Women traveling in India

While I’m already of problems that women face while traveling India. Few incidents in past havr really shaken up the confidence of many tourist. This link provide you a different perspective where many traveler answer this question with their own experience. https://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-for-a-woman-to-travel-in-India-alone You are welcome to share your views and I know most of them would be negative but if you go through the link and read few reviews you might get a better idea. Due to all this negativity, many poor people who depends on tourists for their livelihood get affected the most. Media doesn’t care about them because they aren’t part of their agenda.

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^ When the locals are even warning you, that’s generally a bad sign. She sounds a bit naive. I’m sure it’s possible to go to India without incident. And I’m sure many do it. That doesn’t make it a safe country.

Is it really ever solo travel with Sommer Shiels? She travels around as a glamour model with a camera crew.

She is filming a travel show. It’s not like she can say “wow this place is a shithole. I feel like everyone is a raper”.

Agree completely with the above comments.

And imho, the actual state lies somewhere in between what Sommer told and what the Indian media tells the world.

Completely agree! I didn’t start thread to argue with anyone. Obviously India isn’t safe place for women who travel alone. Although some of them had wonderful time which is mentioned in the link.

Here we go…

Is anyone getting AF flashbacks.

The fact of the matter is that most countries are pretty crappy compared to rich Western countries. The average Vietnamese, Africa, India, Middle East, or whatever person lives in squalor compared to people who get to live in a nice middle class suburb in the US or Western Europe. It’s just an objective statement to say that those countries are dirtier, have more poverty, and more crime then what the audience is used to. It’s not accurate to say that women travelling alone will be crime victims for sure. However, it is most likely true that they will experience crime at a much, much higher rate than they would at home.

My EX was an MD who for career reasons decided to a year internship in india.She said some of the diseases she saw there was basically rooted out in the west , thus it served as a very good apprenticeship for her.Not to mention she got to practice Yoga daily and made a big thing of the india thing for future schooling and research. However she never said that she felt “danger” maybe because she also didn’t feel “danger” while doing alot of other humanitarian looking things.

I wouldn’t send my second cousin’s uncle’s half-sister’s daughter to India by herself…

Women travelling alone are sex tourists. Those who choose to go alone to countries such as India, Brazil or China are looking for the exotic D and want the adrenalin rush of the “wow what is going to happen next in this dangerous country”. And there is also the status whoring of later bragging about going alone to dangerous country X, grrrrl power and all that.

Lol, very close relative. Sure, she shouldn’t because it’s not safe.

With a population 4x that of the US, if the chance of being raped in India were the same as the chance in the US, you would expect to see 4x as many sensational (newspaper worthy) rape stories coming out of India competed to the US.

In practice, it’s probably a bit higher than that, but not all that much higher. The “rape beta” of India is probably somewhere between 1.2 and 1.4, which probably reflects a greater prevalence of attitudes like e-coli’s above.

I found India to be relatively safe, but with incredibly pushy beggars and trinket salespeople. Of course I am a big male so not a prime rape target. As for other crimes, you’re more likely to be cheated than robbed, although it still makes sense to keep a close eye on your belongings and not just leave the lying around for passer-bys to walk off with.

Its unsafe to travel alone in many countries anyway because you don’t know the areas that are good and bad, and there are many aspects of traveling where having more than one person just makes a lot of sense. One guy looks after the stuff while the other goes and figures out whatever you’re confused about. Plus, you each notice different things about the environment, so you’re just more aware of what’s going on. It’s when someone is alone and lost and confused that they are most vulnerable, so it’s good to have a companion so you can be confused together.

Probably the safest third-world places I’ve felt as a westerner were in China and Vietnam. However, there was lots of trickery and attempts to cheat and misdirect people in China. Not exactly violent crime or even robbery, but it still left a bad taste in your mouth when people tried it (sometimes they succeeded, sometimes not).

@Bchad-

I think what is considered rape in India is very different to its definition in the U.S. I am not discounting India but fewer people report and the standards for what is considered rape is different.

There are a ton of things we can bring up about reporting and stats. A ton of stuff goes unreported in the US, too.

But the stuff that makes it into the newspapers and which have prompted many colourful discussions here on AF that we hope not to revisit in detail is what makes people fear that one step by an unaccompanied woman into India and she’s going to be pounced on by rapists.

Obviously, we are making evaluations based on a lot of incomplete data that we are not likely to be able to find. This post is just to give more context on what was going through my mind when I posted above.

i felt totally safe in India.

China was a strange one because you feel so safe that the trickery catches you more off guard.

Travels with crew…

…says traveling alone is great, everyone should do it.