How much does tourism change a village? What effects does tourism have on a culture? Can tourism help a poor remote community to develop? How can a village have the benefits tourism offers without the problems it can cause? These are the questions that have grown in me over the past 20 years, fed by questions from the villagers to whom I introduced tourism.

Only a handful of backpackers had ever passed through Wogo in 1989 when I began taking small groups of tourists to stay with the villagers. Village stays were not only a resounding success for the tourists but also for the villagers. They became the unique selling point of our tours and our business success was laid on the foundations of our visits to Wogo. But in the long term, what would be the impact of introducing tourism to this village? And how could the villagers benefit from the growing numbers of tourists that came to their village?

After six years of taking tours (1989–1994) and frequent short visits, I spent eight months (1998–1999) seeking to understand tourism from the perspective of the different stakeholders. I felt indebted to the villagers and answering their questions became central to my research. I wanted to understand the conflicts of tourism development and offer the villagers potential solutions. The long-term research continued with visits in 2001 and 2003; in 2005, with the assistance of a British Academy grant, I was able to evaluate the success of one of my suggestions.

This book provides the story of the lives of real people in real villages. I have not changed their names. Following discussion with the villagers, we were sure that anybody reading the text, familiar with the area, would be able to work out which villages I was writing about and therefore there was no point in keeping them anonymous. In nearly all cases, the villagers are proud to be part of the study and wanted their real names to be used. I have respected their wishes.