Flightster

Dark Tourism: Seeking Death and Suffering

• by Alan Perlman
• on November 22nd, 2010
• 4 Comments

On a Monday morning in May of 2009, I found myself in an Eastern European van, chugging peacefully toward one of the most infamous disaster zones in the world. Just outside of Kiev, the verdant and undulating urban center of Ukraine gave way to springtime dandelions, birch tree forests and clusters of wild chickens. It was a calm, near-cloudless sky.

The trip to Chernobyl was only a couple of hours. During the drive, our tour group watched a documentary about the nuclear accident. In April of 1986, reactor 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded during an unauthorized systems test. Firefighters rushed to the scene to put out what was described as an “electrical fire.” A little more than five hours after the first alarm had gone off, the fires were contained. The damage, of course, had only begun. Within twenty four hours, record amounts of radioactive gases would show up as far as Stockholm, hundreds of miles away. Thousands would die, some quickly, others slowly, over many weeks, months and years. One man interviewed for the documentary was fortunate enough to survive the incident. “Even today, twenty years later,” he said, “I can still feel the taste of lead in my mouth.”

At the time, the nearby city of Pripyat housed some 50,000 residents. Within two days, the entire population was evacuated, and even then many had been exposed to lethal levels of radioactive poisoning. During our tour, we spent an hour or so walking through the abandoned city. We explored crumbling rooms that housed relics from the Soviet era. We meandered through an elementary school and its rotting gymnasium. Paint had peeled off the walls. Outside, a lone ferris wheel looked out over one of the most barren and creepy amusement parks I’ve ever seen.

At one point during all of this, I eavesdropped on the quiet mutterings of another tour-goer.

“I’ve been killed here before.”

“Huh?”

“You know, Call of Duty? I’ve been killed here before. It’s one of the levels. Looks the exact same.”

That was Dom Joly, a British television comedian and journalist, known for his hilarious hidden camera show Trigger Happy TV. Later that night, over a few of Ukraine’s finest beers, I learned that Dom was in Ukraine researching his new book–exploring the “world’s most unlikely holiday destinations,” as he put it. The book just came out a few months ago: The Dark Tourist: Sightseeing in the World’s Most Unlikely Holiday Destinations.

Dom enlightened me to the idea of  ”dark tourism” (also known as “grief tourism” or “black tourism”), the kind traveling where people seek out places associated with death and suffering. It happens all the time, Dom said. Places like Chernobyl and the German extermination camps, Ground Zero and Alcatraz.

I thought about my trip to Rwanda a few months prior.

I spent hours reading about the genocide, walking through the memorial museum in Kigali, thinking about all the horrible events that took place back in 1994. What is it about death and suffering that draws people like me to such places?

Recently, a colleague of mine forwarded an article in The Atlantic that discusses dark tourism in Cambodia. Global demand for authentic, dark tourism-related sites is growing, turning this particular type of travel into a noticeable and profitable sector of the industry.

Keeping up with the trend, the Cambodian Ministry of Tourism is planning to restore fourteen Khmer Rouge-era buildings in Anlong Veng, a district run for years by Pol Pot, the notorious leader of the Cambodian communist movement–his attempts to “cleanse” the country resulted in at least 1.7 million deaths during his reign.

What kind of ethical implications will be raised? Even today, the same anti-personnel mines that will be displayed at the Anlong Veng munitions depot are the ones sporadically exploding throughout local farmland. I wonder where the income generated from the country’s newfound dark tourism will go?

The Kigali Genocide Memorial, for instance, is run by U.K.-based Aegis Trust, an organization that “actively seeks the prevention of genocide world wide.” The Rwandan utility company Electrogaz donates electricity, and revenue from the memorial gets funneled back into the country, helping to deliver educational programs to high school students.

Like medical tourism, ecotourism and culinary tourism, dark tourism is  an interesting category to think about when you’re planning your next trip. I’ll be curious to see what ends up happening in Cambodia, and whether or not the government handles the revenue in an ethical manner.

What are your thoughts?

Alan Perlman

Alan Perlman travels the world as an international cost-of-living surveyor. When he's not hunting for the price of female undergarments in places like Syria, Rwanda and Turkmenistan, he's hanging out in Boston, MA, staying active, meeting people and brainstorming business models. You can read more about Alan and his plans to conquer life at his blog, The 9 to 5 Alternative.