The four-hour walk

Most visitors to the old town in Jeddah want an hour. A few photographs in front of the carved wooden balconies, something cold to drink, back to the car before the heat builds.

A guide who offers that will never be short of customers. It is easy to run, easy to sell, and everyone leaves happy enough.

Some guides offer something else. Four hours on foot, starting before sunrise. The story of a single merchant family, told door by door. Stops where there is nothing to photograph and a great deal to understand. It costs several times as much, and it asks the visitor to be curious, patient and slightly tired.

Most people would not choose it, and that is fine. The guide does not need most people. She needs the handful each week who will remember that morning for years, tell their friends, and come back with their parents. For them the price is a bargain, because what they take home is worth far more than they paid.

The temptation is to soften the walk until it suits everyone. Make it shorter. Add a stop for pictures. Cut the long account of the old trade routes that half the group found slow. Each change wins a few more bookings and removes a little of the reason anyone loved it.

The many want it quick and easy, and there is nothing wrong with them for wanting that. The few she is there for want to be stretched.

Telling the many, politely, that this is not the walk for them is not arrogance. It is the only way to keep making something the few will never forget.