On being harrassed by touts and vagabonding travel

“This is the place where the bodies are burnt. Women cannot access because a few times some of them have jumped over their husbands’ pyres and died. If you see a white cloth, is a man. If you see a red sari, is a woman. I work here as a volunteer…”

A dramatic sight such as the Hindu traditional cremation on Varanasi’s ghats becomes particularly otherworldly after dark, when the flames jut out of the pyres full of wicked energy, drizzling, as if dispersing pieces of soul little by little, bit by bit into thin air.  This is a moment you want to enjoy slowly, privately, thinking of the secrets of life and death, reflecting on the differences between your own culture of the dead, and such a different one. You may want to cover your eyes as a log rolls slightly across the fire, revealing the nakedness of a burning limb… you may even have come a long way, just for this. Certainly not to be asked for cash.

The stuff of many travel legends is not something you are keen to share with everyone. Especially with that pestering local tout, aiming at you from a mile away, approaching fast. Ready to fire the same deadly tirade you do not want to hear. It happens everywhere, all over the world. In my case, the tout would not stop talking. Not even if you moved behind another foreigner, as if the vital was to talk for the sake of talking:   “This is the place where the bodies are burnt. Women cannot access because a few times some of them have jumped over their husbands’ pyres and died. If you see a white cloth, is a man. If you see a red sari, is a woman. I work here as a volunteer…”

Richard, a young New Yorker, has arrived in India after a trip to Europe. He is not green, having travelled the Northern half of the subcontinent for almost two months. He has another extended foray into Southeast Asia and Australia ahead and his face looks tired. “This country got me sick”, he confesses.

We do not know each other, but we cannot help exchanging a sympathetic gaze, a tactical strategy to join forces and leave the bugger on the side. We have not even walked all the way up the ghat’s first four steps that our “local friend” is already attacking a couple of elder tourists without even bothering to change the lines. His song is always the same:

“This is the place where the bodies are burnt. Women cannot access because a few times blah blah blah”

These days, and especially in South and Southeast Asia, touting has become a problem to cope daily with. It is legitimate to wonder whether or not travelling has to be off the beaten track to become free from such an annoyance.

My personal answer is: not really. Be it an offer for a guesthouse, a souvenir, one of those wooden frogs with a musical spine, a massage or a rickshaw ride, it appears that vagabonding may incur into a one-way only experience:  the traveller’s. Meeting someone who is genuinely interested in deepening the acquaintance is rarer and rarer, even further away from the main tourist sites. And most often, we misguide this pure contact for touting, and we are back to the start.

In this article, the author compiled a pop-song compilation of anti-sexual harassment feeling songs to keep in mind when a woman gets honed at during her travels. I think such an example may only foster the idea that something during the development of indie – and less indie – travel, has gone horribly wrong; because we, as travellers, are the first individuals to be responsible for the harassment.

Blame it on the hippy trailers or whoever you want, but as I’ve been taught “the lesser the demand, the lesser the offer”.  Turning back the history’s time wheel is definitely not an option, but trying to become more responsible in our on the road choices definitely is. Otherwise, the risk we face is to transform the World into a depressing supermarket museum, and the travel experience into another kind of empty shopping cart we try to fill up to feel great and adventurous. These things, I am sorry, we cannot buy with a credit card.

PS: An acknowledgement to Richard’s comments for having ignited the spark to write this week’s contribution.