r/TravelUnhinged

About 25 years ago, I got onto a minibus to travel in the far north of Pakistan. A white guy was trying to talk to the other passengers, asking them how far Naraan was. But, of course, he was speaking in English and no one understood him.

So I called him over and started to chat to him and told him what I knew of the route. He sat with me, relieved to find someone that spoke his language and asked me another 100 questions, which I was quite happy to answer.

All the other passengers noted that we were speaking in English.

None of this is remarkable.

About 3 hours into the journey, my American travelling friend spotted some young kids by the side of the road and waved to them - then he leaned past me (I had the window seat), and let out a loud whistle - no doubt to amuse the kids.

Well, about 5 minute later, I nearly got lynched because whistling at women is extremely taboo here (although I am not sure there were any women - just kids - but northern tribesmen are very protective and conservative in general).

Half the guys in the bus got up and surrounded us, looking very angry. All their anger was directed at me. Even the bus stopped with all the ruckus.

They kept asking why I hadn't told the guest to our country that whistling was disrespectful and shamed everyone. I kept saying that I didn't know him - but of course, they said I was speaking his language and I was his guide and so I was responsible.

So none of this anger goes to the American guy - why? Because he is a guest to the country, and you cannot criticise a guest - you only show them hospitality - so then I started getting fingers jabbing me in the chest - people are really pissed at me - I am shouting now - I tell them that I was just trying to help this traveller out by advising him - I even remind them that I got on the bus after way after him.

The American guy is stunned - he is wondering what I have done. I start to explain - and he doesn't understand - but hears the word 'guide' and now he seems to think that I want money for the advice I gave him.

It was only after I started shouting at everyone that they calmed down - eventually, one guy did confirm that the American had been on the bus for hours before I got on, so they calmed down and left me alone. The bus restarted.

The American got all sullen and I stopped caring about explaining anything to him. At the next stop, I got off, about 100km before my destination, and waited for another bus.

'Sahaab, the man in the pharmacy is calling you.'

I heard the squeak behind me and turned.

'Sahaab, in the pharmacy, over there,' said the teenager, pointing enthusiastically at a small shop. I did not know what to make of this but walked slowly over towards the sign that announced that the proprietor was a Master of Greek Medicine and Homoeopathy. As I approached the concrete steps up to the door, it tingled open and a small, dark-skinned man stood at the top, giving me an avuncular smile. 

'Did you call for me?' I rasped. Although the air had thickened during the descent and I was only at about nine thousand feet, those three concrete steps up into the pharmacy had to be taken slowly. My skin was tingling, and I guessed it was because of the higher levels of oxygen. I had just had my first night of restful sleep after the dreams of suffocation. 

I felt a warm hand on my shoulder as I was practically lullabied into the shop.

The first thing I saw were the fantastical shelves and the exotic word, ‘apothecary’ leaped to mind. The old shelves, which might have been painted white by an ancestor, were cracked and some of the plywood curling. Balancing on top, looking infinitely fragile, and making me suddenly slow down so as not to knock anything over, were bottles and jars in dark purples, stained browns and rose reds. Nothing was labelled; all the bottles seemed to be full of powders or liquids that strained to let forth an explosion of smells and serendipitous healing. 

‘You have been sleeping at the Mubarak guesthouse?’ he asked me suddenly. 

I stared at the apothecary, at him nodding his thin eyebrows and shiny pate. I was confused. Had I forgotten to pay at the guesthouse? ‘I am not sure what it was called.’

‘Ahh… there is only one place to stay here. Did you come off the bus from Khunjerab last night?’

I nodded.

‘Good, Akbar will have taken you to Mubarak guesthouse. Did you sleep well?’

I was beginning to become mesmerised by his head, and wondered if it caught the light reflected off the bottles or whether it explained the way that some of them glinted back into the general gloom.

‘Why did you call me here? I need to take the bus to Pindi.’ I started to retreat, but did not hurry, desperately worried that I would knock something over. 

I remembered the stories that my mother told me about her family being from a long line of hakims, the masters of medical lore in her village near Faizabad in India. She first mentioned it after we had watched a news report on the television about the increase of heroin on the streets and in the penthouses in London. She was amused that such a fuss was being made by the British about a drug that had been stored in a large jar in her childhood kitchen for medicinal use. 

‘I need to catch that bus’, I repeated, almost making it out of the shop.

‘Are you itching?’

I stopped and turned back.

‘Are you not itching a little?’ he repeated.

In response, I clawed at my left hand, leaving white trail marks on my skin which had gone, over the year under the Pakistani sun, from a gentle beech to a dark, mahogany stain.

I looked at the chemist and he smiled. Pharmacist, chemist. Apothecary, charlatan. I felt a sudden tremor of movement in the small of my back and even as my hand moved there, I stopped forced it onto the pocket of my kurta. With my other hand, I clutched at my small canvas bag. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘You have body lice,’ he said sombrely.

I realised that my hands had moved to my thighs and that I was now scratching. 

‘Rubbish,’ I insisted and marched out of the shop. Back in the cool air that even at this altitude was pregnant with the promise of the smells of the plain, I relaxed and looked around for a place to have breakfast. In the distance, down the dirt track, ignoring the majestic snow-dusted peaks on my left, I heard the first bustles of the market place. But I was scratching and my brain told me that there were thousands of creepies crawling all over me, below my lip, behind my ear, in the crook of my knee. When I realised that my hand was slowly moving towards my crotch, I turned from the road and lumbered back, as fast as I could back into the pharmacy. 

I threw down a second razor and it skittered over the rough concrete floor, stopping in the soapy water that lay all around in small puddles. I called through the three inch gap above the small wooden door that would have come up to my shoulder had I been standing. A painfully thin arm was thrust through the gap and I took a third razor blade and continued hacking at the hair on my legs. I was soaking wet and sweating under it. 

There was no air and I felt the same suffocation that I had experienced when I was several thousand feet higher. No matter how hard I tapped the new razor on the brick walls, I could not dislodge the hair. Despite being shaped similarly to a Gillette disposable, it soon revealed itself to be a cheap local copy and became blunt. My legs were streaked with blood which had become diluted by soapy water and I was close to tears. 

‘Half an hour is nearly up, sahaab’, came a call from outside. 

‘I need more time,’ I screamed back, ‘a lot more time. I’ll pay.’

I had been persuaded that I did have lice. And that there was no way of getting rid of them without shaving my whole body and having my clothes boiled in a sulphurous, pink fluid that, I was assured, would kill off the lice and eggs. So here I sat, in a hamaam, a small washing room that was behind a barber’s shop which conveniently neighboured the pharmacy. I was in one of the tiny cubicles that seemed to be the size of a small cupboard, shaving, feeling miserable. 

My brain must have filed away the fact that the skin is the largest organ of the body and here and now it took on meaning. Another small patch of leg became clear of hair but I was having trouble breathing in the extreme humidity.

‘Give me a bucket of cold water’, I shouted through the door. A moment later, there was a tap and I unbolted it before squeezing myself into a corner so that my nakedness would not be seen. 

‘It is outside,’ came the call. The murmurs grew and soon I realised that the pharmacist and barber were firm friends. They chatted in Pushto and I could hear their respectful banter. 
After an hour, finding hair in places that I had not seen in years, when I had poked and prodded myself to make sure that no crevice was left unscraped, I  called for my clothes. When nobody replied, I looked out of the gap, into the glare of light, feeling cooler air dancing on my nose, I saw my clothes still in a metal bucket that sat on a rusting primus stove. It bubbled and a thin haze hung over the whole apparatus. The room smelled like a sweaty plastics factory and I felt more trapped than ever. 

Then three men walked into the room and started to laugh and as one of them pulled my clothes and my canvas bag out of the bucket. I sat back on the wooden stool and ladled some more cold water over myself. 

An hour later, my clothes, freshly ironed, were pushed through the gap, followed by my bag. I had been sweating for hours and now realised that my mouth was dry but I could not bear to ask for a drink, sitting among disgusting puddles and clumps of cut hair, discarded razor blades, small pools of blood, streaks of blood that had started to clot on my leg and turn dark in the gloom. And all the while the three voices, full of merriment came from outside.

The pharmacist and the barber; but I wondered who the third man was. 

I found somewhere vaguely clean to stand and managed to dress. When I finally opened the door onto the world, I saw him. At first, he looked relaxed, and then he looked at me looking at him and the conversation that he had been having with the barber and the pharmacist suddenly died. 

All three men came over, slapped me on the shoulder and asked if I felt better. My whole body was covered in sores, my clothes were pulling at the stubble on my body and I was in a hundred points of pain that amounted to agony. 

All three of them were ebullient until the third man noticed my forehead. ‘Your eyebrows,’ he squealed, pointing up at me. 

The barber and pharmacist looked aghast. But all I could do was to stare at this man. 

‘You really need to shave them off,’ exclaimed the barber. ‘Come, let me do it for you,’ he cooed. 

I shook my head. I was looking at the third man. I might have had lice. I might have had something else. Whatever it was, he would surely know.

It was Akbar. The same Akbar who had welcomed me so solicitously the night before into the guest house.

Asking Indians to skip foreign travel to "save" the rupee isn't economic policy. It's economic paternalism dressed up as patriotism.

The people flying to Bali and Bangkok are the same ones paying taxes here, earning in rupees, building businesses on Indian soil. They're not the problem.

And the irony is suffocating — this is the same government that runs Incredible India campaigns begging foreigners to spend here. Foreign exchange is a win when they bring it in. A crisis when we take it out.

Here's the real question: why are Indians choosing Phuket over Pondicherry? Because the infrastructure and experience aren't comparable yet. That's not the traveller's fault. That's unfinished homework.

If the rupee is struggling, fix monetary policy. Don't ask a 28-year-old saving for her first Europe trip to carry the weight of macroeconomic mismanagement on her backpack.

Build better experiences. Make India impossible to leave.

Until then — see you in Europe.

This part showcases Holy city of Amritsar from Magnificent India video series

I went to Alleppey for the first time a few months ago and I still think about it randomly during the day.

Not because something crazy happened there. It’s just one of those places that quietly gets stuck in your head.

I remember reaching there tired as hell after a long journey and the first thing I noticed was how slow everything felt. Boats moving lazily, tiny shops near the water, old uncles sitting outside their houses doing absolutely nothing. Nobody seemed to be in a rush and weirdly, that started affecting me too.

I spent most of my time doing the simplest things. Eating fish curry meals at small places near the road, getting lost in narrow lanes, sitting near the backwaters for hours without even touching my phone much. One guy running a tea stall spoke to me for twenty minutes like we already knew each other.

There was this one evening when it started raining lightly near the lake and the whole place somehow became even prettier. The water, the sound of boats, people casually carrying on with their day. I just stood there completely still for a bit.

As someone who’s still new to travelling, Alleppey felt very different from the usual “tourist place” experience I had imagined in my head. It didn’t try too hard to impress me.

It just felt real.

Had a brutal travel experience last week. Flight delay turned into cancellation, then rebooking chaos, then I missed a client meeting I’d been trying to land for months. Still annoyed about it because the lost opportunity was way more expensive than the flight itself.

Now I’m wondering if this is exactly why people occasionally book private travel.

​

Funny how all the “please reduce spending, avoid unnecessary foreign travel, conserve fuel, save the economy” messaging started showing up right after elections.

Before elections, everything was:

India booming.

Economy unstoppable.

Middle class thriving.

Global superpower.

Fastest growing nation on earth.

Then votes are counted and suddenly citizens are being told to tighten belts, travel less, spend less foreign exchange and prepare for “global uncertainty.”

It’s honestly exhausting how every crisis in this country gets repackaged as a moral responsibility for ordinary people. Oil prices go up? Citizens must sacrifice. Currency weakens? Citizens must sacrifice. Inflation rises? Citizens must be patriotic harder.

Meanwhile the same political class, industrialists and influencers preaching restraint will continue flying internationally, hosting destination weddings and posting luxury Europe itineraries without skipping a beat.

The timing is what gets me. If things were this fragile, why does the truth only appear after elections are safely over?

Suddenly every "offbeat" destination is on Instagram reels. Kasol became Goa. Rishikesh became a yoga theme park. Coorg is now wall-to-wall resorts and homestays charging Bangalore prices while the local Kodava culture quietly disappears.

Locals in Manali can't afford rent anymore. Every guesthouse is booked by influencers shooting the same waterfall content. "Hidden gems" stop being hidden the moment someone posts coordinates in a travel Facebook group.

The Char Dham roads are choked. Kedarnath gets a helipad rush. Ladakh gets 3 lakh tourists a year with zero waste infrastructure.

Go fewer places. Stay longer. Spend at local dhabas, not cloud kitchen chains that opened a "mountain outpost."

And stop calling yourself a conscious traveler because you carried a tote bag to Spiti.

That one time when I ended up in Shoja because I missed a bus.

No fancy cafés selling 300 rupee coffee. No people screaming over Bluetooth speakers. Just pine trees, fog, old Himachali homes, and silence so loud it almost makes you uncomfortable.

Stayed at this tiny homestay where the owner kept feeding me rajma chawal like I hadn’t eaten in weeks. It was raining outside, everyone was sitting near the kitchen heater, and nobody was trying to impress anybody.

Just existing.

I went for a walk the next morning with just stray dogs following me around like unpaid guides and clouds moving through the forest like smoke.

And somewhere during that trip, I realized how exhausted I’d become without noticing.

Not physically. Mentally.

Like every day in the city had turned into this constant pressure to become more. More successful. More productive. More interesting. Even rest started feeling guilty.

Shoja didn’t magically fix my life or help me “find myself.” I still came back to the same problems.

But it reminded me that softness still exists.

There are still places in the world where nobody cares what you do, how much money you make, or whether you’re “doing enough.”

And honestly, I think a small part of me never left that village.