Who cares where they go on holiday?

The truth is that if you travel randomly, you do end up in some very odd, but very interesting places

"We had got suspicious," Emma Nunn said, "when we changed planes at Halifax. I said to Raoul – I really can't see a small plane like this going all the way to Australia." Miss Nunn and her friend Mr Christian, who are 19-year-old students at King's College, London, had not thought it odd that they might have to take a plane to Halifax in Nova Scotia, Canada, in order to get to Sydney, Australia. After all, the world's round, isn't it? You can get anywhere if you keep on going.

It was only 45 minutes into the second flight in a 25-seat plane that the ghastly truth dawned on them. They hadn't, after all, bought tickets to Sydney, Australia. They'd bought tickets to Sydney, Nova Scotia. The other Sydney is Nova Scotia's third largest city, with 26,083 inhabitants. It boasts of a convention centre, six 18th-century buildings, and "a pond which is home to ducks, pigeons and swans". No koalas, however. "Obviously, it was a big disappointment," Miss Nunn said.

This delightful story came about because the pair of muppets typed "Sydney" into an internet site, and took the tickets they were offered without looking at them too closely. The travel business has taken this marvellous opportunity to remind people that they should always book tickets with a reputable travel agent. But there is another, sunnier side to the story, revealed by the fact that Emma and Raoul, who sound a cheerful pair, are having a perfectly nice time in Nova Scotia. They've become local heroes, famous all over Canada, and people are buying them drinks and inviting them home for dinner, and they don't seem to mind too much about their misadventure. Good for them.

The truth is that, really, most people don't mind too much where they go on holiday, and anywhere would really suit. I can't help thinking that the general quality of summer holidays would be improved for most people if, say, on one out of three occasions, you ended up going to the wrong place. After all, sooner or later, most travellers will end up in Sydney, Australia, but I've never heard of anyone who has gone to Sydney, Nova Scotia on holiday, and it's probably quite charming.

Of course, one has a sort of belief that only the chosen destination will be the right one, this summer. You weigh up the competing charms of Majorca, Rio de Janeiro, Scarborough, and Melbourne, and make what seems like a reasoned decision. But in fact, you don't have any passionate attachment to your choice unless there's something you burningly want or need to see there. In nine cases out of 10, if you found that the plane you were on was going not to Barcelona but to Athens, you would get off, find a hotel, and in the end have a very enjoyable sort of time.

The thing is that some cities and places have the reputation of being fabulous destinations, and others, quite as interesting, don't pull the crowds at all. People hear by word of mouth that this Greek island, this Australian city, this Indian stretch of coast are the places to go, and flock there. Sometimes they are wonderful places, but sometimes you can see a look of faint bemusement on the faces of tourists as they struggle to see why they are supposed to come to this place and not somewhere else.

And if tourists and the tourist industry were judiciously incompetent, and ended up in the wrong place more often, I'm sure people would have just as much fun. If every so often a plane which was supposed to be heading for Florence decided to put down at Bologna instead, what an increase in human happiness all round would follow. Tourists who thought they wanted to go to Palma could somehow be sent off to that divine town, Parma; South Americans wanting to have a weekend in New York might end up looking at the National Railway Museum in York; Paris, France, could offload the occasional visitor on Paris, Texas; and, surely, great cheerfulness would follow.

The truth is that if you travel randomly, you do end up in some very odd, but very interesting places. It so happened that the first place in India I went to was Calcutta, which is not on most tourist itineraries; I had to go there, but subsequently it became one of my favourite cities, somewhere I would always recommend. Places that you would never spontaneously go to are always interesting because you don't know what you are going to find there.

So, though most stories of my-holiday-in-Sydney are not very interesting, Emma and Raoul are going to come back having had a very strange and funny adventure, and having seen somewhere they never imagined going. It isn't an argument for making sure you always use a travel agent, and always know exactly where you're going and what you're going to do. Really, what would be nice is a revival of that old favourite, the Mystery Tour on a global scale.

p.hensher@independent.co.uk