I'm quoting, probably more than is necessary, to give you the full flavor.
The Dharavi squatter settlement in Mumbai is often described as the biggest slum in Asia. … It is a vision of urban hell. … It is also one of India's newest tourist attractions. … a young British entrepreneur … selling walking tours of Dharavi as if it were Jerusalem's walled city or the byways of Dickens' London. There seems to be a market for this sort of thing …
Poverty tourism—sometimes known as "poorism"—did not originate in Mumbai (formerly Bombay). For years, tour operators have been escorting foreign visitors through Rio de Janeiro's infamous favelas, … and the vast townships outside Cape Town and Johannesburg, where tourists are invited to mix with South Africans at one of the illicit beer halls known as shebeens. But the Dharavi tours have been especially controversial. … the Indian English-language Times Now television channel attacked them as an exercise in voyeurism and a sleazy bid to "cash in on the 'poor-India' image." – Smithsonian Magazine, March, 2007
There are few niches that are not filled by someone in Britain's enterprising travel industry. At a recent industry conference I heard a presentation from Professor John Lennon about "dark tourism", which is tourism to sites connected with tragedy or some sort.
When I lived in France in the 70s, I was surprised at the number of French folks I met who had been to New York and taken bus tours of the worst parts of Harlem and the Bronx.
Of course in the '70's, one had just been through a decade of inner-city race riots. I settled in NYC at that time. The first time my girlfriend from Bombay (as it was called then) visited, she insisted on riding buses around Harlem. My mom, also visiting & a bit concerned for our friend, joined her. The two of them regaled friends and family for years about how my friend 'passed', and my mother 'didn't have to worry about a thing' tho she 'got some looks'-- and also how 'it wasn't bad at all'!, as though the whole point had been to go up there & prove that black people were just getting a lot of bad press. As a New Yorker by choice, I found the whole thing voyeuristic and strangely racist.
Posts: 2605 | Location: As they say at 101.5FM: Not New York... Not Philadelphia... PROUD TO BE NEW JERSEY!
When I was very young, some girlfriends and I went to the Apollo Theatre in the Bronx. We walked down the streets of Harlem, went to the theatre, and were literally the only white people there. It wasn't until years later that I realized what a chance we had taken.
