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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