This commentary reviews recent research in terms of tourist’s mobilities in terms practices of walking, cycling and driving. It concludes by reflecting on the contemporary lock down of travel in terms of the global pandemic and its consequences for waiting, stillness and immobility – particularly in terms of flying.

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In this paper, we reflect on the challenges of ethnographic fieldwork in tourism research. Specifically, we discuss the intense, messy and complex dynamics of doing (tourism) ethnographic fieldwork, highlighting how key challenges have affected us as researchers, our practises, relationships and experiences in the field. Our reflections are illustrated considering respectively our research experiences of mountaineering in the Himalayas, walking tourism in China, horseriding tourism in the UK and volunteer tourism in Peru. Although these fields have very different social and geopolitical contexts, we experienced similar issues. Our most commonly experienced challenges include time limitations, having 'enough data', accessibility to the informants and rapport building.Through the discussion of these challenges, we unpack the often conflicting emotional contours of fieldwork which are commonly experienced but rarely spoken of. With this paper, we seek to open critical debates on the emotional aspects of tourism research which may be particularly useful for novice ethnographers and scholars constrained by the institutionalized pressures of academia.

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This article examines how various stakeholders’ practices on the ground mobilise and immobilise the Chamagudao’s heritage as a historic trade and caravan route. The research is based on ethnographic fieldwork in Yunnan, China, following movements of tourists, guides, residents and information on the remaining trails of the Chamagudao. It outlines how nodes, constructed by state actors and touristic media, rather than the lines of mobile heritage primarily constitute the Chamagudao, and the implications for tourists’ awareness and understanding of the Chamagudao as mobile heritage. Explicitly mobile practices occurring along its trajectories are challenging the nodal interpretations of this historic route. The article offers a mobile perspective on assessing the opportunities and challenges faced by tourism routes in China in the governments bid to develop these as mobile heritage destinations.