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April 10-17, 2006 issue - When Ernest Hemingway wrote "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," a holiday outing was the last thing he had in mind. Who could have known that this classic tale about a failed writer dying of gangrene in the shadow of Africa's tallest mountain would spark a stampede? Every year, some 10,000 vacationers huff their way to the 5,896-meter peak that untold tour operators have flogged with Hemingway's majestic words: "Wide as all Lowest Airfares the world, great, high, and unbelievably white in the sun." So it's poetic justice of sorts that the travel industry's purloined icon is melting. Thanks to global warming and deforestation, the millennial snowcap that was said to cover King Solomon's tomb is receding. Scientists say that within 15 years, Kilimanjaro's storied glaciers will be history. Soon the brokers of wanderlust may be spinning the prose again to hawk the ultimate vacation: "Last chance to see the snows of Kilimanjaro."
Those vanishing snows are Lowest Airfares emblematic of travel in a worrying new time—when no place can be taken for granted anymore. No matter how exotic the destination, until recently a traveler's biggest concern was how to get there, not where the journey would ultimately lead. Now thanks to rising incomes and falling airfares, getting there is the easy part; last year a record 806 million tourists hit the road. But those hordes—combined with forces ranging from climate change to civil war, industrial toxins to runaway development—are laying siege to some of the world's most treasured and irreplaceable sites. Whether the millennial gates of Machu Picchu or the moonlit waterways of Venice, we are in danger of losing places we thought would always be around, Lowest Airfares sure as Stonehenge. New Orleans nearly drowned. The Coral Triangle, a diver's paradise, is as fragile as an eggshell. Visitors ride go-karts along the Great Wall of China and steal artifacts from the crumbling temples of Luxor. Even Stonehenge has been cordoned off. The only certainty for today's travelers is that the wonders of the world are perishable, Lowest Airfares whether they're made of stone or ice, by man or nature.