Earlier this year, Agnes Callard, in her column for the New Yorker, wrote about the absurdity of thinking of travelling as an achievement. To prove her points, Callard takes help from G.K Chesterton, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Socrates and Immanuel Kant. Chesterton once said ‘travelling narrows the mind’; travel, for Emerson, was a ‘fool’s paradise’; and Socrates and Kant never left their hometown, she writes. Not many were pleased with Callard, not because she wrote about something they love, but for the lack of depth in her arguments. 

The article comes off as a personal rant, not a thoughtful meditation on the subject. I didn’t like that essay. Yet as the end of the year looms over us and the world saunters into celebration mode, the visuals of thousands of vehicles standing stationary on the way to Manali reminded me of Callard’s The Case Against Travel. While there may or may not be a case against travel, there’s definitely a case against too much travel. The term is overtourism. National Geographic define it as “too many people in one place at any given time.” Every holiday season, popular tourist spots like Goa, Manali, Ladakh, and Shimla get overly crowded, which puts a massive strain on the city’s infrastructure. 

Soon after the pandemic subsided, and movements across borders were eased up, the tourism industry shot up drastically, as those with the means to travel around booked their tickets to ease off the lockdown fatigue. Although tourism is one of the primary sources of socio-economic development in these cities, the excess of it is also leaving adverse effects on the region and its populace. 

 

Impact Of Overtourism

The travel and tourism sector accounts for almost seven percent of the country’s GDP, and gives employment to millions, yet there’s a hidden cost that’s rarely even considered. The influx of vast swathe of tourists impacts the socio-cultural life of the local stakeholders in various ways, most notably being the damage to the river, coastline, and other natural resources. 

Overtourism also makes the city rife for unfettered commercialisation, and when profit becomes the priority, environmental regulations are bound to be flouted extensively. Places in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand are already suffering, with the frequency of landslides getting higher and higher in sensitive regions. Forget the holiday season, even on regular weekends, these places face massive congestion in urban areas and road blockades.

“Some of the enablers of over-tourism are the endlessly growing world population, increased middle- and upper-income individuals, discretionary time, and money to spend on leisure and tourism,” reads a research paper from 2022.

The Call For Responsive Tourism

With the number of domestic and international tourists showing no signs of decline, it’s important for policymakers to raise awareness about responsive tourism. At a World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002 in Cape Town, responsible tourism was largely defined as the travelling that “minimises negative economic, environmental and social impacts” on the place and its inhabitants. 

The declaration also asks for the involvement of local people in crucial decisions that affect their lives and mobility in the city. Among the major grudges that locals carry towards the tourists is how they have little power in formulating policies that affect them directly. South Africa became one of the first countries to enlist Responsible Tourism as one of their major national policies. Other countries too need to follow suit.