Tourism to India as popular culture: A cultural, educational and religious experience at Dharamsala

This paper considers a cultural, educational and religious experience of Western tourists to Dharamsala in Northern India. It supplies information on the growing phenomenon of Western people visiting the East for self-fulfilment, study and belief. The article aims to deal with tourism in its popular cultural format, as this aspect of the phenomenon is under-theorized. A structured questionnaire was administered to 127 visitors at seven different sites in Dharamsala. In addition, 20 in-depth interviews were held with participants. Participant observation was chosen as another research method, as one of the researchers had lived in Dharamsala from 2004 to 2005. The study examines and analyses the characteristics of visitors to Dharamsala in terms of their cultural, educational, religious, and tourist experience and positions the visitors on a scale of motivations from education to tourism, and from pilgrimage to tourism.