| The
Tourist Trap
 Author:
Fiona Sutton - 2002
Posted: 23 August 2002
It's been a long time
since I've travelled to a place beyond the tourist realm. And really,
I am kidding myself to call the parts of India and Nepal I travelled
to non-tourist destinations. I have yearned for but have yet to
go to the places where "real" travellers go. I am one
of those people who are disdainful of the package tour, excited
by the prospect of experiencing another culture and embarrassed
at being able to get around because someone will be sure to speak
English. Dammit, I am seeking a place where I can finally disassociate
myself from the epithet "tourist".
Yet my brief travels
in India and Nepal have given me pause. A six year pause. Are my
intrepid ideals all talk? What stops me from fulfilling my goal
to explore Myanmar, check out North China, or trek in Vietnam? Is
it a matter of travel comfort? I loved my Nepali sojourn on the
decrepit chicken-bus zooming around ridiculously narrow bends on
the pseudo-road high up in the Himalayas, as another motorised transport
(I don't think it could be categorised as a car) attempted the same
manoeuvre. No, I really did enjoy it. I even thought the seat especially
designed to "move" with the bus was terrific (it wasn't
bolted down). I have tried the up-market version of transport in
India with a chauffer driven Mercedes Benz 4WD on the same trip.
It wasn't nearly so fun. I was clinging to my seat as our "driver"
was driven off the road (this one had bitumen), not by the on-coming
tourist bus, but rather by the truck that was passing the on-coming
bus. The truckie "encouraged" us off the road by opening
up his door and speeding up for our imminent head-on collision.
I am glad we missed the camel.
It's not even the brutality
I witnessed towards animals, which keeps me from the remoter regions.
Most of it seems to be instigated on the premise that this is what
tourists enjoy. I passed numerous dancing bears on the side of roads
- whipped up to their hind legs and further encouraged by the nose
ring attached to a chain on a stick. I declined the opportunity
to pay for and witness a fight between a mongoose and a snake (while
at the same time requesting the old man not to dive from the fort's
three storey tall walls into the well). But isn't this part of the
"cultural experience"? Are beasts of burden dragging way
too heavy wagon loads on busy highways, snake charmings galore and
rides on the ubiquitous painted elephant any different to the fight
between the mongoose and the snake? Weren't the dancing bear and
the tiger hunt all part of the custom of historic India? The goat
sacrifice I witnessed is certainly cultural rather than cruel.
I don't think it's the
hawkers either who have deterred me from travelling to the back
of beyond. Being surrounded by Nepalese children in the process
of learning the art of salesmanship was both wonderful and sad.
Their happiness was infectious. That the art was being preached
in a tiny village at the foot of the Himalayan range was a shock.
But by the same token, tourist-jaded hawkers in the major tourist
centres of India instilled in me a profound despair and a serious
doubt. What had happened? Nepal, opened up to foreigners for less
than a century, had inhabitants who seemed a happy lot, who were
interested in me and cared not at all whether I purchased their
wares. They smiled. India has been opened up to the self-interested
traveller for centuries, colonised and taken advantage of, and whose
hawkers now spit at you if you do not buy from them. Was it merely
a coincidence that I felt safe in one south Asian country and felt
fear in another? Was it just bad luck that I was fondled by a particularly
repugnant specimen of the opposite sex while trying on a sari in
New Delhi? Was being chased down a market lane by a bedspread seller
a sign that foreigners had overstayed their welcome? I had a bruise
on my arm for three days from where I had wrenched my arm from hawker's
grip at the end of our delightful encounter. But this is nothing
compared to the bruise of doubt. Is this Nepal's fate?
Travellers are witnesses
to a culture, onlookers who take valued experiences away with them
back to their homes. Do we think about what we give to that culture?
We set up patterns of travel and patterns of experience. Those early
travellers to Nepal loved the fact that their experiences were authentic
and that the culture was unspoiled. I believe my visit to Nepal
and my travels around that country could also claim to be an experience
of a culture "unspoiled" by tourism. I loved the people
and their way of life. They are happy to see foreigners, or so it
seems to me. Yet my travels in India have forced an awareness in
me, a sense of responsibility. I felt that these places were wholly
and negatively affected by tourism. Centuries ago, those first travellers
to India had authentic experiences of a culture and returned home
to tell people how interesting it was. So the next lot of travellers
go and set off to have their tiger hunt and their elephant ride.
The tourists' expectations were set up by the first travellers.
Fellow travellers want the same experiences. Indian tigers are now
extinct. Bears still dance. And I had an elephant ride.
What will be the fate
of the Nepalese people fifty years from now? My immediate reaction
to Kathmandu was… it hurts. To breathe was painful. The pollution
was so bad that my boogers were black. The government's responsibility?
Probably. My hair changed colour from washing in the water. We kept
on buying water knowing that the country does not have the infrastructure
to recycle the plastic bottles, but also aware that our companion's
first attempts to drink self-treated water resulted in two days
of misery. Happy hawkers were everywhere, including tiny country
villages. Was it like this fifty years after travel to "unspoiled"
India became fashionable?
How much responsibility
does the traveller to "unspoiled" places have? Did I deserve
my bruised arm as one single anonymous traveller in a centuries-long
and never-ending line of foreign faces who have come to get some
sort of illusory experience from their visit? I recently read an
article about travel in Myanmar. The advice was to be quick before
tourism "spoils" the "major attractions." Do
I race out and buy my ticket? I want to… But I also do not
want to spoil the place. Do we as travellers of the world, seekers
of the new and exotic, need to think more about this? Perhaps.
Author: Fiona Sutton
Email: news@polosbastards.com
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