On the place of poverty tourism – that is, if it’s even a ‘thing’ at all
Are you a Race Across the World devotee? To be candid, I’m not. The idea of racing around the world sits uneasily with my – and Steppes Travel’s – belief in slow travel.
And yet, despite my misgivings, I was persuaded to watch an episode – the one set between Georgia and Uzbekistan, both Steppes heartlands. I was pleasantly surprised. What struck me most was the contestants’ hunger for experience, their willingness to step outside their comfort zones, and their openness to meeting people and welcoming the kindness of strangers. That, to me, is the real joy of travel.
I’m not an advocate of rushing through a journey, but I am a firm believer in using expertise to cut through the noise of endless online searching to create an itinerary that is not just tailor-made, but truly bespoke – my itinerary.
That is why the insights below from Clare, Charlotte and Illona are so compelling. Clare’s point that “I often find the strongest trips are built around contrast rather than trying to make one place do everything” is so prescient. Charlotte is, as always wise, in her line, “The point is not to add more for the sake of it, but to let the journey follow the way the country actually fits together, with people, wildlife and ecology threaded through the same landscape.” And Illona puts it so succinctly when she says, “some of the best wildlife encounters happen when you stop chasing them.”
Travel rewards those who slow down, leave room for the unexpected and are willing to step beyond the ordinary. The race, if there is one, is to arrive at that understanding – and the winners are those who trust our expertise to help them get there.
Justin Wateridge, Managing Director
Insights from the field
Australasia | Clare Wiggins
When clients ask for Australasia, I often find the strongest trips are built around contrast rather than trying to make one place do everything. When pairing very different ways to spend time in the region, the shift between the two becomes a highlight of the experience.
Start your adventure on a purpose-built expedition vessel cruising across Australia, Papua New Guinea or Indonesia, designed to reach places that are otherwise hard to access. In Australia’s Kimberley, for example, you can expect dramatic tides, ancient rock art and long stretches of wilderness that still feel properly removed from civilisation.
Then, you introduce contrast. For a slower pace, there’s Kokomo Private Island on the edge of the Great Astrolabe Reef in Fiji, with its generous beachfront villas and residences perfect for families and multi-generational trips. Alternatively, head to New Zealand’s rugged Southland region, which features a majestic cast of mountains, glaciers and fjords.
Take this further with a conversation: Clare Wiggins
India | Charlotte Lawton
If you’re looking at India for wildlife and want more than a classic safari loop, there’s a quieter route worth knowing about. It links two landscapes rarely experienced together: the sal forests of Kanha and the mangrove waterways of Bhitarkanika National Park.
The route begins in the central Indian highlands in Madhya Pradesh, where decades of conservation work continue to shape the surrounding wilderness. Days are spent tracking wildlife through Kanha’s forests, then you head east, watching the terrain change as the land gradually gives way to water.
In Bhitarkanika, Odisha, the pace shifts again. Exploration is by small catamaran, moving along mangrove-lined channels into remote creeks and islands. The point is not to add more for the sake of it, but to let the journey follow the way the country actually fits together, with people, wildlife and ecology threaded through the same landscape.
Take this further with a conversation: Charlotte Lawton
Zimbabwe | Illona Cross
If you know Hwange National Park, you’ll know that some of the best wildlife encounters happen when you stop chasing them. A new treehouse stay opened last month in the park, and it’s the sort of place I’d point you towards when you want wildlife to come to you. The treehouses are built around the trees they sit in, raised above the forest floor among teak and camelthorn woodland, and designed so nature takes the lead. From your veranda, elephants can come right up to you, drawn in by camelthorn pods, moving quietly beneath as if you are simply part of the scene.
What I like about this concept is that it feels intentional rather than showy. It is immersive, yes, but it is also rooted in the practical reality of how conservation tourism should work. The location has been chosen so that tourism revenue supports nearby villages and conservation initiatives, with local employment built into the model and the option to visit nearby schools and homesteads in a way that directs spending into the community.
Take this further with a conversation: Illona Cross
Bulletins on the board
From yurt to UNESCO list in Uzbekistan
The Karakalpak yurt, and the art of crafting and playing the kobyz, have been added to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage List, recognising living traditions that continue to shape everyday life across the region.
Record turtle nesting season in Australia
Lady Elliot Island, 80 km off Queensland at the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef, has recorded a standout turtle nesting season, with more than 140 nests confirmed. The island sits in waters recognised by the IUCN as an Important Shark and Ray Area, with reef manta rays and spotted eagle rays, and large manta aggregations between May and August.
A sacred sighting in South Africa
Rangers from Kambaku Safari Lodge in Timbavati Private Nature Reserve have spotted a white lion cub, a rare occurrence in a region where the first recorded sighting dates back to 1938. Revered by the Sepedi and Tsonga people, white lions are not albino but leucistic, with a recessive gene reducing melanin and producing pale coats and distinctive eye colours.
Filed by our Specialists
Cycling the DMZ | Justin Wateridge
A ride north from Seoul becomes a lesson in how borders are lived, not just drawn. Cycling along South Korea’s Peace Path, Justin Wateridge moves between bunkers and rice fields, crowds and silence, and a guide’s family story that brings the division into sharper focus.
Read Cycling the DMZ
Anti-poaching unit in action | Deborah Cook
At Loisaba Conservancy in Laikipia, Deborah Cook joins an anti-poaching tracking demonstration and sees how the unit works, from scent work to the pace of the pursuit. It is a practical insight into the quieter, day-to-day work behind wildlife protection.
Read Anti-poaching unit in action
Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon | Sue Grimwood
Flying into Alta Floresta on the southern edge of the Amazon, Sue Grimwood watches the forest thin and fray into farmland, with the road cutting deeper as exposed soil washes away. It is a clear-eyed account of what is being lost, and what recovery can look like when land is protected.
Read Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon
A question on our minds
Poverty tourism – is it a ‘thing’? If so, does it have a place?
“Tourist: your luxury trip, my daily misery”
The graffiti photographed on a wall in Barcelona encapsulates the moral dilemma of what some in the travel industry call ‘poverty tourism’. The mere term makes me feel uneasy. Of all the other terms I’ve seen used, ‘social impact tourism’ is probably preferable, but the disquiet I feel is less about the semantics, and more about the concept and whether it stands up to ethical scrutiny.
On a recent trip to Egypt, I put poverty tourism under the microscope with a visit to Manshiyat Naser, an area of Cairo known colloquially as Garbage City. Lying at the foot of Mukattam Mountain, the suburb is home to the Zabbaleen (‘garbage collectors’), a marginalised community of Coptic Christians who fulfil the role of informal rubbish collectors in one of the world’s most populated cities. In short, this is the side of Cairo that the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities would rather you did not see.
I wait for my guide outside the remarkable cave church of St Samaan’s that sits just outside the main residential area of Manshiyat Naser. A young family steps out of the church and runs towards a vehicle that is waiting for them, hands held over their noses and mouths to block the overpowering smell of rubbish that hangs heavily over the area.
My guide* appears. I ask him whether he is happy with his home being called Garbage City.
He smiles warmly: “I prefer the name ‘Recycling City’. The community handles around 8,000 tons of garbage per day, recycling up to 80–85% of it,” he shares proudly.
This figure is remarkable when you consider that so called developed countries with industrialised refuse processing plants only manage to recycle 25% of their rubbish, at best.
My guide is easy company and does his utmost to make me feel welcome and at ease but, as I stroll around Garbage City, the sights and smells are disturbing. Filth permeates the neighbourhood, spreading like polluted floodwater through every street and every home. Scattered across roads and pathways, crammed from floor to ceiling in the rooms of buildings, packed perilously high onto the back of trucks, and hanging from winches in the sky, rubbish is everywhere. For the mangy dogs roaming the streets like drunks thrown out of late-night bars; for the pigs penned on rooftops and in cramped backyards; and for the free-range rats and swarms of lazily buzzing bluebottles, life in Garbage City is a bonanza.
But what about the people who live here? While the men are out collecting waste from the city’s more affluent areas, women are sat amongst enormous, stinking piles of rubbish, extracting what is recyclable (and therefore money-making) and discarding what is of no value at all. One woman is sorting through several bin bags of cooked food. She has created giant piles of cooked rice all around her, along with a separate pile of carefully sorted animal bones.
“What the restaurants throw away the pigs will eat. And the bones will go to the bone man to be made into glue. He’s a bad tempered soul so we won’t visit him,” says my guide.
The bone man isn’t the only resident of Manshiyat Naser to be snippy today. I photograph a street strewn with plastic bottles and other debris, overlooked by a huge poster of Jesus Christ. A man operating a winch, wags his finger at me and looks agitated.
“The people here are worried they will be moved out of the city. They think you might be a journalist from the government, sent to photograph the squalor to make a case for their eviction,” explains my guide.
I put my camera away and we continued to walk and talk. We stop to kick a football with an animated group of children; we stop to talk to an old man who is telling a story to his grandchildren; we stop to talk to a man selling tobacco, surrounded by posters of Jesus, Mary and Saint Simeon. The smell of rotting garbage is momentarily usurped by the smell of cologne, as we stop to chat with a group of young men, freshly shaven and dressed in black leather jackets and Ray-Bans.
Over coffee, my guide tells us of his aspirations for the community:
“I want us to have better working conditions; uniforms to help with sanitation and modern machinery to make our work safer and easier. I want the community to feel proud of what they do. And I want to show more tourists how the community lives.”
Tourism in places like Garbage City can create economic opportunity, but just as importantly it can deepen understanding and empathy of social issues such as informal economies, poor working conditions, religious intolerance and housing inequality. People rarely care deeply about places or issues they do not understand. At its best, travel can shine a light on social inequality and inspire travellers to engage more thoughtfully with the world around them and where appropriate, take action. With an erudite and affable guide to open doors and give context, tourism in Garbage City is challenging the stereotypes that typically prevent deprived communities from making progress. And for the traveller, visiting communities like the Zabbaleen is an opportunity to substitute the conveyor belt of off-the-shelf experiences with unaffected and immersive human interaction. Is this not the epitome of what positive impact travel should be aspiring to achieve?
But, of course there is a flip side to this. While the desire to visit places like Garbage City may come from a good place, there is a danger that this form of tourism commoditises poor people and romanticises poverty. When I talk to my friends about my experience, I inwardly cringe at how words like “dignity” and “stoicism” roll too freely from my tongue. It feels like I am dining out on the Zabbaleen’s capacity to endure an environment that neither I nor few of my friends would be able to tolerate for a week, let alone a lifetime.
Privileged visitors being given the opportunity to temporarily consume poverty without enduring its long term consequences sounds indecent, but then I think back to my motivation for visiting Garbage City. Cairo is not merely a destination for well-heeled tourists to enjoy, it is a home to 23 million people, many of whom live hand to mouth. To experience this remarkable mega-city solely through the lens of Giza and the ceremonial fineries of the Grand Egyptian Museum is to see only the very tip of the pyramid. Travel should go deeper and remove the filters to reveal places beyond what ministries of tourism want us to see; the whole story, not just the sanitised chapters.
Like all forms of tourism, ‘poverty tourism’ is not a single phenomenon. There is good and bad, and ultimately, whether ‘poverty tourism’ deserves its ugly name depends on the intent behind it and the consequences that flow from it. If the experience is reduced to voyeurism: a form of human safari designed for titillation, social currency or bragging rights, then the criticism is entirely justified. But when travel is approached as a means of understanding; when it strips away a destination’s curated veneer to reveal the realities, inequalities and humanity that exist beneath; and when that understanding leads to empathy, advocacy or fellowship, then it ceases to be an exploitative spectacle and becomes something far more valuable. At that point, it is not ‘poverty tourism’ at all. It is simply ‘good travel’.
Jarrod Kyte, Product and Impact Director
If something you’ve read has struck a chord, feel free to drop us a note. We’re always happy to continue the conversation.
*Due to the sensitivity of the piece, we have chosen to protect the guide’s identity, rather than create a false one.