I read a very interesting article in the travel section of the SF Chronicle recently. Entitled “Ok we get it - No place is as good as it used to be”, the article is about the Kathmandu Syndrome, a phrase coined by the writer, John Flinn.

Basically, the Kathmandu Syndrome refers to how people remember a place they have visited. We all know, that nothing remains the same - people and destinations change over a period of time. Upon visiting a destination for the first time while on vacation, many people fall in love with the place - whether it be the small resort town of Puerto Vallarta of the late 1960’s, Cabo San Lucas (Mexico) of the early 1970s, the popular rasta - hippie enclave of Negril, Jamaica of the late 1970’ s (and early 1980s) or the mystical Kathmandu of the early 1970s. After repeated visits, many people observe ‘the idyllic place” they fell in love with has been transformed into something very undesirable due to its increasing popularity as a tourist spot or vacation destination.

In the article, the author describes how he fell in love with Kathmandu after visiting this legendary cultural mecca located high in the Himalayas for the first time in the mid 1980’s. Over the years, he describes how Kathmandu’s increasing popularity with the international tourist crowd, has led to many undesirable changes - the city streets, once so quiet and peaceful are now choked with automobile traffic and how the Himalayan air keeps on getting more and more polluted; he also notes that the elephants which used to lumber down the streets have disappeared and of the increasing aggressiveness of the many vendors and beggars. After his last visit, Mr. Flinn decided Kathmandu had lost its magic. However, for people visiting Kathmandu for the first time, most of them still become enchanted with the place - they have no prior knowledge of how the place used to be. This is the phenomenon known as the Kathmandu Syndrome.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 10th, 2007 at 8:05 am and is filed under travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.