All Eyes on Us: Traveling India in COVID-times
Our time in India has come to an end. For a country we didn’t expect to be able to visit during the pandemic, we really covered some ground: Varanasi, Agra (and Fatehpur Sikri), Jaipur, Pushkar, Jodhpur, Udaipur, Mumbai, Aurangabad (Ellora and Ajanta Caves), Goa, Hampi, Kerala (Kochi and Alapphuza), and Madurai. All in exactly 30 days (as ordained by the visa gods)! What a trip!
The times are unprecedented, and we—foreign tourists in India—are a much-anticipated throwback to the before times. Traveling during the beginning/middle/end (will we ever know?) of a pandemic is certainly not my first choice. In addition to the obvious risk of actually getting or spreading COVID (fwiw we are triple vaxxed and wearing KN-95 masks), everything is a trickier when it comes to flights, longer-term planning, and visas. Tons of businesses have have shut down or been renamed since the last Lonely Planet update, some activities no longer exist, and literally ALL the attention is on us wherever we go.
But there are also some upsides! We get to do high-season things without high-season crowds, we don’t need to book anything more than a day in advance, and we can always count on an open table—or entirely empty—restaurant or guesthouse. Even the Taj Mahal had hardly any tourists!
Of course, the slowdown in international travel is absolutely devastating to all the people so heavily reliant on tourists for their livelihoods. Three people—a rickshaw driver, a travel agent, and a restauranteur—have held up the rupees we paid them with huge grins on their faces saying “Two years!! This is my first money from a foreigner in two years!” I hope our presence brings them luck. Men on the streets regularly shout “Hello! Welcome back!” Hello and thank you on behalf of all foreigners I guess?
It’s somewhat awkward being this much the center of attention. We saw at least one foreigner in each of our stops (except Madurai), but in places that would be normally completely full of foreign tourists, a tiny handful (literally like 1-5) is not doing much. In normal times I assume the focus on us would be diluted by the volume of foreign tourists, but when we’re the only non-Indians around it is obviously impossible to blend in. People ask for photos with us all the time. Mostly I say no because it feels weird to take a photo with a stranger. But sometimes I say yes (only to children and women). At the Hawa Mahal (Wind Palace) in Jaipur I agreed to a photo with a small group of women, which quickly became a major photoshoot with everyone in the vicinity. From this I learned the danger of doing selfies at major tourist destinations; if you say yes to one you have to say yes to them all! It is truly hilarious that pictures of Chris and me grace many an Indian’s vacation photo album.
There’s clearly a lot of misinformation about tourism (and don’t even get me started about COVID); we’ve learned through conversations and peoples’ questions to us (but how did you get here???) that many think the country is closed and there are no international flights. We just say say Tourist visa! We flew from Nepal! India opened to commercial flights and tourism visas on November 15th; a couple weeks ago I’d have said we’re in the tourism vanguard, but now with Omicron taking over the US and probably soon to hit it big everywhere else, we may just be a blip on the radar between shutdowns.
On our way to the airport in Madurai, after successfully navigating the Indian public hospital COVID testing system (it involved three locations, about eight different windows, and a Final Boss hidden on the third floor of the Madurai Medical College who needed to stamp and sign our negative tests), our tuk tuk driver stopped not once but twice to call out to his friends, pointing to us in the backseat, “AIRPORT!” One parting moment to remind us that in India we’re a serious commodity.
Our next stop is Sri Lanka, which has never shut down to tourism, so I expect it will be very different vibes across the board. Until next time India!