“alan bennett describes in one of his journals how, during a visit to egypt, he found himself trapped among cohorts of tourists trudging wearily though dusty wastes of sand and rocks under a merciless sun: the famous,site he had come to admire looked merely like a,stone quarry full of sweaty crowds. he wondered if tourism was not like pornography: a desperate search for lost sensations. the fact is, the only impressions that truly register on our sensibilities are accidental–we did not seek them out (let alone book an organised tour!”
