The turn East : ‘new’ religious consciousness and travel to India and after Blavatsky

The twentieth century saw travel for leisure or pleasure- tourism - reach a position of centrality in the cultural praxis of large swathes of Western society. Situated as a component part of larger trends such as social mobility, consumerism, individual freedom, and eclectic postmodernity, travel quickly acquired a multivocal capability in Western narrative. To travel for leisure became a statement of means, of class (for example, Butlins in contrast with St Moritz), and of identity, but also of belief, desire, and fantasy. These were tropes familiar from the accounts of Grand Tourists, medieval pilgrims, and other travellers throughout prior centuries.