For better or worse!!

cyberhippie

As a experienced travel bum in India I'm bound to comment on the new expectations on travel in India.

On forums such as these, I'm struck by the an almost obsessive need to plan for all eventualities, whilst on a trip to India.

Will my sim card work on Indian mobile network?

Can I rely on transport to run on time?

Where can I catch Newcastle V Man United on the telly?

Are wet wipes available?

Should I take precautionary antibiotics to stave off Delhi Belly?

Can I burn my Jpegs to CD?

Where can buy a memory card for my digital camera?

Is there an Ipod dealer nearbye?

All vaild questions of course, all of which I've answered to the best my ability over the years.

However it leaves me thnking, how many folks are left who are willing to take a chance and experience a country in it's raw state??
Without relinquishing the norms of the background they come from!!
Who will walk away from their daily status quo and experince a trip without the order and certanties we all expect from life at home!

Travel used to be about change and experiencing a different way of living, without the burdens of the mundane.
A trip into the unknown, unfettered by consumerism and boring consistancy!

I'm not advocating one style of travel over another, merely commenting on a newer need, for a travel in a bubble mentality.
Perceived hindrances such as the ones mentioned above seem to becoming more and more normal questions/expectations for the traveler to India, with little attention paid to the adventure and carefree visits of years gone by!





So what do you all think!

New-South-Welshman

That is so true, aye. I'm guilty of some of the things mentioned. But true, sometimes you have to break free of the square you live in to experience something new. It's like eating having fish & chips in India. Why do something you'd do at home, try something different. Good rant, Hippie.

cyberhippie

NSW. I'm not going to caste the first stone but I see what I see!!

capt_mahajan

When the kids were younger, we used to get up in the morning, dump some things and a map into the car and drive. Stop where we wanted and see what we wanted.

We drove Hyderabad Delhi and onward to Uttaranchal in the height of summer and back, and enjoyed it thoroughly. Discovered some interesting places on the way, stopped in Jabalpur, Bhopal, Shivpuri.. Agra. and others.... all unplanned.


Similar driving trips to Goa, Kotagiri, Hampi etc and shorter trips around Bombay and Hyderabad have been equally unplanned. Srirangapatnam was unplanned and really enjoyed.

Unfortunately, as you get older, time sometimes gets limited, children cant easily miss school, and I get tired more easily. I cant drive Hyderabad Jabalpur in one day no more! Plus, of course, its cheaper to fly budget airlines than drive, even though its not half as much fun.

And you get a much better idea of how huge and how varied this country really is, when you drive.

Right now, planning a similar trip to Darjeeling/Sikkim,or Coorg or Uttaranchal. (The only thing planned so far is that I am going). Finances won't let me drive alone, but maybe I can get some friends to join me.... otherwise, train.

__________________
When I look up, I see people cashing in. I don't see heaven, or saints or angels. I see people cashing in on every decent impulse and human tragedy. -Heller, Catch-22

PeakXV

Alot more people are travelling to India for business, partial business, or even working vacation (due to improved comms/internet) purposes these days.

With that in mind any surprises or potential obstacles you can eliminate through research, question asking, and organized preparation shouldn't be looked at so much as a lack of intrepidness or weakness of travel character... but simply as a means of assuring a more successful and efficient journey.

__________________
What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Don't go to India ~ Pre-trip Warnings & Misconceptions?

Nick-H

A lot of people want an easy(ish) introduction.

I did --- using an agent to pre-book everything.

Mind you, somem are more adventurous than others: I've never been anywhere without a hotel pre-booked.

Perhaps your opening line says it all, CH: Experienced travel bum... My guess is that you started young enough not to have too many cares and worries where you might sleep any particular night; possibly you didn't even worry too much about what you might catch. And from the second time on, you had experience!

Also, I guess IndiaMike wasn't around then !

70s-80s overlander

The point is well taken: pre-internet travel in India required a LOT more faith that everything would work out OK. My attitude used to be that if I had heard/read that SOMEONE had gotten from here to there, then I assumed I could do the same. I also assumed that if there wasn't a train available when I wanted one, then there probably was a bus, or -- worse come to worse -- I could go the neighboring town by foot or rickshaw and find some kind of transportation there. Only once that I recall did I end up somewhere in the middle of the night with nothing like a hotel in sight, and, on that occasion, a friendly Indian told me to barricade myself in the train station waiting room, which I did, and that was that.

The other side of this pre-internet travel was that I DID routinely read everything I could find for one year prior to visiting a country. For India, I ended up reading for two years before I made the first trip.

The bottom line, though, was that there was a lot more faith involved in traveling without having every question answered.

capt_mahajan

Having travelled a fair amount in non touristy places abroad, I find that if you have the following, the rest of the plan can stay totally flexible:

-money
-documents
-keys
-wife, if applicable.

daverm18

CH:
I can't disagree with what you've said. We have the advantage in this day and age to surf the net, find sites like this and actually speak to people about their experiences before we embark on our adventures.
I know of a couple that went to Costa Rica and went to a Pizza Hut every night. It bamboozled me at the time, but when I really think about it, they were still adventurous enough to leave the comfort of their own lives and at least attempt to experience another culture. Those of us that travel do so with whatever comforts we deem necessary...and that's OK.
Cheers to everyone that isn't afraid to do the big trip, India. At least it was the big one for my wife and I...and we had a blast.

punchinello

The world has changed. We are constantly told how dangerous everywhere (else) is, so we want to stay safe. There is now a massive industry that supplies the means to stay safe (medical, personal security etc.). More people and less naturally adventurous people are travelling and you can take a short, cheap trip simply because the trip is short and cheap. People in rich countries are simply much more dependent on consumer electronics than they used to be. There are now fora, like this one, which will actually be able to provide you with information. That, even in the last 5-10 years is totally new. You CAN plan a trip down to every detail before you leave home.

Nick-H

Now I come to think of it, although I never made it to India back in the seventies (I don't think I got further than Wales ), I was quite happy to put a blanket over my shoulder and trust that some corner of somebodies room would be available to me...

Not so thirty years later!

punchinello

All this said, I think anyone coming from a safe, western country to India, more than almost any other place, is fairly adventurous. I've been to North Africa, SE Asia, America and Europe. I'm leaving for India in 4 weeks and frankly, I'm shitting myself.

capt_mahajan

Not as offtopic as you might think:

"We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that a savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.".. Mark Twain

daverm18

Puncinello:
Don't shit yourself. You'll have a great time. Did our first and only trip in Jan,Feb/06 and still can't stop looking at our pictures and coming to this forum.
Depending on where you're staying, bring an extra roll of tp, so that when you do the 2 you'll be comfy.

beach

I think it’s the flip side of the channels like National Geographic. In their quest for perfection (of the documentary they are making), they try to show the country (India or otherwise) a sort of exotic place ‘just invented’.

That it’s, it not like any regular place on earth where there are towns, where there are village, where there are roads (yes, roads), where people go to offices, where people live in homes……the whole theme is sort of dramatized (for the sake of the documentary) as something ‘unbelievable’. Then you believe the movie. And people starts believe, along with many things, that you can just walk into a forest and the tigress and her five cute cubs would pose for a photography session.

That you are (ad)venturing into a unusual civilization at the best or an alien planet at the worst.