I don't think slumming is a healthy way to develop real relationships or transmit knowledge and ideas across cultural boundaries. It's predicated on an imbalance of wealth and power...the white adventurer can leave at any time, while the native is stuck in his ghetto. It gives the one with power deluded ideas about himself, and breeds resentment in the coolie.
I don't really have any contextual information about Sharma or any of these other guys, so I'm just going on the way these pictures are posed (and they do seem really carefully posed, most of them). Sharma might be a cool guy; I have no idea and don't really care.