The list of writers who are turning tours into reading vacations is dominated by self-help authors like Mr. Chopra and writers with a spiritual bent like Neale Donald Walsch, the author of "Conversations With God," who in June took readers on an eight-day tour of Peru timed to coincide with the summer solstice sunrise over Machu Picchu.
We were shown round the island by Rob Ellson, a former local newspaper editor turned tour guide.
Once we had piled onto the coach – all clutching a Monopoly board-style map detailing the foreign-acquired properties we'd see – Roman Borisovich, an investigative journalist and the co-founder of ClampK, quickly turned tour host by kicking off with a definition of a kleptocracy.
Miner turned tour guide Andrew Williams, 51, of Ebbw Vale, said the route through the site was fitting given Wales' links to the coal industry.
He is a teacher turned tour guide for guests of the capital's plush Taj Tashi hotel, and like many upwardly mobile Bhutanese men, he has foregone a traditional bamboo bow for the status symbol of a high-tech carbon-fibre compound bow.
"I'm sure you'll change your mind once we go out on safari," Thiel said, turning the tour away from the underground warehouse of Ronald Reagans reaching maturity at levels approximately 2.7 times faster than normal humans do.
The Golf Boys are in the vanguard of a free-to-be-me movement that is turning the tour into a mobile Improv, where the joke is on anybody who feels the need to conform.
The Lions were also conscious that choosing Cipriani ran the risk of turning the tour into a circus with publicity always following in the 21-year old's slipstream.
What follows is a page-turning tour de force of ideas.
Knitters have also been busy at work creating woollen bike wheel covers while artists in all media have been turning out Tour-related works to go up in shop windows and business receptions.
After years of loosely enforcing a ban on motor coaches in the Lower Ninth, the police are turning back tours and fined one company $150.
