Travelers vs. Tourists in Bowles' The Sheltering Sky

Introduction: Travel and Tourism in The Sheltering Sky

In the novel The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles takes us on a journey with travelers Kit, Port, and their friend Tunner as they travel across the expanse of the African desert. Bowles juxtaposes the landscape with their personalities, and through their actions we learn what Port and Kit had once lost and are rediscovering in each other. Most importantly, the novel is highly descriptive of areas of Africa that may otherwise remain unknown to outsiders. The narrative invites us to reconsider what it means to travel rather than to tour—a distinction that shapes how the characters perceive and interact with the world around them.

The Traveler's Detached Perspective

Tourists tend to want to see culture and be pampered more than travelers do. Travelers, by contrast, have either visited a region before or are motivated primarily by the experience that travel itself contributes. In the case of Port, we see through his eyes how he operates as a traveler and not a tourist. When "As he walked along the hot road toward the walls of Bou Noura he kept his head down, seeing nothing but the dust and the thousands of small sharp stones. He did not look up because he knew how senseless the landscape would appear," Port demonstrates a deliberate turning away from the visual spectacle. His refusal to observe is not indifference but rather a seasoned traveler's wisdom—a recognition that the landscape, no matter how striking, offers little to someone already familiar with its senselessness.

This detachment distinguishes Port from a tourist's typical response. Where a tourist might gaze upward in wonder or attempt to photograph and catalog impressions, Port walks with his head down, fully aware that his expectations and his experience will not align. The novel's setting and central conflict rest partly on this difference in approach: the traveler accepts limitation and incomprehension, while the tourist arrives seeking revelation.

Observation and Authentic Experience

Tourists may often appear brash and selfish, but they are viewing something for the first time and therefore may be more open than travelers to what a country has to offer. They are more observant, and for a moment during the beginning of their travels, Tunner, Port, and Kit display this same openness. "As he moved along cautiously under the trees he became aware that at each step he was crushing something beneath his feet. The ground was covered with large insects; their hard shells broke with little explosions that were quite audible to him even amidst the noise the dogs were making. It smelled of mint and woodsmoke." This passage captures heightened sensory awareness—the kind that tourists bring to unfamiliar places.

Yet travelers ultimately pursue authenticity over comfort, and they are willing to tolerate experiences that tourists would avoid. Travelers tend to stray from tourist attractions toward areas that are authentic in nature. For Kit, this is demonstrated when she sits to eat authentic local fare: "She had found patches of fur in her rabbit stew, and unfortunately the light in that part of the patio was so dim that she had not made the discovery until after she had put the food into her mouth. The man leaning against the wall beside her was also eating—small dark objects which he kept taking out of the hood of his garment and crunching noisily. With a faint shudder she saw that they were red locusts with the legs and heads removed." Kit's willingness to eat among locals, despite the unpleasant surprise, marks her as willing to accept the true conditions of travel. A tourist seeking a familiar or sanitized version of local cuisine would not encounter such discomfort.

Conclusion: The Nature of Travel vs. Tourism

Travelers are in a place, or traveling, usually for different reasons than tourists. They may be interested in accessing remote areas, or in going to a particular town or country to conduct business of some kind. Tourists are somewhere to have fun, spend money, and experience a watered-down version of a country. Through The Sheltering Sky, Bowles illustrates that the traveler's path is one of acceptance—of senselessness, of discomfort, of fundamental distance from the culture encountered. The tourist seeks to consume and catalog; the traveler seeks to endure and understand, knowing all the while that understanding may elude them entirely.