[0:00]Are Indian tourists badly behaved or has the world simply decided that we are. That is one uncomfortable question many of us have been asking recently. Every few months there is another viral video, another incident involving an Indian tourist. Another social media pylon and before you know it, one person's bad behavior becomes a debate about 1.4 billion people. And the internet starts asking its favorite question, what is wrong with Indian tourists? Take this group, for example, Indian tourists were recorded performing Garba, the folk dance of Gujarat, on an airport tarmac in Vietnam. Why? Honestly, your guess is as good as mine. But apparently some people see an airport tarmac and think that's the perfect dance floor. But this was also not a one-off. Before that, there were videos of Indians doing Garba at the Great Wall of China. Then a group dancing at Hanoi's famous Train Street. At this rate, Garba might as well become India's new extreme sport, depending on the airport, of course. Now, you see, Indians do not need a lot of encouragement to start celebrating, a wedding, a promotion, a cricket victory. Or defeat, an engagement, a cousin's engagement, a cousin's cousin's engagement. Just give us five people a Bluetooth speaker and enough place to stand, and we will find a reason to dance. That joyful spontaneity is part of what makes Indian culture so vibrant, but one man's celebration is another man's nuisance. And that has turned into a conversation about growing habit of treating public spaces abroad. As if they were an extension of a destination wedding. Now, before we start beating ourselves up, let's be fair, the world is full of bad tourists and bad tourists have no nationality. After all, at one point American tourists had the reputation of being the loud, culturally insensitive types. British tourists were known for the art of getting drunk in foreign countries. Australians once had such a bad reputation in Asia that, and I'm quoting here, these are not my words, ugly Australian became a real phrase. And Chinese tourists have faced years of criticism. So no, Indians did not invent bad tourist behavior. We're not even particularly original at it. But here's the problem. We are the newest arrivals and we are arriving in huge numbers. Millions of Indians are now traveling abroad every year. For many destinations, Indian tourists are one of the fastest growing visitor groups. And when a country's presence grows, so does the scrutiny. People notice you more, they remember you more and they judge you more, that is human nature. But is all of this criticism fair? Sure, a lot of it is absolutely rooted in stereotypes and sometimes plain old prejudice. Anyone who has traveled abroad knows this, some people assume Indians are loud, some people say they bargain too much, some people assume they are cheap. And once a stereotype takes hold, people start looking for evidence to confirm it. It's called confirmation bias. One bad tourist becomes proof of a national character flaw. A thousand polite tourists go completely unnoticed, that is how prejudice works. But, and this is important, not everything can be explained away as racism. Because some of the complaints are coming from Indians themselves, and many of them sound familiar. Talk to people in Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Kashmir and the Northeast. You will hear many of the same complaints, littering, queue jumping, public drunkenness, shouting, trespassing, treating places as Instagram sets rather than real communities. In other words, the problem is not that some Indians forget how to behave abroad. The problem is that some of us do not always behave well at home either. And that takes us to a much bigger question, what exactly is a good tourist? Is it someone who spends money? Not really. Is it someone who takes photos? Everyone does that. Is it someone who shows off their culture? Of course not. There's nothing wrong with celebrating your culture, of course. But as they say, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. So the issue is context. A national monument is not your dance floor. An airport tarmac is not your Garba venue, and the difference between welcome guest and an annoying tourist is often the ability to read the room. The reality is that travel requires humility, you are a guest in somebody else's home, somebody else's city, somebody else's country. Now, that does not mean you abandon your culture, it means that you respect theirs too. And that is the real story here. Don't feel ashamed of being Indian, just travel better. Wait your turn in line, follow the rules, respect local customs, keep the volume down and remember to not treat every moment as a real opportunity. Because when you travel abroad, you're not just representing yourself, fairly or unfairly, you are representing all of us. So the next time you board a flight, pack your passport, pack your phone, pack your power bank and some civic sense too. The planet is gasping for breath. Several species are fighting for survival.
[5:33]Through extreme heat waves, raging wildfires, severe droughts and the race to build a greener future. But are we listening? This World Environment Day, join us for a special edition of Planet Pulse. At 9 AM IST and 3:30 AM GMT only on first post.
