We forget that to travel east of the Holy Land was considered highly adventurous until after World War II, and that central Asia was virtually inaccessible to outsiders until the late twentieth century. And if you become sick or injured, you can be evacuated from most places within hours: Peter Fleming or Ella Maillart would have been in real trouble had they become sick or injured in the vast expanses of central Asia. We live in a completely accessible world of intricate airline schedules and instant communication, where you can visit the great moiae of Easter Island as easily as you can take a journey to Stonehenge or the Parthenon, the difference being a longer flight and the need for the correct visas and a foreign rental car at the other end. Then, in the twentieth century, came ocean liners, massive cruise ships, and the Boeing 707, followed by the jumbo jet, all of which together made archaeological travel part of popular culture. From that, it was not much more difficult to organize tours to Egypt and the Holy Land, now readily accessible thanks to the new technology for Victorian travel: the railroad, the steamship, and the telegraph. The enterprise was so successful that he took advantage of steamships and continental railroads to organize what we now call package tours to France and Germany. A devout Baptist and an advocate for temperance, he began his business by organizing rail excursions to temperance meetings in nearby towns in central England. Cook was the first to realize the potential of the railroad for group tours. He harnessed the revolutionary technologies of Victorian travel to a growing desire on the part of the middle class to explore the world and its ancient history. Thomas Cook started it all with his meticulously organized archaeological tours up the Nile.
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