Also seen on : http://thealternative.in/travel/why-i-do-not-love-travelling/

Yes, you are awesome.

You are an escapading, adventuring, questing piece of brilliance. Carefree and casual, you walk through the streets of any city, shaking hands with street vendors, high-fiving school children, and bargaining with the closest auto-walla. Today it’s a temple, yesterday it was a palace, and tomorrow it’s a hike – to a temple (in a palace). Before you reach your destination you have the tour book memorized (or are you the type who eschews tour books altogether has already begun to use it as toilet paper?). You are a postcard-scrawling, shade-sprawling, beach-balling traveler, bouncing from souvenir stall to bar crawl. You’ve no challenge in constructing a 140-character epithet that communicates to your internet social life the elusiveness of daylight, the splendor of the moment, the extraordinariness of the experience. Life is good: the world is being seen, changed, experienced.

I love you, transitory traveler, for all that you are: from the sandal-tan on your feet to the local headgear you sport ironically. From the slightly-too-sexy number dangling off your shoulders to the less-than-sexy holes in the crotch of your decaying denims. I love you, but I do not envy you.

When people hear about where I go and what I do, they often exclaim over the amazement of travel – “You must love it!” they encourage. “Tell me some of your craziest stories!”

Confession: I do not love traveling. Here’s why.

 
The podcast above is from the November 2, 2010 All Things Considered NPR radio show.
You can find the transcript here.

The voluntourism debate on Social Edge asks the questions:
  • What can social enterprises that lead individuals to live and work in developing communities do to avoid the potential harms of voluntourism?
  • Are concerns over stated?
  • What ideas do you have for establishing more effective cross-cultural understanding?
The blog "More than Good Intentions" offers an opinion on "Hug an orphan" vacations.

The scholarly article "Inside the thriving industry of AIDS orphan tourism" from the HSRC provides an analysis.