It was a week-long escape to Kerala- God’s own country. The green and cosy-lazy Kochin, lush beauty of Munnar, the expanse of Periyar and finally a trip along the waterways. Nothing more we could ask for.
Yes, indeed Kerala is beautiful with loads of greenery and waterfalls and winding hill roads. The boat ride on Periyar’s green-blue water watching the dark jungle on the banks and avoiding the quite a few lonely tree trunks jutting out of water is an experience in itself. The voyage on backwaters, equally relaxing where we watched life in full form on both the banks laced with birds flying, sun setting and trees reflecting in the water.
All in all great holiday experience but somehow it failed to touch my heart.
It could be excess hype created for the God’s own country or over-commercialization of every activity. Maybe it was too tourist oriented or maybe it was too rehearsed. I thought that Kerala has overdone their tourism avatar. And I guess that will be the fate of most of India’s tourism-oriented states. More a place becomes a tourist attraction, it fast loses its raw appeal. It also loses its purpose for being an attraction since now it gets crowded with so many other ’attractions’ e.g. shops, eateries specially put in to appease a special someone called ‘tourist’. The Echo point of Mattuputy lake in Munnar was a blatant reminder of the fact that we go as tourists and tourism mean shopping and eating. It would have been such a serene place with green silky waters draped on earth and wall of tall trees and hills bordering the vast lake. However, it was nothing but a shop hive with bhaji and chai smells wafting all around!
I understand that it is a commercial decision to put entry fees for jungle treks, temples and monuments, facilitate boat rides at a price on lakes and take tolls to ride smoothly on a thickly forested road. All in all enhancing tourism seems to be all about creating more ‘enjoyment’ opportunities from which the state can generate money. And what sort of enjoyment it is really! A scripted ride on the elephant through plantations on a patch of road traversed by the elephant umpteen times in a day or a walk through the quarter of an acre of spice plants with a guide who is better off speaking in his mother tongue.
Since we heavily borrow all our lifestyle ideas from the influential West, it is no wonder that the implementation of tourism is an equally imported and copied feature of modern India. Tourism in all developed countries is a matter of enjoyment, relaxation and more often entertainment. Hence a great natural wonder is often reduced to a two-hour tour at a price. And many times trivial and mundane spot is also elevated and hyped to a level of ‘great attraction’ which can fool you and ultimately leave you dissatisfied.
The emphasis is on the ‘paying’ tourist and not on the spot. Well some of us definitely enjoy this ‘tourism’ but some of us want to run away from it. Having access to mineral water on a hilltop is good, but more important is access to written material about the place, the history, the geography. Making facilities of food and relaxation are wanted but keep the sanctity of the place, we do not want to hear radio tunes in pristine lake forest.
In an attempt to attract the ‘paying’,’ urban’ tourist we come up with some ideas so flawed and so dangerous. The lovely ‘Kettuvelam’, the backwater barge is an important fixture in Kerala tourism. The boat ride is an experience no doubt when it takes you in alleys of backwaters. But then in the night, for our air-conditioned stay on the barge, the power generator is roaring away spoiling the real calm we came to experience. What is the point in offering people to stay on a moored barge and polluting the surroundings with smoke and noise? I believe it would be the same thing for ‘Deluxe’ Shikara stay in Kashmir. The experienced folks can tell… The same goes for a boat ride on Periyar Lake. It is a boat party crowded with people in all shapes and sizes, squealing, talking, laughing, eating and out to see the ‘wildlife’. No wonder the ‘wildlife’ hides in the deep confines of the forest. We saw a silhouette of a couple of elephants grazing on top of a distant hill and that was the reason to rejoice. And if I remember, it was a reason for the toppling of a certain barge in the same lake as people rushed to one side to take photos, a huge tragedy.
Finally, what is tourism and what does a tourist want? Many amongst us want to have the same city life of comfort, movies, shops, rich food albeit in a different setting for a few days. But there are few who are learners before they are tourists, who want to understand the place and its ethos in a completely natural setting. Maybe it is best for such a tourist to visit a museum and gaze at a sculpture and recreate the surrounding by imagination and ‘enjoy’ the experience.