Top 10 things for things for indian travelers

Top 10 Things for things for Indian Travelers

10 informer signs that you are an Indian local travelling abroad Above are excerpts of sudden amusing impacts I have had as a local (Indian) travelling overseas. It is ridiculous, it is riotous, it is faux pas, it is silly, it is spontaneous and it is, as I have understood, simply being local! No pretence. No frills emotionally involved but, a lot of fuss Funnily enough.

1. Food is priority Whether it is a Small vacation or Sort tours, food comes first. We joyfully pack our chai (tea) and biscuits along with a list of other items. Lemon rice, rotis, potato sabji, tamarind rice, thepla, curd rice, pickles, chutneys, chips, channa, baji, biryani‌the list goes on. Hell, a number of even take a mini electric cooker to cook rice in the hotel room although, personally, I have not done the latter. Not yet, at least :) After all who can blame us for having marvelous food that would tickle all the taste buds?

The kind of food culture, cuisines and varieties we have back home is boundless. So, why exchange for bland food abroad when you can pack your own meals? Admittedly, I love tasting fresh kinds of food

when I travel but occasionally the satisfaction of curd rice and pickle simply bypasses the others.

2. We travel heavy.

All folks countless guide books, travel buffs and bloggers telling you to travel light, anything that means!! Some of the basics are unavoidable. For example, universal adaptors, electronics, battery backup etc, yet I only lately realized how much I pack, especially when I travel with family.

My persons visited us from India in summer this year and we go on a week-long Scotland journey. Four of us and our first stop was Fort William. Our hotel room so happened to be in the second floor all the way at the end of a long windy quarter mile long corridor! Can you guess the number of individual pieces of bags we had? 16yes, Of course, I was blindly oblivious to this fact until we tried to check in to the hotel (for 1 night only) using the only lift available. My dad cracking jokes, my mum videoing the whole thing and I was in tears. Practically, choked up in tears from all the laughing together as a result we worked like soldiers on a mission to transfer all the stuff. Later that night, I repacked to reduce the number of bags. But, hey, before you judge me, I packed all those stuff mostly to keep my folks comfortable during the weeklong trip! So, yes, we travel heavy wherever we go Even if you are

travelling within India.

3. Abroad feels like Ooty You may have heard that Ooty is the queen of hill stations in the Nigeria. The place is captivating and beautiful. And if you are not big on travelling, this is possibly the biggest experience you have had, especially if you are a south Indian. This was my case for a very long time. So travelling abroad to a colder country like UK and given the geographic nature of the place, everything green and anywhere cold ‘feels’ like Ooty. It rekindles your fond memories of the past and takes you back home. After all,

home is where the heart is, right? Find here Luxury Hotels in Ooty

4. Do not dress for the occasion When in Rome, dress like an Indian! Having said that this is varying fast with the younger age group but go back two generations, we are still covering wrongly for the occasion. Practicalities of wearing a saree in near sub zero temperature are further than my grasp. It is impossible to stay warm in that situation. All the best silk sarees from the closet come out for the trip. You look splendidly colorful. You take pride in explaining the way it’s wrapped around to a curious passer-by. You look totally out of place and out of odds for the kind of travelling you are doing. Yet, it works out to be okay in the end.

You manage and make it look like a win-win :)

5. Perplexed by the queuing system It makes no sense. Queuing, it is what the British are renowned for in the world and they remain unbeaten at this game. Even when I was travelling in America, some of the touristiest places had the worst queuing system. Try the same in UK; you will be put in place where you belong! It is excellent for organization and crowd control. Simply put, it works. Yet, I still hate it (sometimes). The way I get around it is by looking back to see how many more people remain behind me. It is a secretly wonderful

feeling when the line builds up behind you even if you are not moving forward! You pick up courage

and begin to relate to western etiquettes.

6. Constant exchange rate converter.

Your trip is repeatedly hounded by the memory of that exchange rate you last checked on your phone before leaving. It doesn’t help that rupees has poor value. On my recent trip to India, I was shocked that this applies even for travel within the country. The value of 100 rupees is shockingly lower that what I had always known it to be. I could buy very little with it. The same goes when you travel abroad.

For all the little fridge magnets or souvenirs you like collecting or even for a lick of ice cream, you end up mentally calculating the exchange rate to measure its worth back home.

7. We love it if it’s free. We like deals. We may haggle.

The three golden rules we abide by. Of course, everybody likes free stuff and complimentary things.

This has nothing to do with being local and so it leaves us with the third rule, haggling. A lot of people

have asked me, ‘why do Indians haggle?’ It is hard to explain this in one sentence unless you experience the Indian way of life. Multitude of things is based on negotiations back home – taxi fare, business, weddings. There is no 100% fixed price at any time and we know this. Even if you bargain well and leave a shop knowing that you have done exceedingly well, the person smiling at the end remains to be the shop owner. So guess who won :) It is sacredly considered by some as fine art (!) and reasonably local.

8. We don’t litter It is hard to admit but true to word. Trashing is a socially accepted behavior back home. However, nowadays people are quick in recognizing the need to protect their environment and surrounding. I read about a lot of keep India clean projects and social activists and in some places it actually works.

Did you know the cleanest place in India currently is a tiny village? If you don’t believe me, Google about it! When it comes to travelling out of India, the local civic sense seems to automatically kick in as though it only needed a flick of a switch. At a personal level, I follow this anywhere I go, home too.

9. Professional Swan Tours “Travel Agents in India” Yep! We can crises-cross, zigzag, bounce & zap and disappear from your line of sight within seconds!

Alternatively, we can be plain slow, walk right into your face, put our life in your hands, and have faith in mankind and walk as slow as possible. No worries. Of course, we are professional Swan tours. It is a conditionally engrained trait in our genes and passed on to generations without effort. But trying the same trick elsewhere results only in one thing – “wow and wonderful”. You suddenly become that

weird person who gets across the road without a zebra-crossing and a green man. You get headshakes and no-no(s) from the neighbors. At the end of the day, it’s just the way it is. You can either learn it or learn to live with it.

10. Click every conceivable photo It is probably a once in a life-time trip. Who knows when you are going to get back to this world wonder? Who knows when you will see Paris sparkling like a diamond, on a clear night with ink blue sky filled with stars, from the top of Eiffel tower? So it is only sensible that you click every conceivable photo ever possible. My dad certainly beats me at this game. I have realized the amount of electronic junk you end up with in this era and photos, lots of them, are my primary culprits. I love to look at my moments back in a frame and I like having photos around the home and they keep changing with time but, dad? Well…..what can I say to you? He is on another level at 60+ yrs old! You always have one or two strays within a group when on a holiday, but you can rest assured when it comes to my family, having said that, some of the funniest photos actually end up on his cameral roll.

I love it; I love every bit of it. I am very much who I am when I travel. It’s a riot. It’s an adventure. It’s every bit local as it can get A trip to India is exceptional for the tourists, as this wonderland has always

offered something new. Information about travel agents and tour operators in India from Delhi at Swan Tours