My social media is filled with people showing crowds at beauty spots around the world. I’ve seen masses at the gates to Machu Pichu, people sharing ‘hacks’ that recommend you visit the Trevi Fountain and Forum in Rome at 4am to avoid crowds. I’ve seen guards in Portofino and Thailand managing lines of people waiting to get their photo for instagram. Venice is selling entry tickets to tourists in the form of a €5 entry tax. Airports have people sitting in every spare corner and the lines for security are out the front door and down the street. We have the Spanish protesting against tourism and one village in Greece voting to ban tourists completely.
A growing global middle class means there are more people with the money to travel - but the world’s best known beauty spots have not grown in capacity.
How much worse is it going to get and what is the solution? Will the City of London raise its walls again and start charing £20 entry? Will Mount Snowden add an online ticket office that releases capacity three months in advance and put armed guards at the trail head?
In the future will only the rich have access to these places and will this push people further into their online reality, or worse - the metaverse.
Countries with Space
In the riding holiday world I get insight into how things might go as we’re always on quest to ride where there are no roads and no sign of other humans. There are rides that have already been impacted by urban sprawl. The Loire has paved roads and no longer lets horses ride up to castles. We have to park our horses and pay at the gate. Cantering is more restricted because gravel paths are now tarmac roads. A very popular ride in India has had a town reach its gate. The population in Kenya has doubled in the last ten years and now there is a car quota for surrounding wildlife in the Masai Mara at one time (four to five maximum, the rest have to wait for 45 minutes before their turn just behind them).
The further away the city remains from the horses the more of the local culture is preserved. We see this in Ireland too where all the Irish speaking areas are on the west coast where the English didn’t bother reaching to beat it out of them. So, authenticity, and beautiful cultural difference is in the hidden pockets of the world these days.
The least densely populated countries in the world are Mongolia, Namibia, Australia, Iceland, Suriname, Botswana, Libya, Canada, Guyana, and Kazakhstan. Most of the these countries are made up in huge part by a big desert or mountain range - but that is perfect for horse riding! We’ll find shamans, petroglyphs, caves, miles and miles of open country with no roads and best of all, land that hasn’t been manipulated by man - or if it has, it’s by ancient man and we are one of the few to stand witness to it in recent times.
It’s no surprise to me many of Black Saddle’s ride’s are located here: Namibia, Australia (well next door in New Zealand), Iceland, Botswana, and Kazakhstan (next door in Kyrgyzstan).
Tripadvisor Travel
Part of the problem is that many people have no idea what they truly enjoy and simply play travel bingo, ticking off the top ten spots on TripAdvisor during their holidays.
For example, there is this one tree in Wanaka, New Zealand. It’s just like the other trees around the lake where it grows, but photographers have snapped it so many times that it’s become infamous. Whenever I walk past, there are buses of people crowded around it. It has no real significance; it’s just popular on TripAdvisor because it appears in so many marketing photos. Everyone is dressed the same, taking the same photo, in and out of the bus in 15 minutes, then off to the next TripAdvisor spot.
This type of travel causes congestion.
When I think about the future of travel, I worry about the restrictions that are coming. The US has only had passports since the 1850s, and UK passports were generally not needed for travel until the First World War. Can you imagine a world where you can travel from place to place uninhibited? What a dream!
In my lifetime, places that were once open have closed due to geopolitical changes: Russia, Iran, the Levant, Ethiopia. Unfortunately, these are the places I’d most like to visit. Maybe in a different part of my life.
I also worry about the spread of English. While it makes organizing travel easier, I can see a lot being lost in the process. Instead of experiencing a new culture, we often see locals in Adidas tracksuits with smartphones, watching TikTok. Kyrgyz grandmothers once made felt saddle pads for their horses that lasted generations, but now they use plastic knock-offs from China. Song Kol Lake, which has had no permanent buildings, no power, and no cell reception for millennia, had two buildings under construction when I was there in July. I was deeply upset to see them.
So much is changing so quickly, and things are becoming more homogeneous. I feel an urgency to travel and soak up untouched places before the crowds find them, or the locals move to the city and forget their old ways.
Buildings at Song Kol Lake
Lines at Reykavik airport snake to the terminal entrance