Tourism normally entails travel for relaxation or leisure, to some scenic spot or a place celebrated for its cultural heritage - and generates some splendid literature. But there are also contrarians who go to the other extreme - visiting the world's most polluted areas, or where fruits of globalisation have conspicuously turned sour - and present vivid but disturbing accounts of what unbridled "development" and rapacious commercial interests seeking to serve the global consumer society's insatiable demand are doing to the planet and luckless communities.