[J.] We had some wonderful experiences in Rajasthan, India and I am fully aware of the fact that my impressions are biased by me not really being prepared for India and that I was stressed and tired after all the admin and things to organise around us leaving South Africa. As a consequense, we started organising a lot around the trip in Rajasthan only after having arrived there and a lot of noise and generally slow internet connections did not really help in getting the right mood set up.
In addition, I understand that a lot of my impressions are based on cultural differences that although I generally consider myself open minded, made it difficult for me to fully enjoy India.
With these things in mind, it was not the dirt, the noise or the smell of urin but the following two things I struggled with in India:
In addition, I understand that a lot of my impressions are based on cultural differences that although I generally consider myself open minded, made it difficult for me to fully enjoy India.
With these things in mind, it was not the dirt, the noise or the smell of urin but the following two things I struggled with in India:
1) How often people were telling us things that were simply not true
2) How women are perceived and treated in daily life.
2) How women are perceived and treated in daily life.
Re 1) Haggling is a part of India as well as other annoying scams as we experienced hands on on our day of arrival and every day after that. However, I found this overall pretty tiring as you always have to have your wits together when trying to go from A to B and in addition have to be sensitive to not inflate prices for local people. In addition, I do not want to feel like being ripped off just because I am too trusty. I found this quite difficult to balance as we had to go through this every day. At some point I felt like being perceived like an ATM for free cash withdrawal. But what made it worse was how it changed me with regards of how suspicious I became of every single information and advice given to me.
It resulted in a situation where I turned down a really nice offer from a man who wanted to help us getting tickets for a show. We were arriving late and knew that tickets are limited and the queue for tickets was already quite long. The man said that he knows the ticket sales man and for a cash amount X he could organise us these tickets. It was not even that much money, but I did not trust this offer, being suspicious of having to pay again an extra amount on top of the regular price; and hence, turned down the offer, queuing up myself and needless to say, we did not get the tickets for that night as the show was sold out. It felt like a double punch to the face by a) having been rude to this man and b) obviously not seeing the show. I must say, it had not been my greatest evening.
However, both of us simply do not want to turn into persons who dont trust in other people in the first place and it felt like India was doing this to us to some degree.
Again, this is a personal impression and other people might deal differently with this.
It resulted in a situation where I turned down a really nice offer from a man who wanted to help us getting tickets for a show. We were arriving late and knew that tickets are limited and the queue for tickets was already quite long. The man said that he knows the ticket sales man and for a cash amount X he could organise us these tickets. It was not even that much money, but I did not trust this offer, being suspicious of having to pay again an extra amount on top of the regular price; and hence, turned down the offer, queuing up myself and needless to say, we did not get the tickets for that night as the show was sold out. It felt like a double punch to the face by a) having been rude to this man and b) obviously not seeing the show. I must say, it had not been my greatest evening.
However, both of us simply do not want to turn into persons who dont trust in other people in the first place and it felt like India was doing this to us to some degree.
Again, this is a personal impression and other people might deal differently with this.
Re 2) I had moments where I wanted to scream about how I was perceived as a woman. I know that gender equality is a concept still being very young in most countries around the world, and that Indian culture simply perceives women differently compared to men. However, I cannot help myself feeling strong about gender equality and therefore, it simply did not work for me in India.
Some example moments I personally struggled with:
- Around 80% of people in the streets and service industry are male
- The first person addressed for whatever query was always my husband. Sometimes in restaurants, the waiter was only talking to him and I felt like not being present at all. [Husband did not like it either as he had to negotiate everything.]
- When I was paying a dinner bill in cash, the waiter came back with the change handing it not to me but to my husband saying "Thank you, Sir"
- When leaving a restaurant or hotel, my husband was greated with "Have a good day, Sir / Thank you, Sir / Good bye, Sir" while all I got was a head nod.
- Smoking as a woman: I know that this is not perceived well by people in public places and therefore, I generally kept it to guesthouses, hotels and restaurants. However, after a long train ride, I was going to a quiet corner, only to be approached by a guy telling me that this is not allowed, all smoking by himself. Another example was, where a group of guys signalled towards my husband that he should not allow me smoking only to ask me for a cigarette a few moments later. [Really?!]
- Adverts in the cinema/television generally show woman either as pretty little things to be decorated with expensive jewellery or as not so clever but cute things that need help
- While queueing up for train tickets at a counter behind which was working a woman, we witnessed how disrespectfull a policeman was talking to her only to be all polite to her male senior who she called shortly after being offended.
Some example moments I personally struggled with:
- Around 80% of people in the streets and service industry are male
- The first person addressed for whatever query was always my husband. Sometimes in restaurants, the waiter was only talking to him and I felt like not being present at all. [Husband did not like it either as he had to negotiate everything.]
- When I was paying a dinner bill in cash, the waiter came back with the change handing it not to me but to my husband saying "Thank you, Sir"
- When leaving a restaurant or hotel, my husband was greated with "Have a good day, Sir / Thank you, Sir / Good bye, Sir" while all I got was a head nod.
- Smoking as a woman: I know that this is not perceived well by people in public places and therefore, I generally kept it to guesthouses, hotels and restaurants. However, after a long train ride, I was going to a quiet corner, only to be approached by a guy telling me that this is not allowed, all smoking by himself. Another example was, where a group of guys signalled towards my husband that he should not allow me smoking only to ask me for a cigarette a few moments later. [Really?!]
- Adverts in the cinema/television generally show woman either as pretty little things to be decorated with expensive jewellery or as not so clever but cute things that need help
- While queueing up for train tickets at a counter behind which was working a woman, we witnessed how disrespectfull a policeman was talking to her only to be all polite to her male senior who she called shortly after being offended.
Again, I understand that this is all part of the Indian culture and I do not want to raise my finger or judge, it is just something I personally so struggled with while travelling in this country.
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