India: The Destination

Tourism is a logical paradox: We make destination choices based on how we imagine places we have not even seen yet. We want to experience something and yet we do not, because what we really want is often to confirm our expectations and assumptions. We seek to find the same images from photographs, guidebooks and advertisements that left an imprint on our minds. India is certainly a case here.

Preparing to talk about this during a recent major travel fair in Poland, I decided to check if the popular image of India is reflected in the itineraries of various Polish travel agencies. In a cardamom nutshell: Yes. My method was simple: I took a sample of travel programs through various regions of India, looking at how they describe the country. A cursory look at tours by companies from other countries suggests this array of images is largely the same elsewhere. These images are what we are seeking to find in India.

This brief tour of tour programs revealed recurrent words and descriptions of the whole country or its regions, cities and other places. The most common were: variations of color and colorful; holy, sacred, temple; architecture, historical buildings; a mixture, mosaic, synthesis, meeting point of cultures and other terms, such as multicultural or cosmopolitan; palaces, forts and similar things; and culture, customs, traditions.

Most of these notions relate to both what is really attractive for many foreign tourists as well as general images of tourism in India. Yet, I also feel that certain elements have been underplayed. In what ways, therefore, can the narrative on India as a tourist destination be altered to make it both more attractive to tourists and more reflective on the country’s nature? 

In India, one of the most significant experiences is witnessing that which is beyond the program: What we see on the way and by the way. A regular tour takes place in a very routine fashion, as the group is bussed between hotels, historical buildings and restaurants. But it is what the tourists see by the way – even if often only through the windows – that turns out to be some of the deepest and most interesting experiences. A part of India’s society and culture can be observed on its streets. A fraction of the country’s village life can be observed even by taking the highways between the main cities (which would be hardly possible in places like Europe). 

It is a reverse situation to that of being enclosed in a hotel resort in the middle of nowhere (such as, say, in Egypt’s Marsa Alam). In such locations you have to pay to witness the life of society or its culture – and even then this experience may be as close to the “real thing” as fast foods are to homemade food. You will get culture packed and filtered, such as being taken to a desert spot with a fake bazaar and a music-and-dance performance which will have only tourists as its spectators. In such tourist traps, you have to pay to witness people’s life and culture. In India, it’s the other way round – you cannot avoid seeing them even if pay for it.

Apart from the above considerations, the weapons of India’s soft power include spirituality, yoga, movies, cuisine and art. And yet the last three appear less often in the image of the country as seen through tour itineraries. It would be hard to imagine Indian movies as a major part of a travel program, apart from special tours dedicated to exploring film locations and studios (though why not include a single visit to a cinema in a regular tour as well?) But the other two – cuisine and art – were seldom emphasized but perhaps should be.

While a foreign traveler is sure to taste Indian food when touring India, the programs I have read stressed this element less than expected. Words like taste, cuisine, spices, spicy or tea were not frequent enough to make the above list. And yet cuisine is an aspect a traveler nearly always wants to explore. Even the more expensive hotels are sure to serve a variety of Indian dishes, even if made a bit bland for foreign tongues. The programs should also emphasize that a tourist is sure to taste dishes from various regions of India, even if the tour will not cover a long itinerary. Moreover, “regular” restaurants usually serve better food than those located in the hotels that host foreign tourists, and are interesting for other reasons as well. They force us to leave the hotel’s comfort zone, and to come into contact with the people of the country. This is a card I would include in the travel agencies’ main deck.

My experience as a tour leader has been that it Indian art works as a cultural magnet. Tourists may primarily seek to witness the glory of the Taj Mahal, but they turn out to be very responsive if one adds, say, a dance performance to the schedule. In the cases I know, however, such additions were either marginal or added late. I feel that strengthening tour programs with more elements of that kind – such as music, dance or sculpture – would both make them more attractive and could be a way of promoting Indian art.

Last but not least, the image of India as a modern country hardly figures in the existing tour programs. The general image that dominates is of a traditional, religious, multicultural country, the heir of an ancient civilization. What we set out to taste is its heritage and its living culture, but not its current economic or technological achievements. I feel not much can be changed here, however. Tourists may often not be interested in, say, experiencing a ride on the Indian subway (though as a tour leader I have actually convinced quite a few that it is worth experiencing). After all, this is something they can do elsewhere – but what they can’t witness anywhere else is the Taj Mahal. The same point refers to modernity in general. Modern urban solutions are more or less similar everywhere. India’s development has also been much behind China, and hence while in a place like Shanghai the city’s new urban face is an attraction for Western tourists by itself, the same does not apply to Delhi or Mumbai. 

It is a Western orientalism of sorts: We want to see the “old,” “traditional” India, because we only consider the West as “modern” – unless it’s places like Shanghai, Tokyo, Singapore and so on, which the Western tourists find amazing because they have become as “modern” as the West (or even more so). Ultimately, this interpretation stems from each Western tourist’s own stereotypes and assumptions. And yet after their arrival, foreign tourists are often impressed with their first sighting of the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi or by the rows of swanky company offices when riding through Gurugram (Gurgaon, a satellite city of Delhi). While I am aware that stereotypes are not easily broken and that this may only work to a point, what I would add to the programs is the aspect of India’s modernity, not in the sense of adding new sites to the tour, but as an aspect that the tourists will witness along the way.