India MIGHT kill you!

Ikuru

Recently I been reading allot of threads on Vaccination, Malaria, dangerous Fruit Juice, bad water lassies, bedbuggs, Rape, Evil police, Thiefs etc, etc, etc...

Sounds to me there is allot of FEAR out there.
Allot of people seem to Project their own fears on INDIA.
(To most first timers India is the Unknown, and its Normal to fear what we dont know.)

MY OPPINION on the MATTER:
You are never SAFE. Life is not SAFE, everything CAN go wrong!
People die all the time! BUT PLEASE Stop obsessing about the NEGATIVE stuff!

India is No worse than Any other place in the world, and in many ways its a BETTER place than many other places.

I Know Allot of people who went to India, Most more than once.
And NOTHING bad happened to them, they LOVED the expirience and that was it!
So please cut down on the What if... this or that goes wrong etc...

India is a Good and LOVING Place, and Most of the time Nothing will go wrong.
So dont worry.

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charlotte

But it is a B*****d when it does

freenote

I have to agree with ikuru. The odds are in your favour !!The whole world is a dangerous place.You take what precations you need to keep your own worries at bay and then go and face it,and very probely have a damb good time .Enjoy

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Ikuru

Thanks Freenote.

Another word of advice to anyone with doubts. Listen to your heart! If one keeps a open mind and a streetsmart aproach. Nothing will ever go wrong.

People who get themselves in trouble.
Do just that. It´s not the place. It´s You.
If "Bad" things normally happen to you they will go on happening in India too.
On the other hand if you have your "shit together" back home, you will in India too!
Maybe even more so!
I know I for one feel happier, more free and more in control on tha road, than in my box apartment.

So Njoy and Happy Travel!

Ruprecht

Well, I am currently repairing a yugo 55a so I can drive it to Barcelona in December... people keep saying "but what if it breaks down?"; "what if the weather is bad?"... so i answer "how the hell do I know?!"

This said, I generally get myself into bad trouble, but this is not the point - if you are always worried about something, you're never gonna do anything! There are a thousand more dangerous places than India anyway

Nick-H

I feel safer walking around the streets of Chennai in the evening than I do in London. People are simply not aggressive like they are here (ok, ok, huge generalisations, not everybody...).

On the other hand I wouldn't wander the tiny streets, and I am told by my friends who live there that I must *not* walk the streets in the night.

Sensible precautions, not being *offensive* in dress or manner ---makes for a peaceful life in many places in the world!

seventies'hippy

Yeah very true Ikuru,,,,,,,,,,,
Infact Looking at It from the point of someone who is new to India I think I'd be very apprehensive of going after reading some of the recent posts about muggings, rape, theft etc
Fortunately I know differently,,,,,,,,,,,,

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Ikuru

Verry true. I was doing the same thing on my last trip, started reading all the bad stuff in the LP. In the end I Realised the book was feeding my fear so I put it aside and started reading it once I got to India instead. Just to know what the next stop is going to be like....

It is a nice feeling ariving at a new spot...
All you´ve seen is the map of the city (Udaipur was like this to me). You know you like it, but you´ve never seen it.

Than you get of the train and figure its walking distant to the Nice part of town, so you just walk of and leave all the trainstation mayhem behind you.

Good stuff!
(Ps. Nice pic by the way)

yogivivek

you have to keep yourself under control if a cow apears and go sit in front of u and stay there for 2 hours...

you cant push the animal somewhere in a garden or can u?

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"We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts, we make the world."

sadhuji

india doesn't kill anyone. india infuses blood into nearly dead persons. you can't equate india with any other country in the world. our politicians are corrupt but our software specialists are the best in the world. we only gave the world the kohinoor.

Ikuru

Incase someone missunderstood I was beeing sarcastic. No India does not Kill people, fear kills the curious travelling carefree spirit and eventually makes it in to an old and selfloving bitter man. Thats all. Someone who rather read maps and eat malaria pills than just grabing thoes flip flops a guitar and getting on that plane. Shanti shanti

Rob_The_Pom

I think you're bang on there Ikuru, mate.
There are risks everywhere on Earth.

I must admit that I was the same before I went to India - I was absolutely terrified of beggars, touts, malaria and the like. I think it is a fairly natural reaction when faced with a culture that is perceived to be alien from your own.
I've since learnt that people are pretty much people everywhere - good, bad, awful or plain, downright amazing.

Keep travellin'.....



RTP

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Dr Funkenstein

Agree totally. One of my many dislikes about Lonely Planet is that it's very over-the-top on how everyone's gonna rip you off, scam you etc. Sure, there are rip-off merchants but a bit of common sense usually gets rid of them. I think LP's got a lot to answer for in this respect: a lot of tourists are unnecessarily paranoid because of what they've read. This leads to rudeness, aggressive haggling and a lot of bad feeling for tourists and locals alike.

You regularly read 'pay no more than x' in LP, too, quoting a figure that's long out-of-date. Again, more bad feeling on both sides.

I bloody hate Lonely Planet, I must admit. Out of date info, paranoid views about the locals and a more-traveller-cred-than-thou attitude. Junk, imo. Get the Rough Guide instead.

<rant over>

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Ruprecht

Well I've been told that the locals eat white-man flesh, the tropical cactus-bears will give you rabies, malaria and the plague just by looking at you, the local police are seven foot tall renegades with machetes, and that the entire country subsides into the Ganges, which is 95C, for a monthly 'cleansing of the westerner'. To tell you the truth, it just made me want to go more.

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readmymind

well... did it break down ? was the weather bad ?? (i'm just curious )

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