Tourists in Mexico experience rigours of crossing US border

Is this for real?

We spent some time in class discussing the US-Mexico border and the form of travel that illegal migrants experience, risking everything to cross into this country at its most remote and dangerous point -- the Sonoran Desert. The excerpt we read from The Devil's Highway made the journey seem horrific...

But, apparently, tourists in a city in central Mexico can pay to pretend to cross the border, complete with fake border patrol guards. Their guides choose how harrowing they want their post-crossing journey to be -- whether they want to walk in the desert for an hour, or a 6-hour odyssey back and forth a river...

Illegal Immigration Simulation

Since when did border-crossing become a game? Maybe Professor Villegas can add "simulation travel" to the list of types of travel... but it just seems so ridiculous! It kind of reminds me of virtually traveling to Disneyland, via Google Earth. Or Angkor Wat. Or reading travel blogs. It's all a kind of simulation.

This article also says 6 million illegal Mexican immigrants are working in the US. That number is just astonishing.

The "Real" India

So I checked out a slide show from the NY Times' Travel section:

Slide Show: Staying in the Real India

Accompanying article: Villagers in India Open Their Homes

So, instead of staying in 4-star hotels in New Delhi that get attacked by Pakistani terrorists, stay in rural villages for a better sense of the "real" India -- whatever that means (apparently rural, poor farmers). Great.

The problem is, when tourists visit rural places to view the great attraction that is "real" India, they tend to bring along some baggage. Observe:

* Unlike the other homes in the village, the tourist guestrooms have electricity, en-suite bathrooms with Western-style toilets and sinks with running water
* Buckets of hot water are lugged up to the rooms for bathing
* Cooks are trained in food hygiene! Good to know, since this is India, after all.
* Food is made especially less spicy. Awesome -- we certainly wouldn't want to challenge our delicate palettes.
* Daily life in the village is "humdrum" -- in stark contrast to your busy office back home!
* But you can still stare and snap photos of women farmers carrying enormous loads of produce on their backs. Suddenly the office doesn't seem so bad.
* You can even visit their religious sites. Nothing is too sacred for the intrepid tourist -- the whole world is yours to photograph, judge, walk all over, abandon, and write up in the next Lonely Planet guidebook or NY Times Travel article.

So much for the "real" India.

But then again, these people probably make good money offering homestays. The man has kids to feed, after all. I wonder if this is a trend that will catch on?

The Rolling Exhibition

I heard about this guy through a class taught by Joanne Woiak, called Disability and Society. Interesting class about a topic that I previously didn't know much about, which is part of the reason why I'm in college! Learning and thinking are great fun! The class provides good discussion material for me and my friends, or anyone who cares to talk about the way society's perceptions of people with impairments creates disability.

Anyway... the guy's name is Kevin Connolly. He has no legs. He travels the world while sitting on a skateboard, pushing himself down random streets, taking photographs of people staring at him. It is a unique form of travel. He has a unique perspective. I like that the people he photographs are staring at him because his unfamiliar body is different and visually arresting... but Connolly's collection of photographs shows just how wildly different ALL of humanity is. I like it.

The link:

The Rolling Exhibition