It may have been a complete coincidence and maybe also the Arriva people and the Transport Malta people who designed the new and controversial bus routes never had this in mind.

The fact is, however, that the new and circuitous routes thought up by Arriva for reasons that the public at large does not seem to appreciate have brought up a new and unexpected silver lining.

And that is that a passenger on the Arriva buses now gets to see far more of Malta than he used to see before. The passengers are taken away from the old, tested and tried ‘direct’ routes from the point of departure to Valletta.

That means there is now less traffic pressure on the main routes leading to Valletta, a good thing in itself.

But it also means that passengers are being taken around villages and offered routes they would have never been to in the past unless they specifically wanted to go there.

While for the Maltese, especially those who have little time to devote to sightseeing, this is nothing except a waste of time, for the foreigners in our midst it is a revelation. Before the Arriva revolution happened, they would have never gone to these villages, and so they would have never seen the old houses, the winding roads and the palatial residences that abound in most of our villages.

And seeing it in summer, they would have never imagined all the enthusiasm and the fervour that grips village after village when the annual festa draws near.

Now they can. From the coolness and height of the new buses, the tourists can, somewhat vicariously, join in the fun.

We have often heard it said that Maltese community life, especially with its peaks of festa, Christmas, Good Friday etc is sufficiently intriguing and attractive to become a tourist attraction in itself. Many times, this point seemed rather like some politicians’ quiet idea of a joke. Until one begins to experience the fascination that Maltese village life exerts on sophisticated tourists coming from cosmopolitan Europe.

If there is a place where this eye-opening experience is happening, that place is Gozo. With the new Arriva buses suddenly making the Gozitan villages far more accessible than they were before 2 July, it’s a whole new world that has been unveiled. That, of course, and the wonderful landscape that Gozo has.

So too in Malta, those who regularly use the Arriva buses can see how tourists have discovered Maltese village life, especially with its peak at festa time, as a previously undiscovered attraction.

The day after Santa Marija, for instance, an Italian tourist was heard explaining to his friends, while the bus was in Mosta, that the festa in Mosta was far more attractive than all the attractions of Paceville.

And at Għargħur last Sunday a group of obviously foreign girls were seen dancing to the band’s music with abandon. Most probably, they would have never discovered the village and its festa were it not for the Arriva buses’ detour.

Obviously, tourist interest can never be restricted to a glimpse of a village even if at festa time. There are pitifully few guesthouses and tourist accommodation in the villages, for all that they usually have are mounds of apartments waiting to be let. Some villages and even towns do not have proper eating facilities, no restaurants except for the very basic ones. The agro-tourism concept still finds it hard to take root.

But the people directly involved, that is the tourists themselves, are being pleasantly surprised by what they are finding. They might have thought they knew all about Malta but they are now being pleasantly surprised. That should be the basis on which future development can be based.