Thursday 24 January 2008

Hallo Maadam photo please..


A single mother and her three children being approached by domestic tourists in Om beach

If the first day in Gokarna was about the irresponsible foreign travellers, the second day in Gokarna belonged to the Indian holidayers on Om Beach. The single mother and her three children were literally mobbed by the domestic tourists. The kids looked scared and were seen clinging closer on their mother's body. Seeing the vulnerable face of the youngest girl, I finally went and requested the boys to let them go. According to them all they did was "to ask to shake hands and take photographs with the family."

The aggressiveness in which they were looking at and approaching the family, I was reminded of the survey answers we have been collecting. Out of the 200 randomly selected samples in the first month, most of them (women) agreed on two 'things' they disliked the most in Gokarna.

Garbage and Indian men!

Guess it's not so difficult to understand why?!

Bangalore © GP 2008

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I witnessed a similar experience in the town of Gokarna. I was with some fellow Norwegians I met a couple of days before and one of them travelled with her little girl only about 2 years old. After travelling for a few weeks in India they got used to the attention travelling with a little child and most of the times they had good experiences and the girl got used to and interacted great with the local people. But this time without asking or giving any notice a domestic pilgrim traveller stuck his camera up in front of the little girl only one or two meters away from her. In few seconds a small crowd of Indian men with cameras surrounded the little girl who was screaming terrified. Not even telling them to give the little girl some space and that they scared her made them put away their cameras until they had their photo.

Unfortunately these stories and the one in your previous blog (“My space and yours- Irresponsible travellers”) are not the only examples...