Hindustan Times
The tourist. The ogre?
I have rather ambivalent feelings about the effect tourism has on a place.
It puts a destination on the travel map, bringing visitors who’re happy to have a new place to see and, along with them, money, new livelihoods and growth to the place and its people.
Simultaneously, it changes the place. Picturesque empty streets are lined with food and coconut vendors. Little-used bus stands brim with luggage and coolies to carry them. Multiple storey buildings suddenly spring up, offering place to stay and cable tv. And empty wrappers and plastic water bottle line the seashore. Taking away a little bit from that charm that brought the tourists in the first place.
Often, tourist spots are ‘created’. Being picturesque isn’t enough sometimes to bring the tourists in droves, especially if you’re talking about ‘just another’ little town along the coastline. So the destination is given a ‘draw’, an exercise similar to what is done with the myriad ‘camel points’ and ‘hanuman points’ that dot hill stations in the country, just on a larger scale.
Photo: Mohit Mital
I started thinking of this during a trip I made last week. Murudeshwar, a small town on the coast of Karnataka, a 14-hour bus ride from Bangalore, and 165 km north-west of Mangalore, is such a place. Its big attraction, besides its natural quaintness and charm, is an ancient Shiva temple and a 123-foot Shiva idol (the largest in Asia) that is either two or 50 years old, depending on who’s telling the story.
It was constructed by the local big man, who owns most of the land in the area, including the many-roomed, six floor hotel that’s poised at the edge of the cliff overlooking the sea on one side and the verdant garden surrounding the Shiva idol on the other. It serves, you should note, only vegetarian food, since it’s located so close to the temple.
A local tour agent very aptly described the entire complex surrounding the temple as the “local Disneyland”, because that’s exactly what it was: an entertainment centre for tourists, though the rides and attractions were a bit different.
I don’t think most tourists mind being sold a ‘story’. Especially, if it brings them to a place fully of lovely fresh, fried fish and beautiful red sunsets. Besides, if tourists are silly enough to buy a story that the locals are smart enough to sell to them, they’re rather unlikely to notice that they’ve been conned. And eventually the story becomes a part of the town’s lore.
But the tourism that comes changes the place and, like I said in the beginning, my feelings about that are ambivalent. Some of the changes are good. They may chip away from the essential nature of the place, but that is the essential nature of progress and change. It’s the undesirable changes, like the paan stains and the dirty seashore, that make me hate the tourists (never mind that I’m there as a part of the same breed) and wonder why their presence was ever considered desirable. I think these changes wouldn’t happen if we were only more responsible travellers; but that seems like a whole lot of wishful thinking.
What do you think?
(3 votes, average: 2.67 out of 5)
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locals are selling the story, tourists are eager to buy it. in a holiday.
its simple economics.
the negative effects - why they should create any trouble.
the sanctity of the place was never the question.
money is changing hands.
livelihood is created
all is good
and this too shall pass
p.s. - tourist and traveler are not the same. they are different breed altogether.
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I think you should travel equally for the journey and the destination. You’re talking about places in your blog; in how many of them have you mentioned the time you spent going there and coming back? Sure, it might be hard to make readable material out of a two-hour domestic flight, but how about throwing a little bit about the travelling as well into your travel blog?
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I think you should travel equally for the journey and the destination. You’re talking about places in your blog; in how many of them have you mentioned the time you spent going there and coming back? Sure, it might be hard to make readable material out of a two-hour domestic flight, but how about throwing a little bit about the travelling as well into your travel blog?
Sorry, got a little off track. The point is that you wouldn’t mind going to a nothing place if the point was to TRAVEL to a place, and not to travel to a PLACE. There’s always something new to be found in any place if you’re willing to make the effort to find it.
Here’s another rhetorical question for you: are you contributing to the decadence of such places by writing about them, and thus sending more tourists there?
Morality is best left to other people.
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I echoed similar sentiments as yours on re visiting Ganpatipule after a gap of over 25 yrs! Will probably never go back again! You put the solution to your dilemma in the last sentence, “Responsible Travellers”! I would also put some responsibility on the locals (people & administration). So shall we say “Responsible Citizens”. Sounds a bit Utopian in “Mera Bharat Mahan”? No doubt “Tourist” spots are created and religion is one handy tool for that. Welcome to democracy! More practically since the the hordes don’t seem to be in a mood to change their ways, it makes sense to stay away from them and look for other untouched places and there will always be some left! One just has to keep looking.
Try reading Manohar Malgaonkar for description of places around Murdeshwar over 50 yrs back. Enchanting reading!
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I agree we make a hill station well known and it develops helping economy boom. But the development is at cost of the community and soon it becomess commercial and looses it simplicity and charm.
The solution lies in planned development by local community which balances the needs and desires of local population and the greed which kills the community and beuty whioch attracted torists in the first place
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Every time I talk about some incredible place I have been to before I become aware of the fact that I am technically inviting others to go there. Sometimes I feel it is better to not reveal how to get there but in the age of Google earth the art of discovery is being lost. There will eventually be very few places where no wo(man) has been before. Only commercial tourist destinations *dread.
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