Winter, with the festive periods spent between revels and good intentions for the new year, is the ideal time to start planning trips and holidays to undertake during 2024. Browsing through magazines and travel-themed guides, images of extraordinary beauty entice us to leave as soon as possible, to destinations more or less distant, with the hidden purpose of not returning at all to our base of departure. But there are places and destinations that, despite the enthusiastic stories of our friends, should be avoided in order not to find ourselves in the uncomfortable condition of having to regret the choice and having to delete some phone numbers from the most frequent contacts.
One of the places that is talked about a lot, often with admiration, is Dubai, city and emirate of the United Arab Emirates that has built its tourist fame on petro-billions invested in luxury shops and ultramodern buildings that stand out in the desert. The stories of those who visited this city-emirate focus on the glitz, the many stars that illuminate the hotels, the constant and pleasant presence of air conditioning at the north pole and the pleasure of spending much of the time indoors, since the desert is outside anyway.
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Of Dubai has been recently spoken also in relation to a detail folkloristic how curious, that is the detained narcos that would have offered to the Italian judiciary his private island not far from the coast in exchange for a discount of sentence. Beyond the judicial outcome of the case, which could lead the Italian Republic to have its own part of the territory 6 thousand kilometers from Rome, the anecdote tells us a lot about some businesses and people revolving around hyper-starred hotels and buildings grown in the sand. Even less attractive, this destination, is from May to September, when the heat goes from torrid to suffocating, making shopping and skiing in the largest indoor track in the world the only activities compatible with the local climate even if not much with the global one.
To stay in our continent, another stopover to avoid in 2024 is Paris. The capital of France, a city of extraordinary charm and cultural richness, definitely suffers from overtourism (or tourist overcrowding) in every day, month and week of the year. A condition that makes it necessary to book in advance each attraction, if you do not want to face grueling queues. And that leads the city to be neglected and also quite dirty. To an already complex daily life, however, in 2024 will be added the chaos of the Olympics, which represent an additional factor of tourist and sports attraction. You can therefore easily predict a chaotic Paris full of tourists, even more than usual. And this will certainly not have a positive effect on prices, on the atmosphere and on city, public and private mobility. It is easy to predict that the cost of accommodation, catering and services will soar exponentially, without considering that access times to anything will become even more prohibitive. There will not be a garden, a glimpse, a staircase, a boulangerie in which not to have to queue.
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One area of the world where there will probably not be much crowding in 2024, despite the many resources that those lands have, is the Middle East. Not that there has ever been a lack of tension, war and bloodshed in that area, but planning a trip to Jordan, Egypt or Israel in the coming months would certainly not be a good idea. The ongoing conflict, unfortunately, has been going on for decades and will not end soon. And over the decades it has been seen that hostilities have sometimes spread, in unpredictable forms and modalities, even to the territories not immediately involved in the clashes. So better put your soul in peace and postpone to a near future, that we all imagine radiant and peaceful, the tour through the gorges of Wadi Mujib, the desert of Wadi Rum, the lost city of Petra, Mount Horeb, the monastery of Saint Catherine, the ancient Jerusalem, the church of the Nativity and the wonders of the Vale of the Temples.
Illustration by Gloria Dozio - Acrimònia Studios
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