Too dangerous?

Actually, I first came to India a little while after two group of people in Gujarat had slain eacch other. Yes, I was concerned, and yes, people pointed out to me that Gujarat and Kerala where a long, long way apart.

Interesting topic. I'm not sure I can answer with a great degree of certainty. I would certainly rule out countries with an active conflict in which foreigners are a target. Having said that, within particular countries with a bad rep, there are often regions which are pretty safe to visit, e.g. Northern Iraq (Kurdistan), Somaliland, parts of the DRC, most of Sudan, Pakistan, etc. I wouldn't hesitate to visit these places tomorrow if I could.

Not much you can do about that. If it doesn't happen (personally I think it won't) then Israel is a perfectly safe place to visit as a tourist. Whatever conflict is happening right now is of very low-intensity, and tourists have never been a target there anyway. Actually, the two years I've just spent living in Israel have possibly been some of the most peaceful since theyyamdancer's visit in the 80's. I've traveled all over the country, including every big city in the West Bank. Things can get tense at times, but with both sides desperate to win the PR campaign, foreign tourists are normally left well alone, provided they don't get actively involved in the conflict.

Those two statements are very true. Threat perception is key to understanding risks and perceived danger.

People who work in foreign outposts (diplomatic as well as conflict professionals) by their existential mission are bound to engage with the populance. Sometimes, do-gooders in the shape of missionaries, NGO personnel get sucked into the vortex of low-grade conflicts. They then increase the threat perception amongst the players in conflict of people of similar appearances. e.g In Jungles of Colombia, urban turf wars of Mexico, swaths of lands controlled by Maoists in India, or TTP in SWAT; all have picked up or attacked outsiders because of suspicions of aiding and giving comfort to the enemies.

An indian could be easily mistaken to be fair target in Afghanistan or SWAT, or Indonesia, or Mexico due to false positives. A chinese individual in Chattisgarh, Jharkand would be in a similar situation.

If something does happen while I am there, it wont be the first time I tell people who ask about my trip that they can check it out on the world news headlines. At least, I personally never came to any harm. I wouldn't purposely choose to be in the middle of political unrest though. It does make me feel uneasy.

Here is one example of me in a patch of the world that just happened to get unpredictably into the world news while I was there.
Spring break in Estonia

There were some other times too, when the rest of the world knew way more about what was happening around me, than I did. If political stuff happens when you are someplace, you find out more about it on the internet, then you would by looking around you. Those were in the days before I started making blogs about my travels though, so I don't have anything to show, but you can probably read all about them in old news articles.

Somebody mentioned Northern Ireland and the bombings in London that used to happen. Strangely, the few times I went to Northern Ireland during the IRA years, I didn't worry about the possibility of a bomb going off at all. Nor, did I worry about it when I lived in London in 1989. In those days, all the garbage cans were removed from the Underground, to prevent bombs being put in them. That means the police were expecting things like that to happen, doesn't it? I also remember a few times in Dublin, having to walk a different route, because of a street being cordoned off because a bomb was somewhere on it, and the bomb squad had not yet defused it. Somehow, I managed to not be worried about that either. I grew up in Ireland, so maybe I just became desensitized to this sort of thing happening there.

So true, and you just reminded me of something.

In 2005 in a city called Batman (yes) in east Turkey, I was sitting on my hotel bed watching TV news footage of mass protests, rioting, etc. My thought process went:

'I wonder where that is...hold on now...that looks kind of familiar...'

I got up, walked over to the window and looked out. A few hundred meters up the street, what do I see but a line of riot police and an unruly mob beyond. To this day I'm still not sure what it was all about (presumably some Kurdish issue).

if Israel strikes Iran i wouldn't want to be anywhere in Europe or America at the time.
think Australia or New Zealand would be the safest places to be!!

Why ? What is the thinking behind this conclusion ? There must be some perception of body harm where you are, to contemplate flight.

I have been in Sri Lanka at a time when the Tamil Tigers were placing bombs in public buses and train stations, and I was using public buses and trains too. My thinking was, that the likelihood of becoming a victim is much smaller than one might think when scared.

It is similar with train-rides in India or plane-crashes in general.

My limit of places to go is more geographically based. I would never go to South America for instance, particularly Columbia or Brasil. Or to muslim countries other than Malaysia or Indonesia. But that has more to do with a disinterest in macho countries, and a sort of structural violence that is predominant there. ( I have been in Dubai for a couple of days, and had touch-downs in Kuwait and other arabian places, but else little contact with that part of the world. Desert sands don't interest me much, even though I know they have their beauty. I have experienced some of that in Arizona and Nevada.)

In 1989, I went to university in October. The first day I was in my place I lived while a student I switched on the TV, and saw people sitting on top of the Berlin wall, and people driving out from Eastern Europe and the only thing hindering their progress were the crowds of party animals celebrating the new freedom to step in and out of East Germany at will. This was followed shortly(within days, I think) by the entire iron curtain which I had just been crossing and recrossing a number of times, to the envy of those I met during the trip who lived in Czechoslavakis, Romania... disolving. They would have risked being shot for trying it, while my magical booklet aka Irish passport meant my only worry was about coffee, cosmetics, chocolate... greedy border guards trying to make me give them any goodies I had.

The iron curtain coming down is considered to be a velvet revolution, but I knew a Romanian girl who lived in Dublin, who showed me the bullet scar in her stomach, which happened in Bucharest during that revolution. Looks like some got shot, before the army and police decided to back down and allow a velvet revolution to take place. I was glad to not have been in Romania, that October. We already had hassles with getting around and getting in and out of the country even with there being no revolution on yet.

Somebody told me, I should have seen the revolution comming and not been so stupid as to have gone to eastern Europe at the time. But, it was bit like the Israel Iran situation is now. There were always opinions being given about it, and always predictions being made, but one could not really find any good reason to not go there as there was no imminent danger.

I arrived after the wall was breached at multiple places. Through the years, I saw the transformation of AlexanderPlatz. The last time I was in Berlin, if one were believe the architects & the owner of the hotel chain; the few inch wide mark on the carpet in my room represented where the wall used to be


Brazil is safe if one does not venture out of the comfort zone. of course one cannot be carefree and roam wantonly ... I would go to Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia in a heartbeat

What about -
Istanbul ? Turkey ?
Tangiers ? Marrakash ? Morocco ?
Alexandria ? Cairo ? Egypt ?
Amman ? Jordan ?

Yes, I understand, these are all places worth seeing. But it is just my way of selecting places, that I never go anywhere in the world unless I have a practical reason to go there, like meeting someone interesting, doing some research there, seeing a doctor with an unusual therapy. I am not really a tourist who goes around to see the things that "need" to be seen. I know I am losing out quite a bit because of that.

For instance, I lived in Rome for a while because I studied there. I did not do the usual tourist things, at least not many of them. Similarly with India, I have not been to Goa or Kajuraho, Hampi and so on. I dislike seeing abanded monuments just because there is some history there. I see the suffering there too, of the people who built it and died, of the rulers who lived thru their power-games, did good and bad things to others and so on. I see that too when I see the monuments, and that makes me want to go inward and find a solution for myself, my own existential anguish, facing death as we all do at any moment of our day.

As far as the beauty of places is concerned, it works out as a kind of disadvantage for me to have been born and growing up in (and always coming back to) Switzerland, in one of the most stunningly beautiful landscapes Switzerland has to offer. My experience is like my heart is so much drenched with beauty every day (even now when I look out my window on lakes and mountains), that beauty somewhere else does not really attract me anymore. It is there too, I have also lived in the U.S. in very beautiful places, with nice and sunny people around, the way Americans are in the West.

Suppose I grew up in the Bronx, or in some suburb of any big city, I would probably want to see "the world" too. In my case it is not so, even though I am living a life others are probably dreaming of only. (End of rant.)

The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.

Israel is a very safe place to visit, with many amazing sights, great culture, leisure, wonderful beaches, I go there every year with my kids.
One of the safest places, low crime rate.
My second comfort zone after India! Yes , there are sometimes terror attacks, but those happen in other countries too, and the threat of a war with Iran, but at the moment there are so many tourists in Israel,all having a great time!

I am & to read someone wrote Pakistan is a safe place to be in.

Dangerous travel: Countries to avoid

The Most Dangerous Countries for Tourists, in Maps

Plenty of problems with these classifications IMO. One of the main problems is that it doesn't distinguish between regions within states, e.g. we know Kurdistan is a pretty safe place to travel to, it can't be compared with the rest of Iraq. Likewise Somaliland relative to the rest of Somalia. Certainly parts of Sudan are pretty dodgy, but Khartoum is considered to be one of Africa's safer capital cities. Conversely, parts of the Russian Caucasus should clearly be red if that color is going to have any meaning. Obviously I would feel considerably safer walking through any parts of Delhi or Cairo than certain parts of, say, Detroit or Baltimore. Furthermore, what does it mean to say North Korea is as dangerous for travelers as Syria? I would consider North Korea to be one of the safest places in the world for tourists, simply due to the fact that tourists are intensely monitored during their guided stay there. Generally speaking extremely authoritarian countries are pretty safe places to travel, as pre-2011 Syria was, and Iran is today (no way Iran should be marked as dangerous as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan).