India: A Place for Foreigners

India has an uncanny attraction for the foreign traveler: it is a land of mysticism and mystery; it escaped from the clutches of the “Great Colonial British”; the cosmopolitan and modern are intertwined with "traditional" culture and challenging poverty. It is a country of contrasts – poverty and wealth, desert heat and glacial cold, brilliant scholars and illiterate peasants. There is a bond of common humanity while the East versus West differences as times feel like an immense chasm.

India is both accessible and untouchable for the traveler: the plane ticket may be expensive, but money goes a long, long way. Luxury is affordable, and for the impoverished backpacker seeking to "see the world" in six months or less, India is a boon.

At ten o’clock at night on a rusty metal catwalk above teeming platforms in the chaotic Old Delhi railway station, I meet a Belgian woman named Anna. Carting our rucksacks out of the sweep of traffic, she tells me, "I left India three months ago. I couldn't take it back in Europe. I sold my stuff and borrowed from friends to come back. I have $100 US a month, and I want to stay six months". In India, all is within the realm of the possible.

Anna is heading for Dharamsala and McLeodGanj. Dharamsala is the home of the Dalai Lama in exile, and houses the Tibetan Refugee Children's Schools and the Tibetan Secretariat. For those less Buddhistly inclined, McLeodGanj is a budget traveler's mecca. For fifty Rupees a night, a soul can hire a room up a winding trail in Bhagsu or Dharamkot. Originally a British hill station, in McLeodGanj foreigners in grungy "India chic" wander the muddy streets, past chai stands, internet cafes and shop after shop selling the same staple clothes and jewelry. Wandering in their midst are locals – monks and nuns in traditional garb, saffron robes and shaved heads, shop keepers sharing chai and watching the throngs, children scurrying between the legs of travelers and murky mudpuddles in the main chowk, women keeping watch over the mayhem of the bus stand from high residential roads. In the middle of town stand a row of prayer wheels, colorfully painted, spun by children, the prayerful, and curious tourists. Guidebooks speak of pleasant guesthouses where you can have a "chance to brush up on your Hebrew with stoned Israeli guests".

I arrive in McLeodGanj, oblivious to its reputation, after a traitorous eight-hour bus ride. Even in the pouring rain, the streets are lined with shaggy, barefoot men and women in spaghetti-strap tank tops and Punjabi-style Salwaars. I make friends with a shop owner, who is philosophical about the mayhem: "It may be a pain in the ass, but what can you do?" After a dreadful attempt at a Tibetan massage from one of the throng of masseurs lining the main street, I wonder, what is this all about? The scenery is spectacular, yet the masses recede as I hike out of town. In relative solitude on a mountain path, I find it hard to believe that they come for the mountain vistas. What is it, then, that lures a woman to beg and borrow money from friends for a six month India hit. And why here?

Gita Mehta's book Karma Kola, a staple of the backpacker reading list, speaks of the Westernization of the East. In McLeodGanj, there is ample evidence on posters strewn about town: yoga courses, meditation retreats, ayurvedic medicine, massage, spiritual guidance.

Mehta writes,

Since East and West increasingly meet under such unlikely circumstances, it might be wise to remember two myths – one Eastern, one Western – which provide a caution to the human race. The Indian myth maintains we are living in the age of Kalyug, which presages the end of the world. Kalyug is characterized by speed. Speed, being the enemy of reflection, will spread fantasy with such velocity that humans, in their pursuit of escape, will ultimately destroy themselves. The Western myth, as expressed in Goethe's Faust, introduces the devil as a poodle, welcomed as something harmless and amusing until it turns into the implacable force that exacts damnation as the price of greed.

Who can deny that this is indeed the age of speed if the psychedelic escapisms, the mindless pursuit of chemical and religious narcosis, the greed for supernatural powers, which entered our experience with all the playfulness of a poodle only three decades ago, have turned into a Faustian nightmare in which fundamentalist priests become bounty hunters, drug barons hold whole nations to ransom, and saffron-robed holy men now deal in arms? …


Mehta's book is a collage of stories of the Western foreigner meeting the East. The tales are testaments to the complexity, chaos and deception possible in the search for spiritual peace and enlightenment. Characters from her book wander the streets of India each day, in McLeodGanj and elsewhere.

A fellow I encountered in Delhi told me, "There are two main types of traveler in India: the spiritual tourist and the budget tourist". I'm not sure if this was an indictment of the folly of the West, but there certainly seemed to be evidence of the truth of his statement. As Mehta’s book evidences, the search for spiritual truth conjures up everyone from yoga practitioners to spiritual gurus. The budget possibilities are rampant in remote hotels that change American travelers cheques and a dearth of guides to traveling on the cheap for sale in crowded markets. Foreigners in shorts and t-shirts worn for two months straight haggle over chai while shoppers buy dozens of pillow covers and beaded jewel boxes at obscenely low prices to sell back home (to pay for the next plane ticket, perhaps). But, does every foreigner fall into these broad categories? Is curiosity about the ebb and flow of religion and faith in day-to-day life, a different flavor from what we are likely to encounter in the West, necessarily deserving of mockery? I doubt it. And yet, with all the caricatures and stereotypes embodied on the streets and in the collective imagination, I struggle: where does the foreigner actually fit?

In a café in Darjeeling, I meet two men travelling together to Sikkim. One is expounding upon the joys of Varanasi. "In Varanasi," he tells me, "people line the Ganges to cremate their dead. There are funeral ghats, and people bathe in the waters to cleanse themselves. People go to die in Varanasi to achieve moksha, spiritual release". The cluster of backpackers around our table is in thrall. He pronounces, "This is the Real Indian Experience".

The next day, I meet an affable and chatty foreigner who declares, "I would love to just set up my easel and paint in a family's backyard. I'm so tired of this backpacking and wandering”. In the back of a pickup truck, jostling along with six Nepali tea pickers, she recounts the last three months of wandering throughout Northern India. "But you know," she tells me, sotto voce, "I really am getting tired of all the Indians. This is a beautiful country, stunning. But the Indians are beginning to piss me off".

In town, I plead fatigue and escape to my hotel room. I wonder, in a bit of a panic: Is this me? Is this how I am seen here? Is this the "backpacker does India" mentality?

On my train back to Delhi, I find myself in a compartment with three other foreigners. I groan internally, thinking of the café and Emma. As we settle in, one fellow pulls out three Indian newsmagazines and tosses them on our communal table. On trains, I have discovered, reading material is shared among whomever is within reaching distance. These magazines were his contribution to the public pot. One woman pulls out a packet of biscuits, offers them about, and curls up to read a Hindi book about Tibetan culture in Leh. The fellow strikes up a discussion about Bihari politics with a gregarious Rajsthani fellow sitting in the neighboring berth. The other woman and I play games with a bored girl who has wandered into our compartment. We lapse from silence to conversation to sleep. Each has been in India for quite awhile. Each carries a large rucksack. The women are wearing Salwaar Kameez, and a distaste for the scantily-clad female foreigner. There are no conversations about "those Indians" or the "real Indian experience". There are no outlandish stories that make us “qualified” backpackers or “experienced” budget travelers.

So where is the space to be foreign in India? I am conscious of the clash between my values and those around me – frustrated at the Eve-teasing and stares of men in Delhi. Cautious about what I am seen doing in public and where (I dared not drink in public in the South). It is a constant process of negotiation, and a challenging one. There is a richness I found only after looking beyond generalizations and expectations.

How is the foreigner to not fall prey to the Western commodification of Eastern culture? I wish at times that there were an easier answer. Each time I step aboard a plane, I must be conscious – what is the baggage that I bring with me? I can really only handle the commodification question from a personal level. While I have theories about the “search for a soul” or a search for history that we engage with in the West, it would be general speculation. My remedy was letting go of my assumptions and admitting my curiosity, of seeking to eschew the folly and insult of travel-as-consumption towards something else, something more engaging.