As a traveler you are, by your very nature, not a local. You dress different, you walk different, you act different, you speak different, and you look different. Here in the States, we are used to cultural differences so we are not quite as quick to notice them. In India, I found that people were incredibly aware of each other in different ways than I was used to, and were always judging and being judged based on their dress, their language, their class, the cut of their beard, and of course, their caste. Everyone there does it without thinking about it – it is part of their culture. It is mostly out of curiosity and rarely hostile, but it’s always present.
Of course it is not much different here. We all size each other up and put each other into boxes. We just do it differently. We operate on a slightly more subtle level – both in judging and being judged. In India, you can tell where someone is from and what caste they are in just based on the clothes on their backs. It’s a bit harder to do here because there is not really a regional dress or style and most people belong to the “middle class” anyways. Those who don’t often dress down or dress up to try to blend in to that “middle class.” Religions too are easier in India. In the States, unless you are wearing a cross around your neck or a kippah on your head, it’s pretty hard to tell what religion someone is.
Needless to say, as a tourist, you stick out like a sore thumb in India (and most of Asia). Not only are you usually a radically different skin color than everyone around you, you also are from an entirely different class and culture than most Indians. At first for me, it was great. It’s fun to be somewhere different and it’s fun to feel different. But you can only watch so many people stare at you, open-mouthed, as you walk by or ride past in a bus, before you begin to feel a bit like an animal in a zoo. And then, after the one hundredth time you are ripped off by a taxi driver or hotel manager, you start to wonder where all your money is going. And so you just have to learn to sit back, relax, and laugh about it - that’s part of what traveling is. Once you do that, you find that you feel a bit less like a tourist. Or, maybe you just start being a bit more of a local.
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