Luxury, Landscape and Loss: When Travel Loses Touch with Terrain

At its core, tourism is meant to be a bridge between cultures – a way for travellers to learn from, live with, and understand communities different from their own. The most enriching travel experiences are those that allow visitors to taste authentic food, adapt to unfamiliar climates, listen to local dialects, and absorb the geography and rhythm of everyday life.

Travel is not just about movement, but about transformation – through cultural exchange, discomfort, and immersion. In a place like Jaisalmer, situated deep in the Thar Desert, the potential for such authentic engagement is immense. Yet, this potential is increasingly being undermined by the homogenisation of luxury in tourism, which replaces depth with convenience and experience with aesthetic.

The reflections in this article draw from the author’s extensive fieldwork in Jaisalmer and the surrounding desert communities. Through regular visits, close observation, and conversations with local residents, the insights shared here are grounded in first-hand experience of the place and its people, especially who are engaged in tourism economy.

Luxury tourism following a predictable global template

In Jaisalmer, luxury tourism now follows a predictable global template. Five-star resorts offer services like central air conditioning, fountains at the entrance, international cuisines, and spa treatments – regardless of their geographical context. These features replicate luxury standards from across the world and strip away the uniqueness of the desert experience.

While tourists may believe they are exploring an exotic locale, what they actually encounter is a polished version of their own expectations. Many five-star resorts in Jaisalmer have fenced off sections of sand dunes with barbed wire, reserving them exclusively for paying guests seeking private, curated experiences. In doing so, local residents are often prohibited from accessing these areas and are even restricted from approaching nearby spaces, under the assumption that their presence might diminish the aesthetic appeal for the tourists.

The local traditions and struggles are concealed behind a facade of curated comfort. In such settings, travellers do not experience Jaisalmer – they merely pass through it, unchanged and often uninformed.

This luxury model ignores the distinctive ecology of the Thar Desert. Jaisalmer is characterised by extreme heat, arid landscapes, and chronic water scarcity. Yet, water is used frivolously in many luxury resorts – for decorative fountains, lawns, and cooling infrastructure. Air-conditioned interiors, though sometimes necessary in private rooms, are extended to common areas, negating the opportunity to engage with the natural desert climate.

Meanwhile, just beyond the resort walls, local communities – especially women – walk for miles to fetch water for basic survival. These women are sometimes viewed by tourists as symbolic of local culture, their struggle romanticised and aestheticised rather than acknowledged as a lived reality.

Furthermore, the culture presented to tourists within these resorts is often a diluted version, modified to suit global sensibilities. Local architecture is reduced to decorative pieces, traditional food is adapted to fit international palates, and folk performances are commodified into scheduled entertainment.

This curated exposure offers little in the way of genuine understanding or cultural exchange. What could have been a transformative encounter becomes a stage-managed experience, where travellers remain passive consumers and hosts are reduced to background characters.

Both the host community and the tourists are betrayed

In this entire process, the host community is betrayed. They are physically and socially distanced from the tourist spaces, kept away from meaningful interaction with the guests who enter their land. The stories, wisdom, and culture that could have been shared are withheld by the structural design of luxury tourism, which insulates travellers from the people whose world they have come to witness.

The local way of life is hidden behind the resort walls, accessible only in stylised fragments that serve visual pleasure, not cultural insight.

But the betrayal is not one-sided. The tourists are also betrayed – of the very purpose of travel. What should have been a journey of learning, humility, and connection becomes a carefully tailored comfort package that resembles home more than the destination.

At every point tourists are segregated from locals, resorts arrange their own vehicles and travel guides to accompany the guests to all tourist locations. This reduces the need of the guests to interact with the locals. Their only point of contact remains the resort staff that accompanies them throughout the trip.

The learning outcomes of such travel are virtually non-existent. Tourists leave without understanding the geography, the socio-cultural dynamics, or the environmental challenges of the place they visited. They do not return with stories of insight, only photos of sunsets and well-decorated rooms.

It is essential to rethink luxury in a way that honours the context in which it is situated. Since ancient times, Rajasthan’s royal families, particularly the Rajputs, were among the greatest patrons of luxury. Even their approach to luxury was closely attuned to the local ecology, with experiences and aesthetics thoughtfully adapted to the region’s environmental conditions.

Examples such as Rani Padmini’s palace at Chittorgarh, built amidst a pond for natural cooling, and Ranthambore Fort, strategically located within forests, illustrate how ancient luxury architecture in Rajasthan was inherently sustainable. Features like hanging balconies, intricately designed doorways, and buildings positioned at the confluence of water bodies reflect a deep ecological awareness, with designs harmonising luxury with the local environment.

Taking cue from the past, in present context of Jaisalmer this could mean integrating traditional building techniques that are naturally cooling, serving seasonal and local foods, minimising water use, and creating spaces for genuine community interaction.

Creating a false image of cultural engagement.

Localised luxury does not mean discomfort – it means meaningful, sustainable, and ethical comfort rooted in place, not in global uniformity.

In conclusion, the homogenisation of luxury tourism dilutes the richness of travel and creates a false image of cultural engagement. It damages the host environment, sidelines the local community, and deprives the traveller of true experience.

The solution lies not in abandoning luxury, but in redefining it – so that it is sensitive to geography, inclusive of community, and deeply committed to the original promise of travel: to connect, to learn, and to grow.

Mahima Duggal is a researcher and pursuing her PhD at the Department of Political Science, Panjab University, Chandigarh.

The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.