THE new sunday express MAGAZINE Voices Devdutt Pattanaik Ravi Shankar Aditya Pittie Anuja Chandramouli Neha Sinha Mata Amritanandamayi Buffet People Wellness Books Food Art & Culture Entertainment July 20 2025 SUNDAY PAGES 12 Phnom Penh Holidays in Hell During the reign of the Khmer Rouge, thousands were executed in mass graves; the skulls fill the stupa that rises at the centre Dark tourism is no longer fringe, this ghoulish travel trend is booming. But as tourists increasingly search for the world’s wounds, a question emerges: are they bearing witness to horror or seeking it out? E By Sneha Mahale arlier this year, India unveiled Bharat Ranbhoomi Darshan—a bold new initiative turning historic and active battlefields into immersive tourist destinations. Launched by the Ministry of Defence in collaboration with the Ministry of Tourism, the project opens up 77 sites, including Galwan and Doklam, inviting civilians to walk the very grounds where courage was tested and history was made. No longer just names in headlines or history books, these war zones will now tell their stories up close—of grit and sacrifice. Once the domain of historians, war correspondents, or pilgrims of loss, travel to places marked by death, disaster, or collective grief, has become mainstream. Today, instead of poolside cocktails, travellers seek out scars. They stand in silence beneath the rusted gates of Auschwitz in Poland. They wander through the radioactive ruins of Chernobyl, Ukraine. They visit memorials in Rwanda, grappling with the legacy of genocide. “Dark tourism is contemporary travel to places linked with the ‘noteworthy dead’. These sites reflect difficult heritage—pain, shame, cultural trauma— shaped by the politics of remembrance,” says Dr Philip Stone, director of the Institute for Dark Tourism Research at the University of Central Lancashire. While it may seem unsettling at first glance, dark tourism is rooted in humanity’s enduring fascination with mortality, memory, and morality These journeys are not merely . about seeing places of death but engaging with the emotional and historical weight they carry It challenges visitors to confront . existential questions about life, death, and human responsibility According to existen. tialist thinkers like Martin Heidegger, acknowledging death is a path toward living authentically When people visit sites of . tragedy, they are often compelled to reflect on the fragility of life and the enduring consequences of human cruelty Dark tourism also . serves as a tool for historical education, ensuring that atrocities are neither forgotten nor repeated. It is a mirror held up to humanity, reflecting both its darkest impulses and its capacity for remembrance, empathy, and moral growth. Standing at the gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the infamous phrase “Arbeit macht frei” looms overhead. Beyond it stretches row upon row of barracks, once filled with human suffering. You pass a room filled with shoes, another with children’s clothes, and yet another with human hair. Each object speaks of a life, a person, a story abruptly ended. Thousands of miles away, in northern Ukraine, an entirely different shadow looms. The town of Pripyat stands frozen in time. Nature is slowly reclaiming the Soviet-era buildings. In 1986, the explosion of Reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant turned this once-thriving community into a ghost town overnight. Today, visitors walk through empty classrooms where books still lie open on desks, peer into decaying amusement parks that never opened, and stand before the sarcophagus of the reactor. Yet, dark tourism is not confined to the past. In the heart of New York City, Ground Zero draws millions of visitors each year. Where the Twin Towers once stood, now lie two massive reflecting pools, each bordered by the names of those who perished on September 11, 2001. The memorial breathes with the stories of firefighters, office workers, airline passengers, and ordinary people. You walk through dark halls filled with recordings of final phone calls, charred elevator motors, and testimonies from survivors and rescuers. In 1986, the explosion of Reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl turned In Cambodia, just outside Phnom Penh, the Killing Fields this once-thriving community into a ghost town overnight of Choeung Ek appear almost Pripyat peaceful at first glance—birds chirp, trees sway in the breeze—until you notice the skulls. They fill the stupa that rises at the centre of the site. Here, during the reign of the Khmer Rouge, thousands were executed in mass graves. Many visitors listen to audio guides that include survivor accounts. Some cry Others simply sit on benches, unable to . process what they’ve just witnessed. Dark tourism is not without controversy though. Critics argue that turning tragedy into an attraction risks trivialising the suffering. In some cases, they may be right. There have been selfies taken in gas chambers, and staged photoshoots at nuclear ruins. It’s a fine line between remembrance and voyeurism. Old Urges, New Language The number of dark-themed sites is growing fast. “It’s partly because more people are travelling than ever before. As tourist numbers grow, so too does the development of new attractions to meet that demand,” says Dr Duncan Light, a principal academic at Bournemouth University The numbers tell . the story In 2024, New York’s 9/11 Memorial . and Museum drew 14 million visitors. Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial welcomed 2.2 million, including nearly three-quarters of a million international visitors. Auschwitz saw 1.83 million pass under its gate. On a single day, 36,000 people wandered the volcanic ghosts of Pompeii in Italy . According to Coherent Market Insights, the dark tourism industry is projected to be worth USD 32.76 billion by 2025, and almost USD 40 billion by 2032. Countries like the US, Canada, Germany, France, the UK, India, Sri Lanka, Argentina, and Brazil are driving the boom. Some, like Pompeii and Hiroshima, are historical mile-markers. Others are heartbreakingly recent. In Israel, the site of the 2023 Nova music festival, where a Hamas attack left hundreds dead, is now a makeshift memorial. Dark tourism isn’t always about war. In Japan, trekkers move quietly through Aokigahara, the eerie forest at the foot of Mount Fuji known for suicides. In the UK, the village of Eyam recalls an act of self-sacrifice: villagers quarantined themselves during the plague, sealing their own fate to protect others. In Dallas, US, visitors peer from the very window that changed American history: JFK’s assassination. At Jallianwala Bagh, bullet holes from the 1919 massacre have been preserved. Amritsar’s Partition Museum, the Cellular Jail in the Andamans, and the battlefields of Panipat all bear the imprint of violence and resistance. In Varanasi, tourists gather not to mourn but to witness ritual: fire-lit funeral pyres along the Ganges. “Tours like ‘Death & Rebirth’ in Varanasi or the ‘Tantrik Temples’ attract foreign travellers,” says Dr Nitasha Sharma, a lecturer at the University of Alabama, who specialises in the perception of dark tourism. Elsewhere, in Delhi, the rise of ‘Djinn walks’ has captured the imagination of local youth. Some trace the emergence of dark tourism Ukaraine The ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia has resulted in the rise of tourism to Ukraine to see the destruction Israel With an average 7,000 visitors daily, memorial near Kibbutz Re’im is proving the most accessible for visitors seeking connection to October 7 to the late 20th century Others argue this is . simply the newest wave in an old human tide. After all, the Romans packed amphitheatres to watch gladiators die. Medieval crowds jostled for a view of public executions. Victorian Londoners paid entry to gawk at patients in Bedlam. Civil War battlefields in America were tourist destinations within weeks. Even the Paris Catacombs, a literal underground archive of death, lured thrillseekers centuries ago. What is new, perhaps, is the name. The term “dark tourism” only entered academic language in the 1990s, coined by John Lennon and Malcolm Foley “But now some seek out . experiences that feel dangerous or disturbing, like McKamey Manor, a US attraction where guests endure simulated torture,” says Dr Jeffrey Podoshen, marketing professor at Franklin and Marshall College, US, whose research focuses on dark consumption and tourism practice. The Manor, a controversial US attraction, offers a simulated torture experience so intense that participants must sign a 40-page waiver. It’s not everyone’s idea of remembrance, but it sells. That appetite for Turn to page 2