Travelling solo and safe: An Indian woman's perspective

Even as I started this blog, I knew I’d have to approach this subject sooner than later. The question becomes why now? Because now more than ever at the wake of of what happened to Nirbhaya in Delhi this year, the narrative behind what it means to be a woman in India is a sore discussion point for the country. While everyone is quick to point the dangers surrounding a lone woman these days - few lend any hope or help to assuage the fears. If we were to believe the people and what media says about these times - we are doomed to live in a perpetual victimhood.

Scores of traveller-bloggers have tried to present a fresh perspective for women travelling solo in India; I have yet to meet a fellow Indian woman on the road. Maybe there are too few, too far apart to make each other’s acquaintance. Implying that the subject is still at its nascent stages of discussion. Having said that, I have indeed met countless foreigners (women) travelling alone.

Getting used to the idea

I was then living in Delhi. While I’d been a frequent traveller to the Himachal, that year had been particularly gruelling. After too much work and even more unrealistic deadlines (nothing new in advertising), travelling in between jobs seemed like the most reasonable way to get out for a month. Except, no one I knew had that kind of time.

The moment I informed my parents, all the alarm bells went off at once. While it was easier to stand my ground with my parents, it was far more difficult to ignore that voice of fear in my head, especially after everyone took it upon themselves to inform of the grave dangers that I might be inviting upon myself. I shut mine out with a big can of pepper spray.

Your biggest advantage: Language

Be it bargaining on the road to finding the most cost-effective ways to travel to exchanging stories to simply asking for direction, language is not just a means of communication but rather a connection that we all share.

Travelling puts your faith back in humanity

The concept of living in our own shadows has been drilled into our heads ever since childhood. It is just something we have all grown up with. But when you travel, you see the reality that nobody talks about. Contrary to facts, I met countless men who in no way treated me as an object. The morbid numbers that you’ve read and heard about, they know it too. And often go out of their way to prove it wrong with their hospitality. Help was often given without even asking and their open-heartedness moved me in unexpected ways.

Tip: Putting your faith on locals does not mean you do so blindly. Assess your surroundings and don’t put yourself in a position where you will be completely alone with a stranger.

When I was stranded in the Bishnoi village, close to Jodhpur, this man and his family opened their home to me till I figured out my conveyance back to Jodhpur.

Travelling alone never gets lonely

Unless you’re paying a mammoth amount of money to book your own private ride, chances are you will be swarmed by people everywhere you go. Be it on a bus or the train; public transport has its own set of pros and cons. And a young twenty something Indian woman travelling alone with a backpack taller-than-herself is bound to draw some curious questions. It is not unusual for old women to accost you in trains to tell you about all sorts of trouble you can get yourself into. This actually is a pro; because even before you reach the destination you have found out all about the places to stay clear of and some of the unique local experiences you can indulge in. The cons on the other hand range from grimy seats to dirty loos to having a smelly goat in the seat next to you on the bus.

Tips: Mind your timings! Avoid reaching your next pit-stop at midnight, especially a place that sleeps at eight. Do not land in a place at 4.30 in the morning when the town gathers momentum at eight. Do your research before you book the next bus or train ticket and avoid instances when you’ll be stranded all by yourself in the dead hours of the town.

And secondly, take advantage of the women’s special everything. From women’s only compartments to women’s only queues to segregated sections in the buses. Travelling in a compartment overflowing with sweaty men isn’t going to make a statement about your feminism. It’s gross and stupid.

Have a chat with the old shopkeeper or the woman sitting in your train compartment whose wisdom is a far greater asset than your smartphone (though some kind of a phone is definitely advised).

Enjoy as much as you can handle

When you are on the road on your own, the world feels invincible. It is easy to get carried away. It all boils down to one thing: use your common sense. It may sound trivial but it has enabled me to have some of the most exhilarating and personal experiences. Although you will get stared at inappropriately and random strangers will try to invade your personal space, there’s a larger number of men who will treat you with utmost respect.

Tip: The big bad wolf does not lurk in small laidback towns or forests or in the mountains. For a simple reason that small towns are well, small; that is, everybody knows everybody. But then again you don’t cross a road before looking, do you?

While most people were booking themselves into ‘tour packages’ to visit the dunes from Jaisalmer, I opted for an independent jeep. I couldn’t imagine soaking in the solitude of the dunes amidst twenty other people. While I’d already met the driver and I was accompanied by my hotel owner, going on my own meant I couldn’t spend the night out there, no matter how much I trusted them. I regret missing the experience but the alternatives were far too dicey.

Good or bad... What's your experience of traveling through India by yourself?

When Joan Didion said, ‘we tell ourselves stories in order to live’, I think she meant - the stories we delude ourselves with.

I used to think that if I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the morning, I’d hammer through the noon and end it with a Thud! Whack! Clanggg! before I hit the sack. But once I had a hammer, I realised I wasn’t hammering as much I said I would.

Other Names #3: Brojesh

The best way to describe Brojesh is to think of him as an old, inhospitable house at a part of town that had seen its peak more than half a century ago. It has no claim to architectural beauty yet remarkable in its thickness of walls and the fewness of windows, most of which has been grated over time. It was built to last. Without talents. Without arrogance. Read about Project Other Names here .

A road-tripper’s recipe to beach-hopping: Sri Lanka south coast

Nay-sayers said it couldn’t be done. Well-wishers said it probably shouldn’t be done. The fact that the mercury would rise to its zenith high in the peak summer didn’t stop us from travelling to the southern coast of Sri Lanka last month. After a rickety eight hour bus-ride that saw us descending into the plains from the hill country, we reached the bustling sea-board town of Weligama. If you are travelling along the same route, keeping a day in hand for the Yala National Park would seem like the most obvious choice. However, short of money and time – my fiancé and I headed straight for the holy trinity of sun, sea and sand. It would be safe to say that any road trip involves the road (duh!), a pair of trusty-ish wheels and at least one companion (who you will most likely fall out with at least once a day. But regardless the offense these silly skirmishes that start with ‘let’s stop for a cola’ have a knack to smooth itself out soon enough). Like life, which’s about the journey and n...

Other Names #10: Mrs. Ghosh

She sat on a wooden bench facing an empty communal pool, contemplating its green chlorinated waters, with her hand resting on the silver handle of her cane and thinking about death. The first time Mrs. Ghosh had visited Dolphin Square, she was no more than five herself. Her father, a district magistrate in the Calcutta high court and a skilled swimmer himself had unceremoniously doused her in the pool. It was the first of many days that would become her entire adolescent years. The pool was emptied and cleaned once every year in the winter. There had been numerous deaths at the bottom of the diving board but all of Calcutta’s best swimmers frolicked to the murky green pools to compete with children from nearby slums who inevitably turned out to be stronger and swifter in the district championships. Every second Sunday of the month, young people who couldn’t afford the membership fee of the government run swim club, competed against each other to earn their place by merit. It afforded t...

Other Names #12: Kaamkar Das

The rain pelted incessantly for six years and five months and twenty-two days over the city of Someplace. There were periods of drizzle when people stepped out but soon, they began to realise that the respite was only a forecast for more rain. At first life came to a standstill and then boredom set in. People stopped going out altogether so establishments had no reason to stay open. The public gardens were flooded and turned into veritable marshlands with crocodiles and snakes which put an end to walking. A thick layer of moss covered the asphalt under the waterlogged streets that made cars and motorbikes skid off their paths and often into death. People received their weekly supplies of grains from a government helicopter that came twice a week to drop sealed packets onto the terraces. Time stretched into infinite seconds over Someplace and its people came to be characterised by their glassy eyes, wet yellowish skin and a perennial dry crust around their mouths. Kaamkar Das was one of...

Other Names #4 and #5: Ahana and Asha

Other Names #4 Ahana belonged to an aristocratic family. But as a rule, Bengalis think more of influential friends, than birth. Ahana was lucky to be esteemed and even loved by people of consequence in society, whose example was followed by others of lesser means. It seem hardly necessary to remark that her family worries and anxiety had little or no foundation, or that her imagination increased them to an absurd degree. But if you had a wart on your nose or forehead, you imagine the whole world is looking at it, sniggering behind your back. Because you can’t see past the puss-filled elephant sitting on your face. Doubtless, Ahana was considered ‘eccentric’ in society, but she was nonetheless esteemed; the pity was that she was ceasing to believe in that esteem. Other Names #5 “I’m going through a phase. And I’m awfully glad it’ll all be over in a couple of days”, Asha whispered to herself. For a fleeting moment the weight slid off her shoulders and she felt a breath of fresh ...

Footnotes from college and my holiday in Istanbul that has nothing to do with the former

The following is best enjoyed with food or beverage that's a tad bit sour, bitter or whatever seasoning that leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Besides teaching me calculus and semi-conductors that have been of no future consequence, the four years at an engineering college furnished me with an elementary knowledge of scientific thinking. I was glad to learn that the minds of people (themselves a product of natural causes) was a function of the brain subject to the laws of cause and effect, like any other part of their body. And that these laws were the same as those that governed the movements of star and atom. I exulted at the thought that the universe was no more than a vast machine in which every event was determined by a preceding event so that nothing could be other than what it was. These conceptions not only appealed to my dramatic instinct; they filled me with a sense of liberation. It gave me such satisfaction to learn that the Earth was a speck of mud whir...

Other Names #14: Girija

Girija was a woman. It was a condition she suffered from birth. The ailment limited her to talk a certain way, dress a specific way and behave in a manner that did not draw negative attention to herself. The slightest aberrations tended to anger or at least annoy people with inevitable ease. It was especially tough for Girija because she did not see herself as a woman much. The condition for her was purely physical. It did not dominate her thoughts or passions every waking minute. If she had to put a gender to her inner world – she would’ve said that she felt like a mixture of all kinds of people and sexes we don’t even know about and she liked it that way. Eventually she came to the conclusion that it was more than the condition of being a woman that plagued her – she was also a feminist which came with a daunting side-effect in her twenties of self-awareness. It made her head pound and her stomach churn at harmless words like ‘pretty’ and ‘feisty’. But Girija rarely discussed t...

Three salad dressings with a side of honesty

Salads. The healthy-and-mighty of all meals. The snooty accompaniment to a glass of rosé. The veritable rainbow on your plate. In Fran Lebowitz’s words, a salad is not a meal – it is a style. Well, as long as ‘style’ includes a fair amount of mud under one’s fingernails – I couldn’t agree more with Fran. Sure, it’s fashionable to eat a salad – but there’s a certain panache to going down on all fours in wet mud, rummaging through fresh lettuce pods every morning and wondering what you’re going to dress them in. While it’s far from the fashion statement that salad has come to symbolise, growing your own food definitely is a style of its own. There are many categories of salad snobs – the ingredient minimalist, the chop-it-right evangelists and the brigade of dressing-goes-first, but the only consensus between the salad factions is that you don’t actually need packaged dressing. A homemade vinaigrette made from basic ingredients lives just as happily on your refrigerator door, not to ...

Other Names #15: Balwan

Settling into a chair for coffee with his friend, Balwan felt his heart race and tension creep into the tops of his shoulder, pulling the nerves at the base of his neck into tight knots. Anger vibrated in his solar plexus. But he was not upset. His friend sitting across from him was. Balwan soaked up other people’s moods like a sponge. If you’ve met Balwan, chances are you’ve already made him cry. He often described himself as someone with an exposed nerve, fine-tuned to every little flutter in his environment like an emotional weather vane. Sometimes these moods were pleasant but even those moved him to such overwhelming awe that he was often reduced to tears. A glimpse of a bird’s nest or a half-furled leaf filled Balwan with inarticulate joy. An unexpected compliment could send his mood soaring and fill him with unbridled enthusiasm. Balwan noticed details that most people missed – a heightened sense of smell and touch and sight. It was like he felt the world around him with f...

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