DesiTraveller

  At the oldest and newest and best bespoke 5 star hotels in India, the word is out - the era of the wealthy Indian tourist in India is truly here. Just about a week ago, I was staying at the best hotel in Kolkata, not one of the new pretenders or the old relics, but one with lineage as well as class, not to mention style. The breakfast buffet is amongst the most opulent I have seen, and they also have, in addition, a separate card for South Indian filter coffees and yet another card for freshly cooked Indian breakfasts from different parts of the country. And yes, Eggs Benedict, with double proper pork ham is what I found on the card too. The evening before, we were parked at their bar, exercising our elbows. And there also, the finger foods served were from the best of Indian options, with a huge range of Indian origin spirits and beverages. Unlike in the past, when I had stayed at this grand old hotel, however - there was one huge change. There were no foreigners in the bar and ...

  People in the trade are already talking about a surge of inbound tourism to India this winter of 2022/2023. The impending fuel shortage in Europe as well as rising inflation makes it not just cold but also unhealthy to hang around there. Likewise, there is the expected rush of ex-pat Indians from abroad, whether NRI, OCI or foreign born confused desis, running away from the recession that is staring them in the face. They too will arrive on Indian shores. Whether long-stay or short, foreigners or OCIs or NRIs, all of them will need some amount of tourism facilities. From fancy expensive hotels in Metro cities to home-stays in rural parts of the country. And for once, we appear to be ready as a country, for this influx. Today, for example, we have international gateway airports in India that provide direct bus services to the interior parts of India, Delhi to Punjab, Bengaluru to everywhere in Karnataka, Hyderabad to different parts of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh are some example...

  It is not unknown for differential pricing to be used as a means of ensuring that resident Citizens are not charged for subsidised benefits used by Foreigners. A huge example is public transport, which globally is subsidised for Citizens as a larger social benefit, but in India especially in context with road transport is often used as a revenue generator. To start with, I simply do not understand why Foreigners pay the same train fare as Indians, in India, on Indian Railways, and why they should not be charged double, or even more -- as is often the case in many parts of Europe when you look at train fares online. Most certainly the British, at the very least, should be made to pay a huge surcharge if they use our train, for all the money they took out of India. Especially if they continue to go on yapping about the misbegotten "glories" of the Raj. We were their slaves, as the movie RRR has shown so well, and it is now time for them to start paying back. All 47 trillion d...

  There has been a huge change for the better with tourist guides across India. I say this with confidence because decades of domestic travel which began with avoiding tourist guides in the early years to a total respect for the tourist guides I come across all over India is a personal anecdotal experience, backed by inputs from other travellers, and something which, in my humble opinion, has not been documented or written about. One example out of many - at a particular temple complex in Peninsular India, over 1000 years old, my taxi driver is an elderly man from another religion. I am usually interested in seeing parking lots, especially paid parking lots, to get an idea of the environs. Not much tells you more about a new place than the paid parking lots, if you can spot the gambling, the pushers and the fake "receipts", you have made a start. So after parking the taxi, our driver asked me how much I knew about this particular temple complex, and I told him that, yes, I ha...

Simple fact - in context with tourists from any country in the world - very few, if any, will admit to having been made a monkey of on an expensive trip to another country. This is a universal truth, and the reasons are not far to see - most do not know anything about the destination unless they have really researched the destination. In our context, whether inbound or outbound India, especially after paying out big fat visa fees. And if they have researched the destination well, then they will certainly have steered clear of all the relevant tourist traps, something many of us learnt early in life. For example, take coastal beach tourist towns anywhere in the world, and start from the restaurants which are right on the beach. Broadly, these can be defined as "greedy row", where everything is over-charged or watered-down or both. On the second street from the beach-front are usually the back-ends of the restaurants on the beach-facing row. Prices may be lower, but then also b...