was a fantastic time with fantastic people... we had been thinking it would be slumdog millionaire, but everyone was polite, educated, and the food at the restaurants and hotels we stayed at was the best I've ever had.
Of course it did, Bangalore and Goa are the only places suitable for foreigners since they're both either technologically advanced or tourist traps. You can't expect the same somewhere else.
We quickly realised that my partner would require an escort everywhere, which the conference staff dutifully arranged. It's too long ago now to recollect how this need was recognised, I have a faint memory it was due to a rickshaw driver harassing her and a companion after only dropping her to the corner instead of the hotel proper.
Surprising since Bangalore is very progressive but generally the way you avoid attention is a bad attire. It's very very easy to identify the rich and the affluent with their attire so they generally end up getting unwanted attention if they're out and about. Ofc being foreigners doesn't help but dressing less than modestly helps a bit to avoid attention. Also always carry something, pepper spray or whatever.
In one hotel, the health faucet (a hand bidet) was jam-packed with mosquito corpses.
Unless you're staying five star, this is bound to be an issue unfortunately.
No one ate with cutlery, it was hands everywhere. People did not wash their hands either, as they did not trust the water, preferring to trust their own knowledge of where their hands had been. Neither of us got sick.
This is downstream from religion. The general rule of thumb is the right hand is used for eating and writing and the left is used to wash the ass/genitals, so the left hand should never be used for anything else like shaking hands or greeting or preparing food cause it's seen as disrespectful or unsanitary. For left handers it's the opposite. People not washing hands is weird cause everyone does from what I know of.
In our accomodation in Hampi, there was a proper toilet, but no health faucet nor toilet paper in the toilets, just a bucket with water and a ladle — this is typical in rural south east asia - you need to carry paper with you if you don't want to use your hand.
Ladle is weird, every bucket generally has a mug. You must've stayed in some really remote place.
Rickshaw drivers would never get us to where we needed to go on-time, even despite insisting they take the route on our GPS. I later discovered that they cannot afford spectacles, and have too much pride paired with desperation to admit that they cannot read the phone, so they rely only on the ways that they know and asking for directions. To get anywhere on time, we required Ubers which use GPS and are rich enough for eye-care.
They're a class of nigger parasite who either fleece you or drive like shit. Can't really change them especially in Bangalore where they have an ego and act entitled to high fares.
From this experience, I always wondered why everyone who had visited India as tourists said it was great, but everyone who had motorbiked through it said it was an absolute shithole and their biggest regret, and that they would never do it again — c90 adventures comes to mind. Watching that quoted documentary above, it makes me finally understand.
I had been planning a motorbike tour of India for 2026, specifically of Kerala and Sri Lanka. However, after that documentary, and after observing an Indian acquaintance's regression into an undesirable association*, I've recognised that life is too short to bother with such a trip — there are so many places to tour that have fantastic scenery and food, but also have a respectful and humanising culture.
You can, it's not that bad. Just pick your place right, if it's a hillstation or more civilized part of the countryside then fine. If it's a remote village or a similar establishment, get fucked basically.
* For the Indian acquaintance's regression, he always had a disposition to misogyny which was able to be curtailed with guidance, however in recent years, from what seems to me like a post-covid nationalisation and propagandisement of their internet and social media to extreme patriotism, he has radicalised to the point of evil and ignorance to things already discussed in this thread; rampant misogyny, deflecting blame to others, dehumanising all muslims, blind loyalty to Israel, that hindus are at war with muslims, that anything and everything is justified in times of war, only losers always play fair... and so on.
That's one end, you haven't met the other end, the globohomo US DEI Soros worshipping people. Not quite anti west but vehemently pro west cause the west represents progressive shit to them. Both political extremes and the rich/affluent are pretty shit so it's best to pick your poison. Also while dehumanising muslims is bad, this is not their land and the expansion of the Arabian Caliphate into the Indian subcontinent is pretty gross just like in Britainistan/Britainabad.
Hinduism on the other hand, is just a "you do you, no matter how depraved, as long as you identify as Hindu, and leave me/us alone".
Not really, people have their own definitions of Hinduism which is based on ritual practices and not fundamental principles. Civilizational fundamental principles are derived from religion but in Hinduism case theyre mostly anecdotal and the impetus is on the individual to refine their morals/principles, which leads to rampant degeneracy cause most of humanity lacks the self awareness to self regulate. Imagine if Christianity was only ritual practices and not behavioural prescriptions and you have a decent idea.
Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil posited the master-slave mindset dichotomy, where a master/ubermench is someone who has achieved salvation (claim of their destiny, self-authorship of their future, equality with God) by the memetic evolution of "How can I know what is good or evil, when I cannot even prove that it is I that thinks my own thoughts. Regardless, I am a natural man, in a natural world, and I must act. So which action? There are actions that I can control that produce observable universal progress, and actions that I can control that produce observable universal regression. Therefore, I will act supremely, and in doing so, realise thyself." without such, one assumes a slave character, a more primitive mindset, in which they have rejected personally uncovering the supreme, and by doing so, relegates to a fate of being subservient to extrinsic forces, rather than intrinsic ones.
Christianity also practices slave morality, there's no real point here. There's no religion in the world which advocates for master morality, the closest you get is Buddhism which is itself an offshoot of Hinduism based on the principles of karma and will excluding the more ritualistic nonsense.
Jung in Aion posited that mother/god/nature/idol worship is primitive compared to father/God/civilisation/supremacy worship. Jung requires a quick glossary: god = a personification of a natural force, natural force = nature/evolution/civilisation pressure, God = the personification of all natural forces culminated into competitively-supreme hierarchy which by definition is unknowable in its entirety but can be progressively uncovered, sin = stepping away from God, idol = worshipping something that is not God (remember progressively discoverable but ultimately unknowable), child = dependent capable non-agent, man = independent capable agent, human = unlike animals humans are capable of salvation, salvation = same def as earlier when discussing Nietzsche. Jung viewed masculine monotheism as a civilising force towards God, requiring agentive disciplined action towards supremacy/God to go from human and child to man, in contrast the various feminine theisms (e.g the polytheism of Hinduism, Animism, Paganism, etc, but also the Virgin Mary worship of lower Europe and the Phillipines) are worshipping a temperamental deity that must be appeased in relative ways to nurture them as children, always remaining in a state of degraded agency and moral relativism.
This is true, Hinduism or at least one section of it advocates against agency as everything depends on prostration towards God and rituals for the same. Lack of focus on good action and more focus on devotion/dogmatism to the religion as a substitute for good morals.
Ultimately, it seems Hinduism is a belief system / coping mechanism adopted to take pride in/inside one's existing self, without necessitating any change besides identification. Buddhism likewise seems designed as a belief system / coping mechanism rolled out to pacify those in repressed/oppressed economic/agentive situations to not want nor expect extrinsic betterment (this also applies to Mary worship in Philippines in which material progress is reset every year by natural disasters). Karma likewise seems adopted/propagated as an inverse-santa-claus sold to bitter people to placate their vindictiveness so they don't throw stones or revolt, believing instead a wishful power will do it, allowing abuses to continue and multiply, because the victims became pacified instead of revolutionary.
It's not any less cope than Christianity especially Catholicism. It's not about pride, it's about achieving enlightenment or escaping the birth cycle and the suffering of life. Those who are more proud without sufficient reason generally are seen as heretical or having a capacity for evil.