Travelling the world with an Indian passport can be quite a bit of a challenge. If you know, you know! So when someone (a true traveller and not some privileged upper class Indian) boasts of having a valid US visa, UK visa, Schengen et al, I totally get it. However, I don't understand when someone of Indian origin with a first world passport shows off his/her travel history. Or, someone who travels the world for work/business. I mean have you even stepped out of the conference room in that particular city of that specific country that you are counting? Most of them whom I have come across, haven't!

There are a few typical characteristics of Indian / Indian origin travellers. The latest to have experienced was on our return flight from Kuala Lumpur to Delhi, when we were taking pictures of ourselves with the plane.

One elderly gentleman started talking by saying what will we do with so many pictures. He said he could bet that we would never be seeing this photographs again, so what was the need to increase the digital clutter. And that's how our conversation with him started, when we told him that we are content creators (professionally doctors) , so we capture a lot and we use them too. We have 5 hard disks full of content and none of them are waste, yada yada.

Then began the real drill. He started shooting us with questions like whether we have been to US or UK, Canada or Switzerland etc. We told him that we are more into offbeat travelling, rather than running after cliched destinations that Indians find irresistible. He then started boasting about how much he had travelled all his life. He was 62. We were almost half his age, so I said that it's a good sign that by the time we reach your age, we too would have a long list to look back. And then something came out of his mouth that explained all his behaviour.

Basically he was very contemptuous in his attitude that he has been such a well travelled man, and we were a foolish couple, who hasn't yet visited the rest of the world. Turns out, he was a businessman from Alberta, a Canadian citizen! So if you are 65+and a Canadian passport holder,who travels for business, you get no respect from me as a traveller, because you are not!

People with strong passports who globe trot on their organisation's money, don't deserve to be labelled as travellers. And look at his audacity, he was looking down on us! Only we hard working people know, (medicos like us) who slog continuously for 6 months to get a week long leave, and who save their hard earned money and break boulders to get a tourist visa. Why don't people talk about that? Why this complex?

Also, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything! At least don't be bitter! We have noticed that Indian origin people detest to be addressed as Indians, as if it's kind of a shameful thing. Anyways, your horizons broaden during travels and one shouldn't stop collecting experiences, good or bad. What say?

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