What does the word Rwanda evoke? What about Uganda, Bosnia, or Lebanon? If your thoughts turn to war, chaos, and suffering, you’re not alone. But Rwanda and Uganda are also among a handful of places in the world where tourists can see endangered mountain gorillas. Lebanon is home to breathtaking beaches and ancient ruins. And Bosnia has a storied multi-ethnic culture and excellent skiing.

All of these countries would like travelers to see just what they are missing. Increasingly, regions that were previously war-torn, suffering under brutal dictatorships, or simply off-limits to adventurers are trying to woo the curious with catchy slogans, promises of unspoiled coastlines, and, more often than not, a taste of the conflict that put these locales in the news.

Tour operators who specialize in such places say their business has grown in recent years, and the number of recreational visitors has increased everywhere from Rwanda to North Korea (see slideshow).

Using the slogan Discover a New African Dawn, Rwanda attracts about 37,000 tourists a year, compared with fewer than 2,000 at the beginning of the decade. The country saw an estimated 800,000 of its Tutsi minority killed by Hutus in about three months in 1994. But far from hiding the country’s brutal past, Rwanda’s tourism authority is encouraging visitors to bear witness to the destruction that was wrought.

One guide published by the tourism authority offers tour operators advice for “genocide-sensitive travel.” Rwanda’s mountain-gorilla tours routinely include stops at sites of awful slaughter, such as the hilltop memorial in Murambi—an exhibit at what was going to be a technical college that displays the bones of some of the 45,000 people massacred there—or Nyamata, a bloodstained church where as many as 10,000 were killed, its crypts now lined with skulls.

Rwanda’s long-range goal is to attract well-heeled tourists by offering them luxurious surroundings. But the country’s tourism success is part of an overall trend toward “tougher destinations,” says Tom Hall, a London-based travel editor for the Lonely Planet travel guides. “[We] see this reflected in our range of guides, which now includes Afghanistan and Algeria for the first time, and the number of tours visiting truly off-the-beaten-track destinations. Five years ago, few backpackers ventured into Laos, Nicaragua, Mauritania, Madagascar. Now these are well-established places to go.”

These travelers are seeking out an experience that’s more than a vacation: They’re looking for a chance to touch history, discover remote areas, and be physically and emotionally challenged. That’s increasingly difficult to find these days, when it seems every path has been explored. According to the World Tourism Organization, an agency of the United Nations, in the first quarter, global tourism was up 6 percent over the year before, with destinations like Subsaharan Africa showing especially strong growth.

Paul Lukacs exemplifies this new type of traveler. In Turkmenistan, the Los Angeles entertainment lawyer marveled at the many statues commemorating Saparmurat Niyazov, the country’s now-deceased dictator and “president for life.” In Sri Lanka, Lukacs witnessed a place in the grip of civil war. And in North Korea, he said, he glimpsed “one of the world’s few remaining unreconstructed command-and-control economies,” where blackouts are a daily occurrence.

“Why go to Barcelona when you can visit Ceuta or Melilla, the two Spanish enclaves in Africa?” Lukacs says. “When I travel, I want to be far away from my world, to see how differently other people live, to learn what traits are human constants and which ones are cultural color.”

Some tour operators offer trips to a host of post-conflict zones, interspersing visits to aid organizations and ruins with historic cities and nature preserves. For a little less than $20,000, including airfare from New York, Universal Travel System, based in Santa Monica, California, offers to take customers to just about every tragedy-laden country in East Africa.