The Trouble with Tourism

I am trying to imagine that I live in a picturesque English village.  You know the type, chunky sandstone brick cottages, hanging baskets, quiet village green and local shops where everyone knows your name.   Around it is centuries of history, castles, monasteries, and forts.  All of this set in exquisite natural surroundings, rolling hills, green pastures, weeping willows, and slow meandering rivers full of trout.   Now I am trying to imagine that every year, in the 4 best months, when the sun shines, the flowers bloom and the temperatures are pleasant, that my idyll is overrun by blue skinned giants.

Along with their blue skinned, looming presence, they seem to have money, and lots of it.  They seem to think that it is pretend money rather than real money with the way they bandy it around.   Without a quibble they are happy to pay £100 a night to stay in a rudimentary room with no modcons and shout about how wonderfully cheap it is.  Shouting of course in a language that we villagers have had to learn to be able to communicate with them.  The only words of English they know are ‘Hillo’ and ‘Har rar yow?’.  During these months we watch them come and go, paying £50 for shoddy meals three times a day, and then they have the cheek to get all stuffy over an extra pound added to their bill, or try and barter a miserably low price on a piece of locally crafted ornament that took a person many hours of their life to complete. 

They walk down the streets naked, with no shame or care for the fact that we wear clothes, meeting in loud groups in front of our peaceful places.  At night they want seedy places to hang out, play their music loudly so that it disturbs the locals who have to go to school and work the following day.  And then they want vast quantities of cocaine, flagrantly snorting it up and down the streets, with the attitude that they can pay their way out of any trouble if need be.

It is thought perfectly alright by these strangers to take photos of us, patronisingly considered curiosities, without asking.  To scrunch their faces in disgust because our gutters are not as clean as theirs, our infrastructure isn’t as cohesive or developed.   And to pick each others arses in public, which is not considered a faux-pas where they come from.

I have to try and think like this.  To try and understand why we are often treated as cash cows rather than people in the places we visit.  So that I don’t put a taxi drivers head through the windscreen when he shouts at me that because I am rich, I should pay 25% more than the agreed price, and begins a war of attrition, to see whether my principles are greater than his desperation.  I wonder if I would do the same, seeing the big wealthy blue people, laden with gadgets I can only dream of owning, while I struggle to pay my children’s education fees, have never taken a holiday abroad, and only have 4 months to earn any decent money, before my lovely village is free from the blue beasts……. 

But then, as a blue giant, parading around with an expensive camera, a laptop, and the ability to pay 4 times more than the going rate for a shit meal, without a single hair of my eyebrows quivering, I wonder why it should be me that has to pay these extra costs.  Ok, so I am rich, relatively speaking.  And I am happy to pay tourist rates, which are grossly inflated when compared to local costs.  But why should I be held responsible for people being unable to afford school fees or to pay back the loans they have taken out on taxis/shops/bikes etc.  And why should I be given a guilt trip on my relative wealth, and be manipulated or blatantly lied to, when someone feels it is their right to extract more money from me.  If the prices are not enough to cover their costs, they should put them up, not shout and con the money from my pocket.  Is it not down to the government to make sure infrastructure and the economy is balanced so that people don’t feel so lacking.

For example:  We had been told of a beautiful place in the neighbouring valley where the Buddhist monastery held pujas in which the tourist could watch.  It seemed like an experience worth having.  As the puja was held at 6.30 am, it was necessary to catch a taxi.  There is a taxi organisation (cartel) operating within Leh, where prices are ‘fixed’, all offered in a little yellow booklet.  Fixed in this case, means still vaguely negotiable.  But they have to be arranged through a travel agent.  We agreed a price with a local agent, who called the taxi driver to (apparently) agree terms.  There was a lot of mirth, in Ladakhi, for the employees of the travel agency during that phone call, but we didn’t bother ourselves with it.  It wasn’t until we were dropped back at our guest house, after our visit to the monastery that the trouble started. 

We had agreed the full taxi fare, with no waiting charges for 2 hours.  The taxi driver however insisted that we were to pay for waiting.  In my urgency for the toilet, I left Alex to deal with it.  He returned an hour later, clearly irked.  The taxi driver, not at that time realising Alex’s stubborn peculiarities had shouted at him expecting him to cough up, and throw the money at him in a resentful ‘you’re wasting my time’ gesture.  But Alex has time.  Plenty of time.  The taxi driver argued that he knew nothing of the agreement, pulling out the little yellow booklet, and telling Alex to claim the money back off the travel agents.   Alex refused.  So they went to the travel agency together, which was conveniently not open.  So he waited.  As did the taxi driver.  For an hour.  The taxi driver kept informing Alex that he, Alex, was rich, and as such should pay the waiting cost regardless of any agreement, because he, the taxi driver was poor.  Alex disagreed.  Finally the taxi driver called the agency, who at last told Alex not to worry about the extra costs.   They would cover it.  It was apparent, if not obviously to the novice traveller, that both the taxi driver and agency were in cahoots to extort an extra couple of hundred rupees out of us, thinking that we would rather pay than waste our time trying to pay the agreed amount.  This has happened with mind-bending frustration regularly through all of our travels. (Except for me in this instance, who had returned to bed for a little nap while Alex protected our vulnerable pockets.)

In Leh there has been a tourism gold rush.  Four years ago there were a few restaurants, guest houses and tour operators scattered about the town.  Now the streets are lined with them.  The locals, seeing the money the tourists bring in, saw opportunity.  Opportunity to escape the hardships of farm life, to make a quick buck.  The problem is almost every local saw this, and almost every local invested in this, taking out huge loans to buy whatever it is they needed to take advantage of the brief tourist season.   But there aren’t enough tourists to cover their costs.  Now many are struggling, having given up local ways of life.  Importing goods that they used to produce themselves.  And the responsibility is being put upon the tourist.  They should pay, they are rich.  No we shouldn’t pay.  So there isn’t enough gold to go round, but who really is to blame for that?  Those looking for a quick fix to their lives.  Perhaps if the energies placed in trying to extract a few extra rupees from the resentful visitor, they would be better placed trying to overcome the gross corruption of government who syphon off any of the monies that should be going towards education and infrastructure.      

Unfortunately, the local communities have been so keen to impress tourists that they have shifted their whole way of being.  Ladakh used to be a place of hard graft during the summer months where work in the fields took place, so that there was enough food for the cold winter months.  And then during the cold months there were festivals after festival, and it was party season for the locals.  Now the festivals are slowly being shifted to the summer, to amuse the tourists, and bring in extra revenue.  Traditional live of self-sufficiency is being abandoned in favour of cheaper, lower quality imported goods so people can chase the easy money around town, flogging pashminas and overly priced jeep tours around the attractive places.  On the plus side, apparently the Indian government is paying more attention to Ladakh, now the tourists are, and improving the roads.  Aside from that I am not sure tourism is bringing much more than avarice and frustration to the area.     

(This attitude, if not the particulars, in my opinion, is common place within India, and this blog post is not meant as a comment exclusive to Ladahk, but India as a whole.)

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The content on this website is copyright of Wendy King - © Wendy King 2012 All rights reserved.

www.wanderingwendyswonderings.blogspot.com

Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited other than the following:

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You may not, except with my express written permission, distribute or commercially exploit the content. Nor may you transmit it or store it in any other website or other form of electronic retrieval system.

Kathmandu - A Monkey's Tail www.wanderingwendyswonderings.blogspot.com

The electric whizz of a circular saw cuts metallically into my dreams.  Beneath that a hammer bangs a dull rhythm.  Cries of people on the street echo up to our room, shouting above the continuous bursts of beeping from vehicle horns.  I roll over onto my good ear, trying to muffle the sounds out, but I find no solace of sleep in the soft down of the pillow.  Alex ruffles behind me, tugging the sheet, my tolerance for disturbance terminated.  Peeking through my reluctant eyelids, I seek out the clock.  7.20 am.  Back in the land of perpetual noises.  Where the peace of spirituality that is sought by the disillusioned Westerner, is ironically absent in any audible sense.  After a resentful hour, trying to ignore the noise and escape back into the quiet of slumber, we relent.

‘Might as well get up.’  I say.

‘Yeah, I guess so.’  Alex replies.

‘Who’s turn for the cold shower?’

‘Yours.’

‘Of course.’

It takes until the end of my excruciatingly cold shower for the hot water to trickle through.  

The narrow streets outside are wet from the heavy monsoon rain that fell overnight.  The large calf-deep potholes are filled with muddy water.  Attempts have been made to fill some of the deeper ones in with bricks, gravel and sand bags.  The trishaws, scooters, white Suzuki-Maruti taxis, and pick-ups beep endlessly to alert all to their presence, inching their way past each other, cyclists, dogs and indifferent pedestrians.  Despite the rain the air is hot and thick, the water vapour carrying the grime of the streets, depositing a layer of the city onto our skin. 

‘Look!’  I say pointing up at the low skyline.

Above us are large knots of power lines, and above them the jumbled roofs of the buildings.  Four storey concrete cuboids that overbear the rickety tiled slopes of the traditional houses, with small, ornately carved windows, surrounded by crumbly brickwork, survivors of the 1934 earthquake.  A monkey sits on the apex of one of the roofs of the old houses, his head cocked, black tipped tail curled around him, staring at us.  The tring of a trishaw bell sounds close by. 

‘Watch out.’  Alex says, gently guiding me towards the side of the road as the trishaw pulls up next to him.   

Behind that is the impatient beep of a taxi. 

‘No thanks.’ 

I hear Alex say.  He repeats it with a gruff tone when the trishaw cyclist pesters him further into a tour of the city.

‘Maybe it’s Hanuman.’  I say.         

‘I don’t know why they just can’t take no for an answer.’  He says.

The monkey shows the redness of his sore looking posterior and bounds across the unimpeded roofs of the city. 

We continue walking down the road, Alex trailing behind; there is not enough room for us to walk side by side.  Entering into Thamel, the tourist ghetto of Kathmandu, the offerings of the small shops set into the buildings along the sides of the streets begin to target the tourist.  The butcher shops with sheep heads buzzing with flies sat on counters, the dingy, mould blackened rooms with low, worn, plywood tables, surrounded by stools, that serve as restaurants for the locals, and the shops that serve more as cupboards of clutter, containing great pots, heavy ladles and dented metal plates come to an abrupt end.  The fare being peddled, sometimes with aggression, other times with indifference, repeated randomly along the streets.  Fake Northface trekking gear, ‘antiques’, cheeky wooden carvings of mischievous looking sexual frolickers, beautifully coloured and intricate mandalas, book shops, alternative clothing, ethnic jewellery, khurkuri knives, restaurants, generic paintings depicting scenes of mountain ranges and peasants and felt slippers.  Each product has its own store.  All of it the same in like stores. 

Behind me I hear the increasing exasperation in Alex’s tone as he fends off trekking guides, bead sellers, weed sellers, taxis, rickshaws, shoe shiners, henna artists and city guides.

‘No thank you.’  ‘No thanks.’  ‘No.’  ‘Look, I said no.’  ‘Just no.’

Escaping the perpetual and physical bustle of the streets we duck into the Momostar for breakfast.  Similar to the many restaurants around.  Modest and dark, with rudimentary furniture that offers no comfort, and smiling, ‘Namaste’ greeting waiters. 

‘I mean does it look like I smoke weed?  I have been asked about 15 times just walking from the hotel.’  Alex asks.

‘Well, you are quite hairy.’  I reply      

At the door of the restaurant a grubby looking child sits leant up against the door frame.  His hair is matted, and his clothes torn and dirt damaged.  With fingers pinched to his thumbs he raises his hand to his mouth and mimes eating.  The expression on his face says please a thousand times over.  Our food arrives, a delicious steaming plate of momo’s, Tibetan style dumplings, and glasses of hot honey, ginger and lemon.  The pleading arch in the space between the boys eyebrows heightens, seeing our food.  Looking at the guttersnipe I shake my head at him, staring into the hunger in his eyes, that gnaws at my heart. 

‘It’s so hard to say no.’

Alex looks rounds at the boy who ups his imploring.

‘Not much of a life is it.’  He says.

A monkey drops down from the roof, swipes a squashed piece of fruit from the gutter and scampers off with a swish of a black tipped tail, back up the building out of sight.  The boy watches it.  He gets up, head low and slopes away in the hope of finding softer tourists.

A short walk through the old city, from Thamel, is Durbar Square, Durbar meaning royal.  Leaving the testing touts of touristy Thamel, we wend our way through the old streets, the personality of the city revealing itself as we venture further into it.  Unstable, but beautiful old buildings, totter at the sides of the streets, made from wonky red brick and carefully detailed dark wood.  From the small shutters the occasional lone face can be seen watching the milieu below.  In between the elaborately carved pillars of the buildings, hawkers have set up shop.  Brightly coloured salwars and saris flutter in the breeze.  Second hand shoes, swing from string.  Lentils, beans and rice flow from folded down sacks.  Colourful assortments of vegetables, red chillies, green cucumbers, and yellow squash are piled into pyramids.  

Often the streets open into a crossroads, at the centre of which are shrines to Buddha, Shiva, or any other of the pantheon of Hindu deities.  Glances down alleys reveal hidden secrets, treasures of temples, plied with pigeons, tempted by the grains scattered by children.  Gold plated, wrought iron, guiled gompas in squares that exclude the constant chatter and hum of the streets they hide behind. 

We sit briefly in one of these squares, listening to the relative silence, smiling at the fraction of peace we have found.  But before too long we see the buckled figures of beggars, creeping from the shadows, dragging their frail forms towards us; healthy beasts of privilege.

‘Let’s go before we get mobbed.’  Alex says.

I nod, arming myself with a couple of 10 rupee notes to pass with a smile and a Namaste to the ones who manage to make it over before we stride back into the throng.      

At Durbar Square we sit upon one of the staggered stages of one of the many temples that fill it.  Many others have the same idea.  Across from us is the impressive nine stage Shiva temple, with depictions of carnal appetites carved into the struts that hold up the roof.  Many of the buildings in this large square that was home to the Nepalese royalty date back to the C16th. 

‘It’s nice to see architecture that isn’t influenced by the ancient Greeks.’  I say.

‘Yeah.  It’s beautiful.’  Alex says.  Then he laughs.  ‘Naughty little monkey.’

I look to see a monkey scamper using his two legs and one arm, glancing behind him as he runs.  In his other hand is a big fresh piece of cucumber.  Behind him is a man aiming a catapult at him.  The man shakes his head as the monkey moves out of shot, and goes back to tending his stall, hoping to better defend his wares from the quick thievery of the monkeys. 

‘It’s the same one as before.  Look, it has the same black tip on the end of his tail.’  I say.

‘He’s staring at us again.’ 

And he was.  Sat with limbs wrapped around a salacious wooden support, the monkey watched us as he nibbled on his procurement. 

Up the high steps of the temple stages, three grimy looking children clambered towards us.  Their spindly limbs levering their tiny bodies up and over the tall steps.  As they approached us the two smaller ones hid behind the older one, unsure as how to proceed.  The older child was only around 6 himself.  They smiled nervously at us revealing rotting stumps of teeth.  Dirt ground into the shallow creases of their supple skin.  Mud embedded under and around the nails of their hands and feet.

‘Two rupee Mr.’  The older one says.

The other two giggle and skip around behind him.

I shake my head and smile.

‘Sweet.  Sweet.  Give sweet.’

Again I shake my head, and poke my tongue out at them.  They giggle more.  The silliness of an adult is an unusual surprise.  For a while we exchange funny faces with each other, and then they bounce down the steps of the temple to find another to test their confidence on.

‘I think it might rain soon.’  Alex said looking at the dark cloud seeping across the sky.

For a couple of hours we wander back through the centuries, admiring the beautifully carved, but modest, palace of the old Nepalese royalty.  Climbing vast numbers of steep, uneven steps, we find vistas of the city spanning 360^o, lofty viewing rooms for the kings to survey their kingdom.  There are silent courtyards, where only the sound of the pigeons fluttering to the rafters to roost can be heard.  It is a palace of ascetic pleasure rather than the gaudy grandeur found in those found in Europe and Nepal’s more ostentatious Indian neighbours.           

We take a different route back towards the hotel.  The roads of the old city, a maze of similarly looking streets, where we are never quite sure if we have walked along it already or not.  In the distance I spot the monkey, watching, waiting.

‘It’s him again.’  I say.

‘Are you sure?  That seems unlikely.’  Alex replies.

‘Maybe he likes us.’

‘Maybe he wants to rob us.  Is your bag zipped up?  They’re quick.  They’ll have your camera before you even notice.’

‘Let’s follow him.’

‘Do we have to?’

I walk towards the monkey, who shows me his raw bottom again and leaps forward, turning around occasionally to see if we are following.  He leads us down quiet streets, lined with tiny eateries, the proprietors either nattering to each other or asleep at one of their own tables.  The first patter of rain splats down onto the precarious cobbles. 

‘Come on Wendy, this is stupid.  Let’s get back to the hotel.  It is going to piss down soon.’ 

‘No wait.  Look, there he is.  At that doorway.’

The monkey slipped through a rusted metal door marking the outside territory of a small tenement.  The sign above it read ‘Langtang Children’s Home’.  I follow the monkey in.  Alex goes to sit in one of the little cafés.

‘I’ll wait for you.’  He says.  ‘I’ll trust your judgement and match it.’

‘I won’t be long.’ 

Inside the monkey is gone, and from the end of a long path I see two happy people waving at me.  A man with one of the most genuine smiles of love I have ever seen comes to the gate and welcomes me in.

‘Namaste.  Please.’  He says pointing towards the tenement block.  ‘How did you hear of us?’

‘I was just passing.’

The man leads me to the entrance where a woman with beauty radiating from her soul greets me.  At the door a child with obvious learning disabilities was wiggling out on his belly.  A girl came to the doorway, and the child giggled as the girl hoisted him back inside again with cheerful tut.  In the clean, carpeted room, were six wriggling children, all mentally disabled. 

‘We opened 7 years ago.’  The man, Jamak said.  ‘My wife and I took in 22 normal children from the rural villages that had either lost their families, or whose families were too poor to look after them.  We live here with them.  Come see the place, please.’

Jamak took me around the building and showed me the comfortable dorms where the children, along with his own daughter slept, the small dining room with low tables lined along the walls to maximise space, the kitchen, the computer room, which was home to a machine some fifteen years old, a small reading and TV room, and a basic room for the physiotherapy of the disabled children.  He explained that he has the help of a Dutch NGO to help him fund the running of the place.  There were pictures on the walls of the children when they first arrived, looking rigid, solemn, scared, and their evolution over the seven years to bright beaming children with a future.  Even after the children are required by law to leave, at 15, they are supported by Jamak and his family, to ensure their future remains certain. 

Jamak never stops smiling, it increases when he tells of something that warms him.  Like the progress of the disabled children he had started looking after.

‘I have no training in looking after disabled children.  But we have started to take in 6 during the days.  We hope that in a year we can take them full time, when we have learnt more.  Their families lock them in rooms during the day.  The parents have to work, and a disabled child is a burden.  When they first came here, they couldn’t eat on their own.  They couldn’t use their hands.  Now they can.’  Jamak beamed.

I almost cry I am so moved by the love and selflessness of the amazing man in front of me.  Before leaving I make a donation, doubling it to include Alex’s contribution.

‘I figure you can do more good with this than would come of it if I gave it to the street kids.’  I say.

Jamak smiles, its warmth penetrates and exposes the weak selfishness within me.  

Copyright notice

The content on this website is copyright of Wendy King - © Wendy King 2012 All rights reserved.

www.wanderingwendyswonderings.blogspot.com

Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited other than the following:

·         you may print or download to a local hard disk extracts for your personal and non-commercial use only

·         you may copy the content to individual third parties for their personal use, but only if you acknowledge the website as the source of the material

You may not, except with my express written permission, distribute or commercially exploit the content. Nor may you transmit it or store it in any other website or other form of electronic retrieval system.

www.wanderingwendyswonderings.blogspot.com