It is a truth universally acknowledged that travelling in India is not for the faint-hearted.
So, here’s the thing about India. Travel the country and you’ll discover it’s stunning, it’s eye-opening, it’s breathtaking. Travel the country and you’ll go through experiences far beyond anything you could have ever imagined.
And these, after 30 years of world travel, are not statements I say lightly. No hyperbole to see here.
In a world inundated with overpriced indoor rainforests and superfluous skyscrapers clambering to be at the top of those record-breaking lists, we are truly sleeping on India’s rich history, culture, and natural splendour.
Sure, everyone knows our naan bread and our chai tea and that quaint little festival of lights, but what about the fact that we speak thousands of languages and dialects? Cuisines that change every few kilometres? Mountains, bustling cities, beaches, rivers, waterfalls, forests, snow! People who are warm, impossibly warm, excited to show you their corner of their impossibly diverse country.
So then, why do other countries, with seemingly much less to offer, enjoy a far higher influx of tourists than we do? Why are people reluctant to visit us?
Why is the world sleeping on India?
Well, because of our ugly truth: India is a notoriously difficult country to travel in.
And, unfortunately, I know I’m not alone in feeling this way.
That’s a pretty big, fat statement right there — especially from someone who insists on constantly splashing India’s magnificence across social media.
But beneath that shiny (and perhaps sometimes irritating) veneer is, of course, the inevitable other side. The dark, sweaty undercurrent that runs along every India travel story.
Before we even get into the tricky intricacies of travelling through the country, we need to acknowledge the primary reason many avoid visiting us in the first place: India has an image problem. We’re just not doing enough to promote the country’s offerings to the world.
My friends abroad — everywhere from Mexico to Malaysia — are always caught unawares when I send over photos from my latest trip in the country. “Wow, I didn’t realise India was like this!” And who can blame them? Thanks to a certain punctuation-marked advertising campaign, we’ve successfully conditioned the world to believe that India is just one giant Taj Mahal.
And if you think us Indians don’t react similarly, you’d be mistaken. Here, the surprise almost feels worse, because you have to listen in pain as you hear lifelong citizens whisper in amazement, “Bhai, yeh India nahin lag raha hai!” — “Mate, this doesn’t even look like it’s in India!” — whenever they come across any one of the thousands of surreal sites we have tucked up our sleeves. I’ve also heard far, far too many tour guides proudly proclaim that “Himachal is the Switzerland of India!” Why? Why can’t it just be the Himachal of India?
But I fully understand where they’re coming from.
India does not yet feel ready to accept her own, unique beauty for what it is, instead insisting on the compulsion to view this beauty in relation to Europe, to ‘the West’, to the supposed superior.
The entire “this can’t be India!” narrative is symptomatic of the belief that if something is good, if it’s great, if it’s beautiful, it doesn’t belong in India — it can’t possibly be in India.
But India can be, and is, this beautiful.
Paris is pretty, sure, but have you strolled through the palaces of Mysore, of Punjab, of Udaipur? Singapore’s Sentosa may be nice and shiny, but have you walked down the pristine natural beaches of South Goa?
However.
Reshuffling the general perception of India won’t automatically open the tourism floodgates, so to speak. And that’s because travelling through India is an adventure that can (and will) test the steeliest of nerves.
In fact, only once a tourist does finally make it to India, does the real tamasha begin.
But, you argue, for English speakers, India isn’t a particularly difficult travel destination, when you compare it to Japan, to France. Yet, despite the considerably wider language barriers between locals and tourists in these countries, they enjoy far more inbound tourism than India does. And the reason is simple: lack of friction.
When you’re on holiday, the last thing you want to deal with is friction. We get enough of it in our daily lives; isn’t it exactly what we want to escape from when we travel?
In India, however, that escape isn’t too forthcoming. Getting to many, many destinations in India — even those in major cities — can be a patchy, pot-holed nightmare, often paired with a dearth of public transport options.
Plus, if you’re a woman who simply wants to wander around a peaceful monument in, well, peace, chances are you’ll have to get used to getting catcalled, followed, harassed — or all of the above — while you’re at it. I’ve personally become habituated to questioning and double-checking my outfit choices when I step out in certain parts of the country.
And then there’s the fairly ubiquitous disrespect for queueing, for personal space, for timekeeping (I’ve accepted that I may never accept Indian Stretchable Time). Objectively, etiquette is subjective, and what I’ve described here isn’t inherently good or bad, but just different. For some, though, it may just be too different.
Many of the foreign travellers I’ve met here have also felt cheated, ripped off, at some point in their time here. The fact that entry tickets to key historic sites are often ten times the price (or more) for international tourists just lumps them into one, homogenous other, without much regard for their background. Because, obviously, these visitors can afford the inflated prices — they’re from abroad, after all. Forget if that ‘abroad’ is actually a lower-income country, and the foreigner in question doesn’t even enjoy the same pocket money as the locals wandering around the site with them — rules are rules.
Then there are the scams. A lack of accessible and clean public washrooms. Shop and museum visits punctuated by power cuts. Low food safety standards. Pushy touts.
As much as it would break my heart to do so, I could go on. And on. India deserves so much better.
Ironically, some of the most boring countries I’ve lived in are now winning at this tourism game. Their once-nothing cities, artificial, devoid of true, rich history, have done an absolutely stand-up job in creating something remarkable out of close to nothing. Sure, the city you’ll be skydiving over may not be the most interesting, but at least there are clear safety standards in place, no one is pestering you, and things are running right on time.
The funny thing is, all of this is coming from someone who hasn’t even scratched the surface of India. I’ve never skied in Kashmir, sipped on tea in Assam, dived off the Andamans, bobbed along Kerala’s backwaters — and anything else that is currently an unknown-unknown for me.
There are people who know and understand the country on a far deeper level than I do, of course. And then there are parts of this country which are fully, truly, still hidden to most of us. Maybe they’ll stay that way. Maybe they won’t.
However you look at it, India is brimming with beauty. There’s beauty in inhaling those roadside golgappas, one lil plate at a time. In those conversations with the volunteers who roll rotis for 15 hours a day in the sweltering kitchens of Amritsar’s Golden Temple. In going on a spontaneous hike along the Konkan coast and happening upon still, serene pockets of wonder.
In understanding, one small trip at a time, that India is one of the few places in the world where both the whole and the sum of its parts are spectacular in equal, awe-inspiring measure.
But. Whether we like it or not, we’ve got work to do. Work that’ll take years, granted, but work that’ll put India up on the world stage — where it truly belongs.
So, let’s get to work, shall we?
Until next time,
S
Tell me: What do you think of the travel experience in India? Do you have a different opinion on all of this? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Cover image captured by Aditya Das in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India.