The "Foreigners only. No Room for Indians" annoyance

In fact and to little surprise I guess, that case Asish is probably referring to already spawned one, some time ago, and pretty soon as it appeared on the web (But it's in the Masala aka Off-Topic forum here, so not visible to all members. Probably because among other things it involved bickering about other web forums, which is just not on. I think last I saw of it, that discussion had duly petered out into the finesses of traveling in the Caribbean and the merits of using guidebooks or not, and little to do with its original subject.)

My bad. Should have followed the context more closely (- point duly noted). Thanks Shiver for making the clarification.

-PM

Okay, I'll name names:
Major's Den in Pahar Ganj was the hotel that would initially refuse to give rooms to my Indian friends until they said they were my friend (already staying there). I did see mixed couples and maybe Indian couples there sometimes, but rarely.

Metropolis Hotel, also in Pahar Ganj -- I arranged to treat some local friends to their good tandoori in the rooftop restaurant. My friends arrived first and asked for the rooftop, and were told there was no rooftop restaurant! Then I arrived and led them up the stairs to it. This was two weeks ago in April 2012.

Now that I've concurred that hotels discriminating against domestic tourists is icky, I'll also concur with the punctuation-free person who complained about his fellow domestic tourists above. My close friends run a hotel in Ladakh, and the people who work there used to always say that one Indian couple was more work than a group of ten or fifteen westerners. They said Indians would never settle into the room without once or twice calling for help or an additional this or that, they threw garbage everywhere, and often complained about obscure things.

"this curry is nothing like my grandmother makes it." --- seen that one

There is a famous back-packer haunt in Chennai that, a few years ago, got a very bad press (including on this site) for not admitting Indians. I guess that's changed, as I recall a Sub-continent-origin member staying there. However, with the guest house that I use to stay in, it was more Indian than foreign, probably mostly business visitors, but tourists too. I'm guessing that this sort of establishment is probably more common in the cities? ...Oh, at nearly 1,000 a night, it was not exactly low-end also.

As a proprietor, I'd be wary of a group from some city or other who had come to party --- but it would be ridiculous to think this would only be Indians. I suffered such a party only a couple of weeks ago, in a place that most people would visit to be quiet. Unreasonable requests? They wanted six extra beds at 10.00pm. American/European.

This whole topic is absolutely new to me, and I had more than twenty trips to India and stayed in hotels a lot in many states of India. I have never been to a hotel where there were no Indians. Maybe it is a certain upper class that is affected? Budget places (400-800 Rupees) certainly aren't, as far as I can tell.

Actually, I have heard it for the first time in Tamil Nadu at a beach this year, where a guest house owner declared, sort of as a plus to attract me, that he does not take any Indians, "because they only come to booze". But a few days later, some Indians stayed there too. But this was the first time I ever heard of something like this.

I'm surprised you have never heard of this atala!

But it is precisely these kind of budget places which are affected, as recounted both by the OP and NonIndianResident.

Pankaj Mishra had this experience in 1993 and wrote about it in his travel book Butter Chicken in Ludhiana. It's a long time since I read it but my recollection is that it was in Kovalam. This review of the book also mentions an encounter with a guesthouse owner in Pushkar
It's a great book by the way, a perceptive young Indian man who is also a very good writer travelling on his own around India on trains and buses as a backpacker. But then we have some very good trip reports here too by IMers with similar qualities .

I'd never heard of it either, Julia ... until Indiamike that is. Ironically, our company used to book all our hotel room under our Indian partner's name - this was to get the better rate & to make it more difficult for our competitors to monitor/track us.

I have run into more than a few situations on my own where the front desk would inform that the 'only' room available was the 'penthouse'. Which on cross-examination was not true. Having only luxury rooms available for certain customers is the other end of the scale in the games Indian Hotels play. It's all about maximizing profits I guess. In some ways you can't blame them for that.

Yes I've had that too, even been shown a mirror-on-the-ceiling honeymoon suite when I was on my own


Another experience - and I've never heard of this anywhere else - is that I was denied accommodation in several hotels in Krishnanagar, West Bengal because I was a foreigner. A couple of years later Mousourik went to one of the hotels and asked the manager why I had been turned away ...

Hm, that's strange; we had an IM mega-meeting here two years ago (25 people or so, if I recall), arranged with them by an Indian member, and white members attending far in the minority. I've certainly sat there on my own later with Indian visitors and guests around, as there will have been on that evening, too. Meeting Indian hotel guests on the way up there as well, sure. Moreover, it gets not infrequently recommended here for the area by some Indian members, that's how we'll have ended up there in the first place.

Yes, the Broadlands Lodge. When I stayed there, three years ago, there were indeed no Indian guests staying that I've seen (it is as usual Indian-run alright); then again it wasn't very busy, anyhow. Low season. One also wonders if many Indian guests wouldn't just find these backpacker joints with their odd dwellers unattractive, or way below them. Broadlands is quite peculiar about who they let in, anyway, and keep a firm tab on non-staying visitors, Indian or foreign. But I've certainly been visited there by both white and Indian friends (one Nick among them ); or indeed sometimes they might come and call you to meet them in the lobby, then free to take them back to your room if so desired. Once however I wanted to take some white ladies in late at night to go over some maps with them, and this was just strictly no-no. So there you go, I'm not so sure if it's a racial thing, I guess mostly they just want no trouble. (I'm a white European myself, just to be clear. Well, maybe not all that crystal-white after a month or two under the Indian sun They have by now of course seen your name and passport, and heard your accent, in any event.)

But I'm not defending it, and after my staying there, an Indian member here did report trying to make a phone booking with them and being told they were full or so. Who knows, maybe of course they were, while a large place, I imagine it will be popular in season. But had I known for sure they had such a policy in place, of course I might have reconsidered staying there. Remember I asked you about it at the time, Nick, and you did tell me about this Subcontinental member you knew of staying there, which is why I decided to give it a go. It is certainly a very quiet and peaceful place, though in the midst of the city, and I guess their keeping a tab on things might just contribute to that.

There's a decent 2003 article from The Hindu on the situation at Broadlands: http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/thscri...09/11/&prd=mp&.

Mwah, I don't know; away from any immediate foreign tourist trail, in y'r average run-of-the-mill Indian budget to lower-mid range business kind of hotel, you'll typically find yourself with 99% Indian guests, and indeed may meet few fellow foreigners along the way, anyway. I guess mostly small businessmen and commuters on the move, indeed, then indeed holidaymakers and whatnot. Kind of like, well, what makes up the average hotel guest, anywhere (I must admit they can be crazy noisy and all day and night and bossy and demanding, and knocking on just any room door they can think of at 3AM and expecting the sky at this low budget and managing to leave a room a complete mess overnight, btw, and certainly when traveling with the dreaded extended family... It can of course be no more than a generalization, and there are of course plenty of relaxed and gentle folks just going about their inconspicuous ways, just as well, but you'll nonetheless often observe this. Indeed many a hotel owner will sigh how they prefer a non-fussy foreign guest. I am of course not saying there exist no foreigners with similar behavior, far from it. But it is what they will not so rarely tell you.)

But again, never to defend any of it; me as an outside observer, I can do little more than observe, anyway. I don't generally hang around much in these backpacker kind of places that might or might not be all-white, so can't say much about it. Such places don't attract me, either, and if I were aware of it, I'd certainly stay away from there. But it must be added that I do think no few such places will be predominantly visited by foreigners white or other because they just don't attract too much other clientele; when's the last time you saw Indian tourists craving for banana pancakes & to hang around with some foreign neo-hippies in some pretty low-key place. Now maybe some will be attracted to that scene because of the promise imagined or otherwise of instant sex & drugs & rock 'n' roll, I'm not sure if I can blame some managers for being not too keen on that.

Of course if they outright say or make it clear that Indians are not welcome, that's another thing yet, and no, of course I wouldn't condone it.

Only in Damrak or Warmostraat When the other option is chicken with spinach and ham pancake The information in the guidebook on vegetarian option(s) used to be sparse.


In a pre-internet-as-commodity-unwashed-masses era; the one guide we all carried was (and still is) the most informative guide bar none: Lets Go guide.

Straying away from the core topic, but, hoteliers and guest house keepers will have seen it all, from extra non-paying sleepers on the floor to sex workers.

About forty years ago I tried to visit a female friend in a hotel near London's Kings Cross Station. I was very severely treated by the landlady. I was probably too ignorant and naive at that time to even register that this was one of London's big red-light areas.

What was the drinking age then ? Were you draft eligible ?

The drinkin' age keeps going up, the age of consent keeps going down.

What, as in a pint of draught, please?

IIRC, one had to be 18 to buy alcohol in UK, then and now. I missed out on National Service by half a generation.

I fear we have gone astray