The author poses with his homestay hosts during a hike with them in Sri Lanka's Sinharaja rainforest.

There’s always a lot of banter about travel “back in the day.” Each generation of sojourners loves to lose itself in a halcyon haze, reflecting back on a time gone by when travel was clearly at its best… and then lost to the ever-denser droves of insensitive and irresponsible touring ogres.

My golden age was long after Across Asia on the Cheap (Tony and Maureen Wheeler’s famous ground-breaking guidebook in 1973), but solidly pre-Internet. I too get a bit misty-eyed just thinking about it.

I first hit the road in the very late 80s. It was also a period of spreading local realization that travelers were not just willfully displaced and resourceless refugees out to experience the world. They were increasingly seen as commodities. Some people believe – as I do – that with these changes, a wedge has been driven between travelers and hosts. Both parties now float through a common space that is, alas, no longer a shared one.

Just how can we bridge the divide between host and visitor, and resuscitate the merits of “going local” without any of its past discredits?

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