New Delhi, March 21 -- In Bengaluru's Terminal 2 (where I spend far too many hours) is a corridor leading to the restrooms that's lined with vintage posters from "the golden age of travel". Air India's now-retired Maharaja does the can-can in Paris, goes sledding sitting on a bed of nails in Europe, and for some inexplicable reason, saves a mermaid in Sydney. Designed between the 1940s and the 1970s, the posters are provocative, rascally, contain every stereotype possible, and would certainly get both the Maharaja and the airline cancelled today. What they did then-and despite their inappropriateness, do even now-is capture the excitement, the sense of discovery and the flights of fantasy that travel makes possible.

We're wearier of trav...