Some thing about Travelling

Hi There,

Today, I am fed up with my work. I am feeling little drowsy. I don’t know the reason but I am not willing to work today. Therefore I wrote the previous blog entry. After publishing it, my mind started counting the number of states I’ve visited in U.S. As I said it has been 2 yrs for me to stay in America, till now I’ve visited more than 10 states. My mind started to count the number of states I’ve visited in India. To my surprise the count came to 3. Man..! I have born in India, brought up there, stay there for 22 years. But I just visited 3 states in India. I started thinking the reason behind it. I ask myself Does our Indians don’t like to travel? May be the answer is yes.

When I was at the age of 12, our school arranged an excursion. They are planning a trip across Andhra Pradesh. I was always interested to travel from my childhood. I went to my mom and told her about my school excursion proposal. She simply denied it. She said, she is not gonna allow me to go any excursion. I tried to explain her many things but nothing really worked. My dad didn’t said no but he failed just like me to convince my mom. After then, I never dared to ask my mom about this kind of trips. This is the similar situation happened in most of my friends. We were unable to go to any trip. The reason my mom told me for her denial is little convincing to me at that time. She said “Son, you are a kid, you don’t know any thing and I don’t know about your teachers, I don’t know how well they take care of you guys. Hence I’ll never allow you children to this kind of trips.” Instead of this trip, she promised me that she will plan some tour in future with our family. But those plans remained as plans till today.

So, I think the first reason behind not traveling is our parents fear. May be most of the parents stop their children till 10th standard. But my mom stopped me even in my engineering days. She always scared to send me near oceans, rivers...But she failed to stop me to visit Karnataka. Situation demanded me to visit Bangalore to write GRE. Situation demanded me to visit Mysore to attend Air Force exam. Situation demanded me to visit Chennai to attend US Consulate. So what I understood with these incidents is our parents allow us only when there is some thing really needed to travel.

One more thing I noticed is, most of our Indian children will get handful of money only at the age of 23 if he gets any job right after his/her graduation. May be the average age is 20 at which every Indian child have handful of money. Till 23 or till you get any job u r dependent on your parents. Hence we can not plan any trip outside our state, because it costs lot of money.

One more problem we had is lack of good transportation. It takes almost 12 hours to reach Bangalore from Hyderabad unless you take some flight. But most of the Indian middle class people can’t afford flight charges; they don’t even dare to imagine a flight for some tour. They always plan some train journey which is cheaper and much comfort compared with all other ways of transportation. Train is a good option, but its very time consuming. Hence we can not expect weekend trips or long weekend trips. If we really planned to visit neighbor state, we need minimum of 5 days holiday. But I don’t think we can have 5 days holiday unless you are not working somewhere. Even if we get 5 days holiday, we don’t find a good company to plan a trip. If you plan a trip for a week let me tell you, it will cost minimum of 10,000/- just for one state trip. We Indians don’t like to spend this huge amount of money for a week day trip. Even if they can afford it, their next trip will be in next year. We just like to save the money. We people think these kinds of trips are just waste of money.

So our people don’t travel any where for site seeing, but they travel only to pilgrims. So it’s very hard to find an Indian who travelled all over India. Our people don’t like to travel once they grew older. Our people don’t like to travel once they got married and have few children. Our people don’t dare to travel till at the age of 15. We couldn’t make time to travel when we are as students. We couldn’t make time to travel when we are working in some company. So for an Indian, he won’t really get an opportunity sorry sorry...., we won’t really like to make opportunity to travel.

But I am able to travel or visit almost 10 states of America in 2 years because; I don’t have any one here who really can restrict me just like my mom. I can travel 600 miles in 6hrs (If we forget the speed limit), or 8 hrs (If we are within the speed limit) so I can make a trip within a weekend. I am staying with friends, everyone like to travel. We are not really worried about money because trip costs very little amount. I don’t need to plan 2 weeks prior to travel. I can hire a car very easily. Every thing is convenient here.

If we seriously desired to travel across whole America, I think it may take 2 months to cover all the 50 states. But if we desire in India, It may take more than 2 months to cover all the states (less than 50 states). I know why our Indian tourism is lacking behind the funds now, because of bad transportation and bad roads. How can a foreigner dare to come to India if we have this bad transportation? Very few foreigners come to India and our Indians don’t like to or don’t have time to travel; therefore our tourism is still behind the screen. I don’t think we can drive 120 KMPH speed continuously for an hour in our Indian roads. Though roads are fine, everyone scared about the pedestrians crossing the highways and animals come on to the highways.

If I go on speaking about our Indian roads, and our Indian traffic system that is going to be one more issue. Let me discuss it some other time. At the end I came up with the reason behind our not having travelling. But Still I have no Idea how to create interest in our Indians. May be it is difficult right...!! What do you guys think of it..??


(This content is just as per my knowledge. I spoke about common Indian man i.e. a typical middle class Indian. Because I believe more than 50% of Indian families are middle class. I may be wrong in any of the things I just spoke, or I may don’t have adequate knowledge in this area. I am not a real critic. So please excuse me if I am wrong, instead suggest me something good)

Request to My Mom:
I always speak about my mom if I write any entry like this. I don’t mean to criticize my mom or hurt my mom. I don’t want to show that my mom is wrong or something. She is typical Indian mom. I hope everyone’s mom is like my mom. I just took an example of my mom to make the things little clear. Mom I really love you. I may do the same thing if I am in your position. So don’t take it serious. You may be right in your situation. I can understand you well. I know you well. Love you so much mom. Excuse me if I hurt any of your feelings.

Cheers
Jilani