The modern guidebook, epitomised perhaps by Lonely Planet, invented modern travel. No longer beholden to tour companies and their empty-headed schedules, people began to travel independently, and felt safe doing so. All the knowledge they might need was, after all, contained between the glossy covers of a recently updated book.

In the pages of my large, much thumbed India guide, I’ve established the fastest way to travel from Gorakphur to Dehradun and discovered the cheapest, and quite possibly dirtiest, place to eat in Delhi’s Pahar Ganj. I’ve found a trekking company in the hills near Madikeri and a village homestay in Khuri. But guidebooks are more than just train schedules and a listing of sites. They’re tactile, weighty and, as a result, somehow reassuring. I used the same guide as a pillow, a makeshift tripod and, once, to squash a brazen cockroach.

» Read more: The End of Travel Guidebooks