It is perhaps the great con of our times—for years now, travel has been sold to us as this horizon-expanding, mind-broadening, self-improvement experience. It’s really quite remarkable how the modern travel industry has taken the very human instinct to move—and chalked it up to a slick, well-marketed, Instagram-filtered product. To travel is to live, to grow, to “discover”, they say. But, a closer look reveals that it’s about something far more complex—and at times, deeply problematic.
Shahnaz Habib, author, translator, and tourist, unpacks the notions of modern travel in her book, Airplane Mode: A Passive-Aggressive History of Travel (published in India by Westland), where she holds up the mirror to the very…
