Max Gogarty, or should I say Nathan Barley was lucky enough to 'land' a prestigious place as a writer for The Guardian newspaper's travel section. He was due to backpack through Thailand & India, writing his online journal as he went.
Only, it went wrong. Very Wrong. What his first introductory article (See Max Link) brought, was vicious derisory comments from the true travelling community. He was exposed as an over-privileged, naive, 19-year old who slimily slid through the selection process through his father's Nepotism.

It makes me teary eyed and proud of the community in one sense. However, it also makes me feel a little wary and hesitant of the 'more-free-than-you' travellers ethos. I feel it is enabling, as well as disabling.
I wasn't aware that freedom in the travelling sense was quantifiable?
Derision of over-privileged, middle class, comprehensive school attending, ponces becomes entirely justified. Similar to the rock climbing community who laud a celebrity climber, who has a team of twenty, carrying cameras, and kilos of karabiners up the Troll Wall, to then become a national icon. Who wouldn't be pissed at that, if you'd done it solo, had to lose a finger or two, shit off the side of a rock face, and had no-one who was particularly interested in your achievement?
The travel weblog's future exists in the hands of Ghandi types, Tolstoy wannabes, and King Lears. It isn't completely about abandoning fortune to find oneself. It is more about abandoning poverty, oppression, and misery to find oneself. I feel the age of nostalgic Hemmingway types, is almost dead. It is going to be the time of the poor working class traveller with a story to tell. Which is why I like Angela's Ashes.