The senses

Gazing over a Norwegian fjord

Tourists, me included, do sightseeing. When my eyes perceive an image of steep mountains or a beautiful temple, I look at it in awe: I gaze. It is something that John Urry defined as “the tourist gaze”. Even though the emphasis is always on seeing, experiencing travelling is way more than seeing: it is offering something new to all your senses.

Our “gaze” is not neutral. It is filtered by culture and social experiences. We perceive images through filtered sunglasses. We see what we expect. The same counts for the rest of the information that reaches our brain through the other senses. When something is red, we expect it to taste hot. The food in Sri Lanka was super spicy, but when I saw a sweet-sour looking curry with pineapples I expected anything but hot. I took a double serving on my plate and started to eat. The first mouthful was hell. The curry was not as sweet as I thought it would be. It took me a while to get used to it, but in the end, I even did chilli in my breakfast. I changed my “gaze” of taste. Perhaps what tourists really do is sightsensing.

Of course tourists themselves are also a sensation and are often gazed upon by locals. When I took a bus from the busy west to the more remote eastern part of Sri Lanka, all the people sat backwards on their chair to gaze upon us the entire way. Four hours long. Each person has a tourist gaze at particular places and during specific times. But perhaps, when we come home after a long journey, we look upon all the familiar sights with refreshed senses and sense things we did not notice before. We bring home a bit of the “gaze”.

Want to know more about the different types of tourist gazes? Read John Urry’s “The Tourist Gaze”.