[The Practical Nomad Newsletter] The Amazing Race; Secure Flight

[Edward Hasbrouck]

This column with links:
http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001570.html

The Amazing Race 13, Episode 7
Delhi (India)

Why do so many foreign visitors have such extreme reactions to India?

Some visitors stay in India for months at a time, and return again and 
again. At the same time, I suspect that more people experience major 
"culture shock" in India than anywhere else, and a significant minority 
are so freaked out by India that they cut their planned stay short.

And this has been going on for generations, including in my own family of 
"old India hands".

When my newlywed grandmother "went out" to India for the first time in 
1922, she landed in Bombay (now "Mumbai") by ship, and continued to Delhi 
by train:

=====

Delhi was the first large town (city) we had stopped at. We pulled in 
there at night -- dark, a huge station, lots of smoke and noise, a lot of 
it coming from men carrying trays, and in one hand a torch, shouting their 
wares. And, worst of all lying on the platform in various places -- bodies 
-- bodies wrapped in white sheets, faces covered. It looked like a picture 
out of Hell. I really thought they were corpses!

Dad [her husband, my grandfather, whose parents lived in India and who had 
grown up there himself] had to calm me and explain. It still looked awful, 
and all the torches and vendors yelling. But it seemed the sight was 
normal. Indians love to travel, have family gatherings, etc. Few villagers 
had watches, so when they went visiting they just went to the station and 
waited for a train that was going their way, even if they waited all 
night! 

[Some Memories of Marguerite Davis Velte Weir, 1986]

=====

Today, decades later, nobody would think of calling the megalopolis of 
Delhi, with its population of more than ten million people, a "town". And 
transportation and communications have improved in India, although 
literacy among the poor has not. But there are still people sleeping on 
the platforms at Indian railway stations. More recently, my most vivid 
memories of Delhi include a late-night trip to the airport to meet my 
mother's flight from the USA, with the auto-rickshaw threading its way 
between rows of "street sleepers" perilously close to the traffic on both 
sides.

Part of the problem, as my grandmother's little story suggests, is the 
lack of understanding that results from a lack of knowledge of the 
cultural context that explains "strange"-seeming actions.

That was clearly part of the disorientation for the cast of "The Amazing 
Race 13" this week: in one day entirely within Delhi, they went from 
Baha'i House to a celebration of the Hindu festival of Holi to a Jain 
animal sanctuary to a Sikh Gurdwara to a Muslim tomb, seemingly unaware 
that these each of these had its distinct religious significance, much 
less what that might be.

As a result, they react with anger to a group of neighbors celebrating the 
spring festival of Holi in the courtyard of their apartment complex by 
throwing colored water at each other, when what is expected is to join in 
the play. (There's no Christian holiday exactly comparable to Holi, 
although it bears comparison with certain aspects of a May Day festival, 
April Fools' Day or Halloween pranks, and the Jewish celebration of 
Purim.) The result is what you might expect for spoilsports at a water 
fight: the racers become everyone else's laughing target.

At the Gurdwara (Sikh temple), Tina and Ken serve water to the "patrons" 
(worshippers). Ken draws puzzled looks with his loud jokes at the entrance 
to a place of meditation, and admits at the ends of the episode that 
despite the clue they were given, he didn't realize that what they were 
serving was holy water.

There are other places in the world as culturally distant from the USA (or 
from that which calls itself "Western Civilization") as India, but few 
such places that are common destinations for Western tourists, even for 
independent backpackers and around-the-world travellers. Visitors to India 
do go to "Old Delhi", while visitors to, say, the Philippines or Indonesia 
tend to spend most of their time at beach resorts or smaller towns and 
villages, and little in the parts of Manila or Jakarta that are just as 
frenzied and disorienting as any Indian city.

A major reason that India is peculiarly overwhelming is, of course, that 
there is too much new and different, all at once, for a newcomer mentally 
to digest. At the finish line for this episode of the race, Phil Keoghan 
alludes to the marketing slogan of India's Ministry of Tourism, Incredible 
India . A more precise description of the impression it makes on the 
typical visitor would be, "Intense" India.

The intensity visitors experience in India is partly because of one of 
India's best features, its relative safety, which lets visitors immerse 
themselves in its most intense neighborhoods. White foreigners ("The 
Amazing Race" has always had a diverse cast, but all the non-white 
contestants have already been eliminated this season) rarely wander alone, 
without a guide or interpreter, through those parts of African cities as 
dense and "intense" as the parts of Delhi that the race was in this week.

The African exceptions -- Cairo and Casablanca -- are among those that 
come closest to India for the incidence of culture shock that rises to the 
level of panic or revulsion. The difference, at least in Cairo, is that 
there are quiet, peaceful enclaves like Zemalek, where I stayed earlier 
this year, where one can get away from the frenzied street life from time 
to time. In Delhi, as in other big Indian cities, almost every street is 
alive, and there is little rest for the stranger's mind from the extra 
effort of trying to interpret the unfamiliar.

In a familiar place, our minds figure out what is significant in our 
stream of sensory impressions, largely without conscious effort, and 
filter out most "ordinary" things without our even noticing them. In a 
place where we have no body of experience by which to judge what is 
"normal", it takes much more effort to figure out what we need to pay 
attention to. The more intense and complex the set of stimuli, the more 
work this is. Some people enjoy that "stranger in a strange land" impetus 
to constant hyper-awareness, the way they would a drug like caffeine. 
Others experience it unpleasantly, as though they were being forcibly 
deprived of sleep or of the opportunity for mental rest and mental 
digestion. It's this dichotomy, in the end, that I think best explains why 
India retains such a reputation as a place tourists either love or hate.

What do you think? Did you love india? Hate it? Neither? Where was your 
most extreme "culture shock" (other than when you returned home)? Please 
share your views in the comments in my blog:

http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001570.html#comments

==========

I've been getting too many questions to answer individually about the 
regulations issued last week for the so-called Secure Flight program to 
require ID and permission for air travel in the USA: What does it mean? 
How will it work (and will it work?)? When will it go into effect?

I've worked with the Identity Project on a set of "Answers to Frequently-
Asked Questions about Secure Flight", which may help:

http://papersplease.org/sf_faq.html

And if the question that you are left with, after learning about "Secure 
Flight", is "What can I do about it?", you might want to read the 
recommendations submitted to the Obama transition team by the Identity 
Project, identifying what the new Presidential administration, and the new 
Congress, could and should do to restore and protect the right to travel 
in the USA. I hope those recommendations give you ideas for letters to  
the editor of your local paper, to the President-Elect, and to incoming 
and incumbent members of the House and Senate:

http://papersplease.org/wp/2008/11/10/the-obama-administration-and-the-
right-to-travel/

=====

I'll be on the Coast Starlight, en route to the PhoCusWright "Travel 
Bloggers Summit" in Los Angeles, this Sunday during "The Amazing Race".

Californians just voted (finally) to authorize a major part of the funding 
for a high-speed passenger rail line on this route, the world's busiest 
air travel corridor.  But for now, it's an all day journey, and Amtrak 
hasn't (yet) copied JetBlue by offering onboard viewing of live TV. Don't 
expect my column on the race until I get home at the end of the week.

Bon voyage!




----------------
Edward Hasbrouck
<edward at hasbrouck.org>
<http://hasbrouck.org>
+1-415-824-0214

"The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World"
(4th edition 2007)
"The Practical Nomad Guide to the Online Travel Marketplace"
<http://www.practicalnomad.com>

Around-the-World and multi-stop international air tickets:
<http://hasbrouck.org/tickets/>