“Hell is other people” – so wrote Jean-Paul Sartre, who might have been less of a misanthrope had he spent less time in Paris, Europe’s most densely populated capital city, and headed instead for his country’s quieter reaches; the tidal interzone of the Camargue, perhaps, or the salt pans of Occitania.
Today, overtourism has become a problem in corners of the world where humans had barely set foot a century or two ago, let alone France; Antarctica’s filling up with cruise ships, and there are traffic jams on the summit of Everest.
