India: final call

Darren believes in egalitarianism. He has shorn hair, with three ratty dreadlocks spilling out the back. He is wearing brightly-coloured happy pants, of the kind that not even fisherman would be seen dead in. Occasionally, he takes a break from his fire twirling/ glass ball juggling antics to tell the girl on the beach with him that, despite her clearly impressive yoga pose, she "in't doin' it 'ard enuff" because she is facing up the beach.

Darren is looking to "find himself". Rachel has privately suggested he start down the back of the sofa.

Rajeev is a con-artist. He is not alone. India is full of them. He seeks to spread disinformation (otherwise known as lies) - such as "the tourist office is closed", or "yes, this product does that" - in order to separate people from their money. When he cannot do this easily, he follows them up the street, "leading" them to places they were already going, to claim 'finders commission' those very same people will have to pay. Polite requests for him to leave will be ignored, for Rajeev is only interested in what he wants.

Rajeev does not take no for an answer. Rajeev is all about Rajeev.

India is a country in Asia. It is big and will soon be the biggest in the world. It is in the middle of an "Economic Miracle". This seems to mean that rich people are getting richer, whilst not so rich people become middle class. It does not seem to have any effect on the not-rich-at-all. They still eat garbage, shit on the street and die of curable diseases.

On the subject of curable diseases, India is not very clean. I'm not entirely sure why. It lacks a lot of infrastructure, but people also seem not to give a crap about all the crap.

India is diverse. This means that it has lots of different languages, food and cultural groups. The food is very nice, and is (in all fairness) a big reason for coming. The cultural groups are very different, united by a common ability to show disregard for one another. Still, in a country of 1.15bn people you can't expect everyone to be Mother Theresa.

I hate to be negative. We are both traveling to, amongst other things, become more open-minded, tolerant and experience different things. However, sometimes you have to call a spade a spade. Tell it like it is.

I came to India expecting an experience, spiritual or otherwise. "You either hate India or love it," said Arty to us in Rio. She was right. Hate is a strong word though. Let's just say neither of us are big fans.

Every destination we visited pales in comparison with others around the world. The north? I'd rather do Bolivia, or Mexico. The south, although beautiful, is still not as wonderful as Thailand, or Queensland, or Guatemala.

And the whole time, hanging over us like a fug, was the spectre of being ripped off, or taken for a ride. It really is hard to relax and warm to people when you can't get them to understand that following you up the street, standing and staring and laughing, or taking photos of you without asking first just isn't endearing. Maybe that's a lot to do with me. For a person who values privacy and time alone, perhaps India was not the best choice.

However, the clincher for me, the reason why India won't be the highlight of my trip, is the incredible proportion of travelers there who turn out to be wankers. Not all of them, mind, just a surprisingly high proportion. Pretentious, anal people who, despite their profession of love and spirituality as the answer to everything, are generally snobbish, unfriendly and aloof.

So maybe that's the problem. In the 70s, The Beatles turned India into an icon of spirituality. A generational symbol, much like Ibiza is today. In doing so, they created a beacon of bullshit that attracts every lost soul with a chip on their shoulder from here to Baghdad.

So maybe I shouldn't blame India so much. Maybe 30 years of dealing with these joyless culture-vultures has tainted the place. Perhaps they expect every foreigner who crosses their shores to be the same, and have altered their behaviour to suit.

Sounds like a pretty vicious circle to me, and one neither of us is keen to experience again.