On World
Tourism Day in India 2023, we Indians must be proud , rightly so, of
our heritage sites, architectural and cultural splendours, geographical natural
wonders and our tourism departments blunders.
We have not
tapped even 10% of our potential. While we wax eloquent on bran
drain, we hardly ever bother to notice, much less quantify, the
tourism revenue drain in India.
Modern day
tourism requires proper infrastructure with a complete ecosystem involving
a whole gamut of tourists’ attraction and promotion factors. Comfort in
new environs to enjoy both the journey, visit and stay that can trigger
nostalgic feelings at a later day and there must be somethings to revisit those
nostalgic moments, at least some basic memorabilia like T-shirts, photo
cards, fridge magnets, key chains, booklets etc. None of these things are
there in most places.
Even our much-venerated
pilgrimage centres the journey are not adventurous or anything to
do with ascetic arduous peregrinations but pure danger and potential
risk, they escalate when a VIP visits. There is neither discipline nor
crowd management anywhere. Cleanliness is totally neglected in most
places.
If people,
try to escape all these dangers and try to go abroad our system kills the
very instinct for travel and tourism through a 17th
century stupid NOC rules in almost all organisations.
When you
visit a place, you grasp life in its complete form as it is in that place. While
doing so, you feel a new joy, experience life differently and learn to
appreciate the whole environment i.e., all aspects of that place its language,
culture, food, dress, traditions etc with total intensity and intense totality.
Of course, certain preferences, embedded as prejudices, may not allow one to
accept every type of food, appreciate every culture of the place or accept all
types of dress codes, understand every language, yet one is struck by something
new, something different and most importantly, in most places people are nice
to tourists.
"What you've done becomes the judge of what
you're going to do — especially in other people's minds. When you're
traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don't have
your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road."-William L H Moon
Symbolically too, when our mind travels without
carrying the burden of the past it is a very enjoyable journey .
Travelogues takes
us not only to new places but introduce us to hitherto unknown and unseen newer
perspectives to perceive life.
Many
great works are chronicles of observed activities or absurdities , the
psychological impacts it had on the thinker or writer, their own
perceived and concerned socio- cultural implications of those
activities.
In
some cases, they also used ideological extrapolation to interpret
events.
The
author. who unfortunately, missed Nobel prize James Joyce's 1000 plus pages
book Ulysses is chronicle of a day. Some
weave a wonderful study of psychology.
Even
when some great authors, thinkers and seekers write travelogues they convey a lot
of great in-depth insight , architectural study and philosophical
insights. In Paul Brunton's work his spiritual seeking, Socio-psychological
aspects in Aldous Huxley's works and socio- cultural aspects and romance in
Lawrence Durrell's works etc.
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