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Surfing the Himalayas: The
Risk Factor in Returning Home.
Sandra Brunet, Department of
English, University of Queensland
s.brunet@mailbox.uq.edu.au
Alpine regions and tropical islands
are frequently constructed as places of solitude, in which time is "stilled."
The romanticising of linear notions of "time" into "timelessness" suggests
the existence of presumed pre-commodified entities. Many travellers nostalgically
seek fragments of "home" in "other" so-called "least developed cultures"
(LDCs), often located in spaces least explored or least touched by gridlines
and digitalisation. For local communities in LDCs the tourist dollar is
seen as alleviating poverty by providing employment. Tensions between the
local culture’s material needs and the non-material desires of the tourists
provide the major theme for this paper. Although tourists’ desires represent
a complex interweaving of diverse longings, these desires are divided, having
predominantly "spiritual", "sensual" or "knowledge-based" motivations. The
presence of Western tourists in Nepal or Norfolk Island, Bhutan or Bali
may represent a desire to appropriate different notions of spirituality,
sensuality and wisdom within the context of Himalayan and Pacific "timelessness"
and "spacelessness." However as Dean MacCannell observes, one consequence
of the Western travellers’ presence is to change that which they most desire
to remain unchanged. The presence of the high-consuming visitor elicits
"longings" in the host culture that reaches beyond the initial material
benefits for the local communities. Case studies in the Himalayas and the
Pacific examine narratives that "over-communicate" and "under-communicate",
concealing social fractures and displacements, inevitable consequences of
cultural exchange. |
