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You claim it's easy to find English-speaking people in India. I disagree.
You claim India has a high literacy rate. I disagree.
You imply there's minimal risk of getting sick from eating food in India. I disagree.
I'm sure other readers who have been to India have opinions about all three of these topics. Let's ask them to chime in now ....
1. No, you claimed it was impossible that we encountered English speaking locals while having a meal in India. You based this on your first-hand observations over a few days in Delhi.
2. Official estimates are over 80%, you believe your few days in Delhi somehow qualified you to have a better grasp of the literacy rate of this vast country and put it at 40%.
3. I scoffed that you let fear deprive you of the wonderful experience of eating local cuisine in India instead of spending your entire vacation eating in your western hotels. Same basics apply as with travel in any developing country = cooking kills bacteria so you can greatly reduce risk by sticking to cooked foods in restaurants with good turnover. Avoid juice and raw fruits/veggies unless you can peel them. I go back and forth on chutneys, probably best avoided but I can't resist. Avoid dairy products unless cooked like yogurt in a curry. For street vendors only buy from ones that cook it in front of you (not the ones sitting in a case or on display) and avoid the ones that use plastic dishes if they don't have running water.
That will make the risk of serious stomach issues low enough to take advantage of being around some of the best food in the world.
The heat could be dealt with at night by wrapping myself in wet sheets and breathing through a washcloth.
<snip>
I only had time to travel from Varanasi to Khajuraho to Agra to Delhi before unwisely eating that street food. Hubris of what I thought was an "iron stomach." All I remember of Delhi skies was the heat haze. The plan had been to head for Kashmir - I'd managed to secure a plane reservation while in Nepal. This was a period of continued conflict between India and Pakistan with some need for officers to rush to the border areas (using commercial aircraft?). I had a return seat for three weeks later, but still I worried that I'd be trapped there ill - and I wasn't feel that well the morning I needed to head off to a ticket office to pay for and pick up the ticket.
The monsoons had started in the Himalayan areas with landslides preventing thru-bus travel on to Tibet. Travelers were going, but it was necessary to take slippery trails around the slides for the next bus...
You are my idol! My trip included all of those places, but it was only this year and was a guided tour and in 4-star hotels. I don't quite have your spirit of adventure. OTOH, I have friends here who consider my solo trip to Edinburgh and Paris as perilous as a solo kayak trip down the Amazon.
Interesting thread. Unfortunately, I was pretty much defeated on my one solo trip to India in the late 1980s. The heat (monsoons were late that year with temperatures soaring above 40 C). The food (in a year of travel it was the only location where I became ill). Harassment (from men). Travel logistics (plane seats were hard to come by, with train travel uncertain). Each component by itself was manageable but together became formidable. Never did I feel like I was connecting to an overall culture in the two weeks or so I was there before boarding a plane to a much cooler England. There were instead vignettes of interaction, some positive some negative.
I remember the Delhi of 1988. I was there for a week and midday heat was unbearable. Due to power cuts the air conditioning did not work in the afternoons. One day I mistakenly opened a window in the apartment we were staying and the hot air that rushed in was something like an open furnace.
At least the pollution was not as bad as it is now.
Quote:
I hated to leave India - but it can be a hard country to deal with under certain conditions. Not the most dangerous (that would have been parts of Latin America during that decade). Or the most seemingly hostile to single women (that would be Bangladesh, with Pakistan at times problematic). For some reason that I can't well explain, I felt more comfortable as a solo young woman in Muslim areas than Hindu.
I think about taking my daughter to India - to finish up what I never did. But she's in her early 20s ... we don't do well on tours, much preferring to wander into non-tourist neighborhoods. With the news reports of male harassment, I hesitate. There are many areas of the world where it is safer for women alone to stay in well-travelled areas, be careful at night. I've tried to teach her to observe then make wise decisions. Still, I do not get the underlying dynamic of how foreign women may be perceived in much of India. No doubt if I went for a long trip, it would become clearer with travel more comfortable. Probably, though, that trip will never happen.
India is terrible for harassment of women. I am ashamed it is so. Rapes are common and under reported and the perpetrators get away scot free most of the times. Even Indian women are afraid of going alone at nights. So I would not advise two foreign ladies alone on a trip of India. But the south is better and treats women well. Tamil Nadu and Kerala are good and Kerala has a good tourist infrastructure. Maybe a guided tour of the North with your daughter, and self tour of the South?
It's a shame you didn't use your time wisely.
Wrong again. Go back up to where I posted the reason. Repeat it without paraphrasing.
I'm an observant, astute person, I'm friendly and I talk a lot with people, and when I go places, I spend as much time as possible off-the-beaten track. So, yeah, it's totally possible to go somewhere for a few days and learn a lot about it. For example, a few days in India I learned what the literacy rate is. You spent two years in Thailand and didn't learn it.
When I go to foreign country (or to be honest, when I go anywhere new), I interact a lot with people. I find out from them about the economy, about their living conditions, their opinions
of their country, what the government is doing or not doing for them, etc etc. Repeat this enough with different people, and you start to get an idea of how things are. 40% of the population is below the poverty line in India and illiterate - in raw numbers that's greater than the entire population of the United States. This problem is caused primarily by the historical caste system combined with the corrupt government.
You said that most of them don't speak English. I'm not sure how much meaningful conversation you can have by using an app.
"I would have liked to have tried street food, but everyone I've ever met has said they've gotten seriously ill from the food in India, so we limited ourselves to eating in the hotel."
Goodness, you missed out, they got some damn good food there.
You claim it's easy to find English-speaking people in India. I disagree.
You claim India has a high literacy rate. I disagree.
You imply there's minimal risk of getting sick from eating food in India. I disagree.
I'm sure other readers who have been to India have opinions about all three of these topics. Let's ask them to chime in now ....
I spent several months in India;
You claim it's easy to find English-speaking people in India. I disagree.
City centers there was varying levels of English proficiency, Mumbai had a lot more than Delhi for sure, Delhi is a different world than Mumbai. I did find surprising the number of Russian speakers that had varying level of proficiency. I speak Urdu fairly well, so the language thing was never much an issue.
You claim India has a high literacy rate. I disagree.
I have no idea the literacy rate of even the US, lol. But I imagine the rate is much, much higher in the cities than rural areas, especially among men versus women.
You imply there's minimal risk of getting sick from eating food in India. I disagree.
There is a risk, a higher risk, but not enough that should prevent someone from enjoying the food. India has awesome food, Indian and Chinese. Could never get enough of it.
You said that most of them don't speak English. I'm not sure how much meaningful conversation you can have by using an app.
That's the hilarity of it, someone so caught up in their know-it-all-after-a-few-days-in-one-city that they'll talk about their deep interactions with locals that allowed them this amazing insight into the entire country, then turn around and claim it is impossible for someone else to have encountered locals who speak English in restaurants.
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My trip included all of those places, but it was only this year and was a guided tour and in 4-star hotels. I don't quite have your spirit of adventure. OTOH, I have friends here who consider my solo trip to Edinburgh and Paris as perilous as a solo kayak trip down the Amazon.
