Although if you would like to know about some movies made in Nova Scotia, there are quite a few, not to mention a current TV SyFy channel show, Haven. which was partially filmed in Lunenberg, and other Nova Scotia locations.

Lunenburg

Earlier I wrote about Campobello Island, the International park where FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt and family stayed in the summer (That site is in New Brunswick, but was on our way to Nova Scotia).

Then I talked  a bit about Baddeck and about Glooscap Heritage Center and Kejimkujuk.But I need to go back to our first stop in Nova Scotia, which was in Annapolis Royal. Getting there was half the fun. That was our three-ferry day. We waited on the pebbly beach of Campobello and listened to the seagulls wheel and scold. Keeping up the rhythm in the bass section, a fog horn bleated soulfully from time to time.

Ship emerging from fog Campobello

Then a Canadian transportation department ferry from Deer Island to the mainland at Letite. A short drive to St. John, New Brunswick, and a large ferry to Digby.
Digby is a very touristy town and the scallop festival started that evening. But we stayed up the road a piece at Annapolis Royal at the gorgeous 19th century Hillsdale House Inn.

Hillsdale House

Not only are the 13 rooms filled with antique furniture:

Room in Hillsdale House

our Bathroom, Hillsdale House

But, they also have WIFI:

That's me tweeting from an antique table!

This was a delightful place to start our “sister’s trip” to Nova Scotia. In Anapolis Royal we took in the Historic Gardens two doors down, and saw the oldest wooden structure in Nova Scotia right next door. It is a house that is still lived in, with lawn maintained as it would have been in the early 18th century. The village streets just beg to be explored with all that history, including Ft. Anne with its exhibits of the struggles between France and England. (more about that later).

The Tourism Office of Nova Scotia kindly organized our tour and arranged for complementary stays for the six nights we were there. But I  will not rave about a place unless we found it raveable–as Hillsdale House clearly is. Nova Scotia tourism operates handy tourism centers where friendly people will give you great advice on how to get the most out of your visit. Here’s the one we visited fresh off the ferry from St. John.

Tourism office near Digby ferry port

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Mumbai Stop Light

Welcome to A Traveler’s Library. If this is your first visit, I hope that you will stick around. Be sure to read the two response posts to this one, which I link at the end of the article. And if you are curious about that book mentioned in the first paragraph, it is about the Dominican Republic.

I recently finished a wonderful book that killed any desire I might have had to go to the place featured, and then I saw the Academy Award winning movie Slumdog Millionaire, which definitely did not make me want to visit Mumbai.  I began to think about the anti-travel movie. And the don’t-go-there book.

Is there such a thing? Although I have not read the book that Slumdog was based on, I have read comments that say it portrays Mumbai as even grittier than the movie. Does this make me want to travel there?

Controversy still rages (on Twitter for instance) about the depiction of Mumbai in the Academy-award winning picture.  Most Indians whose comments I have read are not happy. One said on Twitter, “Would you like it if America were portrayed by a movie that showed only the slums of New York?” Uh, well, there have been quite a few movies that do not show America in the best light. But perhaps because movies set in India are rarer in the United States, the impact of Slumdog has been greater. American movies, set in America, are widely viewed around the world, the good, the bad and…all that.

But back to the question of whether Slumdog Millionaire might make people actually want to go to Mumbai. I began to hear another discussion which caught me by surprise.  Slum tours, it seems, are newly chic. Some call this kind of tourism ‘Poorism.’

Do the profit-making companies that lead these tours actually give back to the communities as they claim? What motivates people to go on such tours? Is it voyeurism? Isn’t all travel ultimately voyeurism? Do the slum tourists come away changed in any way? Will they be more sensitive and generous in the future? Will the inhabitants of the slums learn how to make a legitimate buck off the tourists, or will the bad guys among them simply hone their pickpocket skills?

Eric Weiner, author of The Geography of Bliss, discussed the tours in a 2008 New York Times article. You can learn more about one of the tour companies that he discusses, Reality Tours, at their web site.

For now, I only know that for me, I am not interested in visiting a place to look at the lives of the poorest, and I am wary of traveling where I fear that I will be isolated in expensive resorts or hotels from the regular street life because it is unsafe, unhealthy or simply unsavory.  Call me unadventurous, but that’s my thought.

I am sure of one thing…the people who run tours in the slums of Mumbai are going to do a lot more business because of Slumdog Millionaire. As to the two main questions here–whether I am totally missing the point of Mumbai, and whether slum tourism has a place– I have an open mind. So educate me. Leave a comment and let me know your thoughts.

Oh, I mentioned a book up there in the first paragraph. I’ll get around to that soon.

See the posts that followed this one when Monica Bhide replied with her take on Mumbai in two parts. And if you enjoy what you see at A Traveler’s Library, please subscribe by RSS or e-mail–you’ll see opportunities in the right hand column. The link attached to the title of the movie will take you to Amazon where you can buy the DVD. It won’t cost you any extra, but it will earn a few cents for A Traveler’s Library. Thanks.

Photograph by Mike Powell, Flickr, Creative Commons license

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©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.