Cultural Diffusion: How to Truly Experience a Country Beyond the Tourist Sites
✈️ Rethinking What It Means to “See” a Country
After coming back from a recent trip, I started to reflect on what it means to experience a new country and to take in all it offers culturally? Every country offers famous places to visit and unique regional or local experiences such as wine or cheese tastings. However, mostly all of these experiences involve minimal to little interaction with the local population, their customs and their everyday life. Most of these tours enhance your understanding of what you already know or have read up on. And while on the tour you might get to chat with the tour operator and ask a few questions to get to know them, their life, and their country in general. This however, is not what I'd consider a true experience in cultural diffusion.
🌍 What Is Cultural Diffusion?
Cultural diffusion is about understanding the behaviors, emotions and choices or values of a society. It’s about understanding the DNA of a place. This can happen a few different ways. Sometimes, it happens intangibly. That is, it’s the stuff that is experienced by being in the presence of it. It's what happens when you walk the streets as you pass by people, or the sights and sounds when you visit a local market or coffee/tea shop. Or it can happen through direct interaction but towards a certain outcome or goal for a specific duration of time such as a Peace Corp stint.
|| Cultural diffusion means living like a local—if only for a day.
Through cultural diffusion, you gain empathy for the locals. You learn about a group of people or community—like why do they behave the way they do, or how do they make decisions, or what influences their choices. When broadened out, it could explain why a country feels a certain way politically or commercially or religiously or would it be a good place to emigrate to in the future? These are the kind of things that intrigue me at least.
🇶🇦 Returning to Qatar: A Personal Example
I recently had this kind of experience when I visited Doha, Qatar, which also happens to be a place where I grew up for 18 years of my young life. Only this time, I was visiting with my 12-year-old kid and designed the trip as a tourist for both of us. The country had just hosted the football FIFA World Cup and was coming out of a euphoria it had never seen before. Prior to that it hosted the Asian Games and other regional competitions. So a lot had changed in the country including being home to Qatar Airways, a world class airline and sponsoring and owning a number of football clubs in Europe.
A Different Perspective with Time
Many people have asked me: what do you think of Qatar now versus before? And I don't have an immediate answer for them. There was a lot to process and to put into context. I did get to meet some of my old school friends and make new ones that gave me a peek into life in the country today relative to what it was 30 years ago. And I did tour some museums and visited parts of the country that were all newly developed. Some museums worth mentioning are the Qatar National Museum, Islamic Art Museum. And some locations worth visiting include the region of Zekreet and Lusail.
What I Learned: The DNA of Qatar 🇶🇦
I got a much deeper understanding into the cultural nuance of the country, about how this country was always about trade and enterprise. Its history starts with and has always been known for the pearl diving and trading business. Concentrated along the coast it involved traders from India, Iran and other Gulf countries and labor from all over the Arab region. The locals were either financiers, or boat owners or diving operators. This industry spurred other industries like boat building and repairing.
🦪The Pearl Economy 🛢️
There always existed an economy dependent on the deep ocean for generating wealth and on Asian and Gulf nations for labor and trade. After the pearl industry died, they found oil and gas—a different product but unchanged the way they did business. Now, they were getting labor and expertise from all over the globe. And this forced all the various local tribes to come together and unify under a flag to hold on to their autonomy and profits.
Present-Day Qatar ⚽
Carrying this same tradition forward, the country is now investing in sports, tourism and self-sustainability. This is their basic DNA.
||“Every Qatari person you meet on the street is interested in a business idea and in partnering on it.”
And because they like profits, they are also risk-averse to new ideas or innovation—unless, of course, the country is paying for their individual risks. This helps explain why they prefer partnering with established companies like a giant petrochemical company or a popular European sports league.🐋 Nature and Conservation Potential 🤿
Tourism is still a growing industry. They have some unique experiences to offer from a landscape standpoint, however, most of their tourist attractions are still likely in the water. Qatar is home to:
- The largest gathering of whale sharks in the world,
- A breeding ground for dugongs and a safe zone for rearing their young,
- And nesting site for the endangered Hawksbill turtle.
🧭 How to Travel for Cultural Diffusion
My point about cultural diffusion is that you can't experience a country by only visiting their tourist sites. It has to be a combination of popular tourist activities with off-beat local experiences. My understanding of Qatar were formed through the combination of museum visits and hanging out with local pearl divers and shopkeepers and friends. I give you 2 ways to dive deeper for cultural diffusion.
🧑🍳 Book a Local to Learn an Activity
Instead of a packaged tour, book a local guide to take you/your group to teach you something—like rock climbing, or learning a local instrument , or calling in a local chef to teach you to make one of their local dishes. This type of activity allows you to slow down and interact with a local for a longer period of time
On my trips to Chile or Spain, my family booked a local guide to take us rock climbing. This works because through an activity you're already familiar with, you're able to spot the different way by which they carry out the activity. You get to ask questions about these differences, which helps build empathy.
Go to a local like this Qatari tea house where people play Dama, a form of board game similar to checkers. Learn the game and enjoy the tea!
🌱 Join a Cause-based Expedition
Another way to get a diffused experience is to join a cause-based expedition. This could be a beach clean-up drive or a community health-clinic drive. Such cause-based activities enhance the local experience. Again, it allows you to slow down on your trip, interact with multiple people at once and gives a flavor of the local region that you'd have easily missed if you'd have taken a cruise trip.
💬 Final Thoughts
If you're traveling to a new country, you might want to enhance your experience by going for a cultural diffusion trip. Slow down the pace of your trip, participate in a local activity and find more ways to interact with the community.
A good analogy is the experience you had when you were in the Peace Corps or when you bunked at youth hostels or couch-surfed as a teenager backpacking through a country. The same experience can now be had by finding these special and unique activities with a local.
If you need help finding such local guides, reach out to me and I'll use my network of influencers to find you an appropriate guide.
|| 📸 Follow my travel journeys on Instagram and connect with me.
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