State of tourism in India

Day 228 / 365

Is it just me, or anyone else sick of getting excited by seeing heavily edited pictures of tourist destinations online only to be disappointed hugely by it when you reach there. I may be highly disqualified to comment about traveling in India, but I do think I have some valid points about why it sucks.

Over-promising and under-delivering

As I mentioned earlier, people posting pictures online of tourist spots highly over exaggerate the beauty and appeal of the place. And who could blame them? No one would want to put up pics about the worst things about a place. The same goes for Airbnb and hotels. You would book a room just a “walk away” from the beach, only to reach there and find out that the walk is a few kilometers.

Commercialization of experiences

If there’s any activity that enough people would want to take a picture of doing, people would make a business out of it. Whether it’s taking a picture sitting on a horse with its front feet up in the air, you could do that for 100 bucks at Mahabaleshwar. At Jaipur, I saw people selling grain to feed pigeons near a fort so that you could take a picture with them flying around you. I don’t think that day is far when people won’t bother with even going anywhere, just a green screen and photoshop would suffice.

It’s crowded everywhere

This might be the most annoying thing for me. Staying in Mumbai I am used to seeing crowds and huge lines everywhere. So having to face crowds and long lines at vacations kind of defeats the whole purpose for me.

It’s a catch 22 situation. All the popular places that one might find out about online are crowded. If the less crowded ones, or “hidden gems” as some people call them, become more known they would get crowded as well. Filled with people standing in long lines to take that one selfie to post on Instagram.

This post is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here

Yesterday’s blog — Why are ocean sounds so calming