A closer look
Before the Suez Canal made life infinitely easier, getting to India required a grueling detour across the Egyptian desert. The 'Overland Route' involved dragging miserable British colonialists off ships and throwing them onto donkeys for days. Because whining imperialists couldn't handle sleeping in the sand, transit operators were forced to build a highly organized string of luxury desert rest stops. The sheer incompetence of these travelers literally forced the invention of the modern multinational hotel chain.
