One of my favorite aspects of travel is observing the day to day life of people all over the world. Seeing a country’s monuments and palaces is a pleasure, but I prefer getting a taste of the culture. As I drove through Jodhpur, Jaipur and Ranthambhore, I was constantly astounded at the scenes outside my window.
As soon as we left the city life of Udaipur behind, the dusty desert roads stretched endlessly before me. Fields full of the seasonal wheat crops were peppered with grazing cows, goats, and a few mischievous dogs. The landscape was dry and brown, as we were heading into the peak of the summer season, and the only color came from the saris of the local women, dotting the fields with their bright blues, oranges, and reds. The women in India work just as hard, if not harder than the men, and I was amazed at the sight of young girls carrying cement bricks on their head with no sign of distress.
Every fifteen minutes or so, the farmland would give way to a small village, and there the real show began. Men sat in circles, their heads wrapped in swaths of bright fabric, and clothed in loose airy shifts, while small children gathered round the water pumps, cooling off from the morning heat. The streets were clogged with traffic, brightly painted trucks, rickshaws and regal looking camels pulling wagons full of grain. While the cows wandered as they pleased, revered by the Indian communities, bulls were put to work, pulling carts and transporting heavy loads. The air was filled with a cacophony of sounds, from the shrill piercing of car horns and the soft mooing of the cows, to the happy squeals of playing children. Then without warning, we returned to the quiet fields, with the long stretch of desert road ahead.
As we drove, my driver, a man named appropriately named Menu, who gave us some insight into the local customs of these villagers. He explained that the color of the men’s turbans signified their place in the caste system, still in use today. A red turban was a symbol of the shepherding caste, while a multicolored turban meant a warrior lineage.
After Jodhpur, I drove down Highway eight, the road that connects New Delhi to Mumbai, and continued gasp at the scenes just outside my window. Families rode on the roof of trucks with ease, large bundles of grain spilled over from the back of their transport carriers, threatening to explode on the cars behind, and camels, elephants, and cows were a common roadside spotting. As the horns around me exploded with sound, Rajesh explained that cars in India have two types of horns: regular horns emitting a standard beep, and pressure horns with over 11 song options.
Cars were only permitted to use the pressure horns on the highways, as a signal that they wanted to pass you. Otherwise, a standard beep was used to alert other cars to your presence.
Driving in India is a very unique experience, one that I’ve heard likened to a racecar video game. Nothing is enforced on the roads, from the speed limit, to the lane lines, to even driving on the proper side of the road. It is quite common to drive straight towards oncoming traffic, only to switch lanes at the last minute, weaving in and out of the vehicles around you.
Finally, as I headed for the last leg of my road trip, driving the three hours from Jaipur to Ranthambhore, I noticed how the landscape changed once again. Tiger country was noticeably drier than the previous cities, and the women tended to favor bright orange saris, perhaps as a nod to their beloved mascot, and also to scare away any predators from their fields.
I ate it up.
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![<em>Illustration: Simon Letch</em>” />
<p><em>Illustration: Simon Letch</em></p>
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<p>In the hilltop Shwedagon Pagoda, whose gold-covered stupas gleam far across Rangoon, are countless statues and images of the Buddha, sitting, standing, reclining in timeless fashion.</p>
<p>One little shrine, drawing small crowds of worshippers, is different. Inside the gilded archway is a large disc of flashing, multicoloured, light-emitting diodes, a bit like a Japanese pachinko machine, surrounding a Buddha image.</p>
<p>What price culture? Is it to be preserved in classic fashion, or updated generation to generation? Is it to be kept for the people raised in it? Or marketed around the world?</p>
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<p>The questions arise because big money is attached. In many countries, the responsibility for tending to culture and cultural properties used to be attached to education ministries. It was part of nation-building. Now, it is often joined to the tourism ministry, to boost invisible exports.</p>
<p>States value relics and ruins if they prove lineage to a glorious past or assist in territorial claims. Only a year ago, Cambodians and Thais died in a clash over an 11th-century Hindu temple sitting on their border. In Jerusalem recently, I climbed around new excavations of what appears to be the remains of King David’s palace, just down from the Temple Mount.</p>
<p>But there is also big money in culture, thanks to the explosion of mass travel. For Burma, inward-looking and isolated for half a century but now opening up and losing its political stigma, tourism presents tantalising opportunities and dilemmas.</p>
<p>Recreational travel into Burma is now mainly filled by small groups of prosperous, well-educated older travellers from Western countries and Buddhist pilgrims from other parts of Asia. They are there for self-education, to savour the ”real” Burma before it is all spoiled by consumerism and mass tourism. There are some nice resorts, but for most, comfort and luxury is not the drawcard.</p>
<p>All that could be about to change. Burmese officials see the 350,000 to 400,000 arrivals last year growing to 2 million or 3 million a year over the next decade. Damian Evans, who directs Sydney University’s archaeology project at Siem Reap in Cambodia, near the Angkor Wat temples, thinks they are ”radically underestimating” the potential growth.</p>
<p>”Thailand had 20 million tourists last year, double the number of 10 years ago,” Evans said. ”Myanmar [the official name of Burma] has everything that Thailand has, and better in many respects. For example, as cultural sites go, there is nothing in Thailand to rival Bagan.</p>
<p>”It also has a lot of things that Thailand doesn’t – snow-capped mountains, the finest intact colonial streetscapes in all of south-east Asia, vast undisturbed wilderness areas, and is a great living storehouse of ancient south-east Asian cultural practices and traditions – such as lost-wax bronze casting of Buddha images, and hand-pounded gold leaf production – that have been lost, forgotten, interrupted or diluted elsewhere.</p>
<p>”Unfortunately, it is these less tangible aspects of Myanmar’s cultural heritage that are most threatened by a mass influx of tourists. The one thing that Thailand has that Myanmar doesn’t have (and presumably won’t have), on any scale, is sex tourism, which I think is the one major variable that will potentially differentiate tourism in the two countries.”</p>
<p>So far, the new government of President Thein Sein, result of the Burmese military’s withdrawal from direct political control, seems to be thinking mostly about trade opportunities in physical goods that arise from the country’s position at the junction of China, India and south-east Asia.</p>
<p>But Evans points to a building human flow across borders, too. ”What we’re seeing in China and increasingly India is the emergence of a vast demographic of leisure travellers,” he said. ”People don’t fully understand the implications of this, which will be a mass movement of people over the landscape and across borders that is completely unparalleled in all of human history.</p>
<p>”Myanmar is perfectly positioned and exceptionally well endowed with the resources to take advantage of this phenomenon, and if the regime is very serious about reform and opening up to the outside world, then within a decade, or a decade and a half, tourist numbers could easily rival those of Thailand.”</p>
<p>How fast it can happen is shown at Siem Reap. It used to be a collection of quiet little fishing and farming villages. In 10 years it has become a boomtown with a six-figure population. It had only a couple of international standard hotels to cater for visitors to Angkor Wat. Now it has more than 100.</p>
<p>The tourism explosion initially overwhelmed Cambodian authorities with new problems, including transport access and communications, urban planning, care of the monuments, and sustainable use of water resources.</p>
<p>The Cambodians have been wise enough to accept outside expertise, channelled through the Angkor International Co-ordinating Committee chaired by UNESCO, on what research and restoration should be allowed, any urgent interventions, and how visits should be managed.</p>
<p>It is a possible model for Bagan, the site of an ancient city near Mandalay where more than 2000 temples and pagodas still dot a semi-forested plain, that is the Angkor Wat of Burma in terms of tourist attraction.</p>
<p>Even before Burma really opens up there has been conflict over local restoration work, often undertaken in the Buddhist way to gain merit for the next life, that doesn’t preserve the original character of the building. But if Burmese did this, like Shwedagon’s flashing light Buddha, does this make it less authentic?</p>
<p>A previous military regime built a concrete viewing tower, regarded as an eyesore unless you happened to be looking out from it.</p>
<p>But that is how many Parisians saw the Eiffel Tower.</p>
<p>Mass tourism into Burma still has many barriers. Its two main airports have limited capacity. Its big hotels tend to be owned by tycoons who are still on international sanctions lists. Its visas are relatively harder to get. Many would-be visitors worry about sending the wrong message on political reform.</p>
<p>Its government is still in a position to choose what kind of tourism it will foster. ”The only question is whether Myanmar wants to sell its soul in achieving [big] numbers, or whether it should think seriously of adopting some form of the Botswana or Bhutan model for limiting tourism and its impact,” said Evans.</p>
<p>”Personally I think the financial lure of the churn-and-burn model of mass east Asian package tourism will prove irresistible in Myanmar, as it has at Angkor, and will raise a whole series of issues to do with sustainability, impact on the environment, and heritage preservation.”</p>
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