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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Not Indian , but if you do 5 star hotels and private transportations, India has lots to offer in terms of sightseeing (Taj Mahal, Jaipur etc and food. [/quote]

Nobody disagrees with this. There is a luxurious way to do India. But it doesn't sit well with a lot of people and they don't. want. to. go. back. if they don't have to (family). What don't you understand about that? [/quote]

Oh we understand.  Now you try and understand -  the luxurious way to do India is inexpensive compared to anywhere else in the world. However, people from rich (western) countries want to do shoestring budget travel in India, making use of infrastructure that is heavily subsidized by the Indian govt for the poorest of its people.  Then they complain.  Well, why did you go to India in the first place?   The domestic market of tourism is so huge that India is not hurting for foreign travelers.

Still don't understand it?  It is like some foreigner comes to DC, goes and eats at the homeless shelter soup kitchen and then complains that the restaurant scene in  US is pathetic.   That soup kitchen is not for tourists. [/quote]

Who is doing shoestring tours of India? Nobody on here has done that. You are projecting that that is why the bad experience. Every single person on here has mentioned that they have done it the luxurious way and they don't want to go back. No way in hell would I take a train in India. No way in hell. 
[img]https://i.ytimg.com/vi/__U-OmS9F00/hqdefault.jpg[/img][/quote]

[b]I took a train in India and no photoshopped white men fell off the roof. It was a fine enough experience. I’ve had more stressful train experiences in Germany tbh with packed out trains,[/b] no room to move, standing room only, and then some chump with a BIKE trying to get on the train. And I’m a PP who said India was fascinating and I’d go back. I think the main issue with India is it is so NOT like the US, but it’s not pretty and familiar like Europe or clean and glamorous the way many of the Eastern Asian countries are, and a lot of American really just can’t cope with it. Like they just do not know how to process everything going on there at all times. [/quote]

Agree with all of this. I'm the poster way back who lived in India as an expat for a few years. I never EVER saw trains like this and I was looking -- because from the media, I assumed they would all be like this and they're absolutely not. India was my first time out of North America, believe it or not, and I loved it. But I also prepared myself with lots of research before we moved there. Do I want to go back? ABSOLUTELY. There was so much I didn't get to see! I never got treated poorly -- sure people tried to scam me, but you learn their game pretty fast -- and I solo traveled around the country as a blonde white woman. [/quote]

That's so funny.  I'm another longtime expat (and like yourself, am a blonde white woman), and I've been on those packed German trains quite often because we also did three years in Dusseldorf.  The difference for me was that none of the Germans packed around me tried to grope me or stare at me, I knew nobody was going to have their hands in my bag, and everything was super clean, with nary a fly, roach, or rat in sight, and the air did not smell of garbage (which it does even in the expat areas in the Indian cities where I was).  In India, I was groped several times, was stared at wherever I went (and those men do not look away when you catch their gaze, nor are they ashamed to gawk at your chest area or body without looking away, even if you are covered).  I experienced the creepy stares and groping in several cities.  This treatment of women is super common in India: the term they use for this widespread sexual harassment of women in public is "eve teasing" (look it up).  Sure, you can stay within the limited confines of luxury hotels and luxury expat neighborhoods, but that doesn't change the fact that you are in a gilded cage surrounded by squalor and a culture in which women are second-class citizens, and sexual harassment is widespread.  Is it really a "magical place" if you have to stay in carefully curated, limited spaces in order to stay safe and comfortable?  I hated India.  And I have spent 16 years living in foreign countries, so not an inexperienced traveler.  South Asia is my least favorite place on the planet, and to put that in perspective, I have been to the Congo and Ghana.  India was the worst.

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Can you right hook the people groping you? I simply can't imagine this. Is this a cultural thing? [/quote]

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