Today more and more tourists are visiting places where conditions are difficult, such as the Sahara Desert or the Antarctic. What are the benefits and drawbacks for tourists who visit such places?

A large proportion of world’s population relies on the tourism sector as a central source of income and employment. Though individuals at present times look forward to visit remote, isolated and undiscovered places to explore by stepping out of their comfort zone. In my opinion, this changing trend has merits as well as demerits. To start with, people today want to seek personal challenges even when it comes to travelling, mainly as these unexplored places are different from usual tourist destinations. In other words, they are thrill-seekers and want to experience some type of risk in life because they consider it to be more exciting and adventurous. Visiting places with severe survival and climatic conditions like the Sahara and the Antarctica helps them gain exploration and realise the importance of comfort in their mundane lives. For instance, in India people prefer visiting places like Ladakh which has low oxygen level and thick winding roads. On the contrary, these unspoiled exotic parts of the world can prove to be dangerous for the tourists. It tends to involve a high peril due to extreme weather conditions which could prove to be life-threatening. Likewise, the ecosystem at such places are very fragile, and tourism can lead to not only ecological imbalance but also cause depletion of natural resources at those places. To illustrate, native animals and plants of Himalayas were affected due to increasing tourism. To conclude, there are both positive and negative aspects of visiting challenging places. Though people can gain a lot of knowledge and experience, but they need to be careful and take proper precautions related to medications and carrying the basic necessities such as food and water, when planning a trip to exotic places.