Chapter 1 - Introduction

Summary

As a critical tourism scholar with particular concern with how destinations are imagined and altered for tourist consumption and local people's responses to such, I have a longstanding interest in tourism in Nepal. Like many popular destinations in poorer parts of the world, Nepal is constructed and commoditized as an opportunity for immersion in rich cultural heritage and spectacular scenery. It is home to eight of the world's tallest mountains and is famous for world-class mountaineering, trekking, rafting and other adventure activities. Its strong Hindu and Buddhist heritage means that Nepal is famous for its many temples, monasteries and stupas, and in combination with the spiritual allure of the Himalayas and the often-cited warmth and hospitability of Nepali people, Nepal is perhaps uniquely imbued with mythical appeal to tourists seeking an ‘authentic’ travel experience.

My earlier work on adventure tourism in Nepal and my wider research on the idealization and romanticization of places and their people under the influence of the ‘tourist gaze’ (Urry 2002) led me to explore the power of globalized tourism markets to construct and control geographical locations, often in ways that Orientalize, Other and sometimes endanger their inhabitants (Bott 2009, 2012, 2018). Tourists are sold holidays through photoshopped, sanitized and highly selective depictions, which mostly airbrush over the realities of daily life in popular destinations, many of which are found in the world's least economically developed countries (LEDCs) in the Global South.

Paradoxically, even when poverty and ‘underdevelopment’ are themselves commoditized, as is the case in niche areas such as slum tourism and ‘tribal’ tourism, the political economies of countries are largely hidden from formations and mediations of ‘dream’ holidays. There is a deliberate segregation of the problems faced by people living in difficult circumstances and the gratifying elements of holidays, which are designed to represent an embodied departure from the realities of everyday life. During my earlier ethnographic fieldwork in the Himalayan foothills and at Everest basecamp, I had observed the extraordinary measures provided to buffer tourists from cold temperatures and provide them with Western luxuries. I watched helicopter loads of Coca-Cola, chocolate bars, firewood and battery-farmed eggs being unloaded and carried uphill by porters in basket loads weighing more than they did.