Travel isn’t just logistics; it’s meaning-making. As cultural theorists note, tourism runs on images, symbols and stories that help visitors interpret a place. John Urry famously argued that “the gaze is constructed through signs, and tourism involves the collection of signs,” which travelers assemble into a narrative about where they’re going and who they’ll be there. Anthropologists push this further. Nelson Graburn cast tourism as a kind of “sacred journey”—a ritual break