Trevel in remote places, depending on the kindness of strangers

Reading Patrick Leigh Fermor's travel memoir, A Time for Gifts, about his trek across Europe on foot, in the winter!, en route to Constantinople, in 1933 when he was 18, and, as noted yesterday, this mode of travel would be literally impossible today - with all the border crossings, the incredible expansion of highways and byways, and great # of cars and trucks on the road, the increased suspicion of foreigners and wanderers, the lack of cheap accommodations, the omnivorous internet, and the proliferation everywhere of tourist. One of the many things that makes his travel memoir so readable today is that he wrote it in the 1970s, looking back, so we get an adult/modern reflection on the travels of youth, not just a travel journal. Still, trekkers would be advised to note that PLF kept a detailed journal throughout his travels, without which he memoir 40 years later would be nearly impossible (part of the charm is his noting overnight stays about which he retains no memory, plus a few fact-checks and updates that put the memoir in context). Of course I'm reminded of my own far less adventuresome European travels when I was young, some of which I wrote about - like PLF decades after the events - in Exiles; as that was a work of fiction, a travel journal was not so necessary, and I had a really good recollection of those days (I don't so much anymore - as if writing purged the memories). I note, though, that my experiences in northern Sweden were in some ways similar to his in north Germany; like him I was traveling alone, on back roads, walking and hitching, and experienced the kindness of strangers: One night I set up a small campsite, and a farmer came over, chatted w/ me, invited me into their farmhouse for the night - a great experience (they spoke no English - were elderly, taking em in like that would never have happened in the U.S. at that time). Met w/ similar kindness on another trip in rural Wales. But I was in a very unpopulated land - the experiences were never the same when I traveled, sometimes trying to hitch, near cities. So perhaps travel while dependent on the "kindness of strangers" may still be possible in remote areas or in off-seasons - but the innocence of PLF's journeys feels far away, and extinct.