The Hollow Journey

The White Lotus, the commodification of travel and other stories

source: personal archives, Tbilisi 2023.

A luxurious hotel hidden in the heart of a Thai island or nestled in the picturesque corners of the Amalfi Coast, attracting wealthy families and couples in search of relaxation and escape: such are the paradisiacal settings that serve as the backdrop for the various seasons of the famous American series The White Lotus. Every Sunday, when I am reluctant to venture out, I allow myself to be swept up in this exotic world from which, throughout the episodes, a few reflections on travel emerge. For, in the space between this exaggerated fiction and the reality of contemporary travel, one can draw an unmistakably clear parallel.

But while I laughed at the tragi-comic holidays of these wealthy vacationers, dragging their prejudices and privileges along, attempting to escape their neuroses through futile distractions, I believed myself immune to this distorting mirror. Yet, what the series reveals is not only the opulence of the elite, but also an implicit critique of the places themselves — these artificial oases, designed to satisfy the contradictory desires of the modern traveler: between adventure and safety, novelty and familiarity.

For several decades, these private residences for travelers of all types have been sprigging up across the globe. Their proliferation perhaps speaks as much to a social or material belonging as to a new approach to travel itself — what we expect from it, what we project onto it, and the way we consume it.

At its essence, this is what travel has become: a commodity. No longer a means of surprise or disorientation, but a way to fulfill new desires, bought and paid for. And beneath the appearance of discovery and openness to the world, it slowly encloses us in our own certainties.

Comfortable traps

Oman, to the south along the coast, near the Yemeni border. To reach Salalah from the desert's far ends, one must cross a barrier of dusty mountains, from which countless torrents spring, their precious water turning the whole region green in the spring. The slopes then cover in thick moss, young trees, and tropical plants — a rare and almost surreal sight in this otherwise mineral country. Along the rivers, vast fields of grass await the arrival of tourists and camels come mid-June, converging in an oddly parallel rhythm. Under this providential microclimate, countless holiday residences of all kinds now spring up like mushrooms, attracting an ever-growing number of travelers.

But in this March month, the high season has yet to arrive, and not a single car disturbs the silence of the freshly paved roads, lined with palm trees proudly reaching toward a cloudless sky. In this still-slumbering landscape, we observe the ongoing changes around the city. Along the coastline, the vacation residential complexes — either newly built or under construction — align methodically.

After long, exhausting days on empty roads, crossing vast stretches of sand and rock, we found refuge, for a few days, in one of these establishments, the only ones offering accommodation during the low season. I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about it, but having never experienced these places — which now seems to embody a certain tourist standard — I eventually saw it as an interesting subject for study.

The Hawana residence is about twenty minutes from the center of Salalah, right on the sea, in an area that probably once just was a vast rocky plain. Behind the secured gate, a paved alley winds through hedges of hibiscus and jasmine, leading to a maze of quiet streets lined with pastiche buildings and hotels. Electric carts glide from one area to another, between apartments, pools, beaches, and restaurants. The meticulous order and almost clinical cleanliness of the place give me the strange sensation of wandering through a Hollywood set.

The place is still almost deserted. A few discreet signs vaguely recall the local culture: arabesques etched on doorsteps, tunics hanging from the racks of souvenir shops, a few discreet mosaics. But any resemblance to Salalah, or even Oman, seems to end there. In this timeless enclave, we are everywhere and nowhere at once.

However, a curious thing: once the initial surprise faded, I found myself feeling a strange sense of ease and calm in this unknown, yet oddly familiar environment. Nothing jared me or disturbed me. None of the unexpected turns of the street, none of its disappointments. I let myself sink into laziness and boredom (an art, after all, worth learning). And from the terrace, I spent long hours observing a group of men, working under the relentless heat, hauling wheelbarrows of cement toward the foundations of the future buildings that would soon rise.

Though our little apartment was not particularly luxurious, it offered a comfort to which I was unaccustomed on the road. Having mostly stayed with locals, in small rural inns, tents, or even monasteries, I only rented apartments or hotel rooms for brief stops in cities, where alternatives when lacking. The accommodation, as long as it was affordable and more or less along my way, mattered little to me. Each stop brought its share of surprises, good or bad. I’ve known my fair share of freezing or suffocating rooms, persistent odors, and cockroach colonies. But I’ve also, by chance, stumbled upon unsuspected havens of peace: that small, warmly lit room adorned with prints in the Japanese mountains, or the sumptuous dining room of an old house in Bukhara, covered in carpets and frescoes, where the housekeeper, of no small temperament, took me in for a few nights.

One must be reborn

Though the road constantly calls me, it never leaves me completely unchanged. As soon as the border is crossed, doubts inevitably arise. There always comes a moment, sooner or later, when the essential question of the traveler surfaces, one I have already mentioned: what are we seeking here or there? I am convinced of one thing: aside from journalists, researchers, and other professionals of inquiry, travel is first and foremost a matter of ego, a quest for self. We take the road for deeply personal reasons, which concern others far less than we might like to pretend. Curiosity, the thirst for knowledge, the desire for encounters come afterward, as justifications we offer ourselves. What drives us outward, at its core, is more about what we are seeking to repair, to clarify, or to flee from in that elsewhere which always remains a little mysterious, and which, for many, must remain so.

Reclined in the sanitized microcosm of my Omani residence, I wonder why one would travel so many miles only to end up sprawled on a sunny terrace, when similar scenes multiply near our homes every summer. But there is, it is true, something intoxicating about opening the shutters every morning onto a new landscape, a blank page sprung from a dream, seeming to invite us to start anew. We grant ourselves the luxury of reinvention, letting our minds drift far from the meanders of a daily life that has lost its poetry and its glamour.

After long months of labor, we should rise from our ashes within one of these enchanted interludes. A fragile rebirth, however. For it is only when the road grows rough, when it scars us, that our landmarks falter and all certainty slips away, that a true transformation becomes possible. Sometimes it takes renouncing comfort, confronting other realities, for a chance to open our curtains each morning, not just onto the surface of a beautiful painting, but onto all the paths still waiting to be explored.

We must redefine travel, not as a product to consume, nor merely as a destination on the map, but as a way of seeing, a way of being, one that we can carry with us whether at home or venturing to the farthest corners of the world.

References:

• The White Lotus, season 1,2,3, Directed by Mark White