Facebook is 'dead and buried' for young people: Study

LONDON: Facebook is "dead and buried" for young people in the UK, who are moving on to "cooler things", according to a major study of social media. 

Professor Daniel Miller is one of team of eight ethnographic researchers based at University College London who are working on a study across seven countries including India, China, Brazil and the UK to examine social media trends. 

Miller said the social networking site was "simply not cool any more". 

"What we've learned from working with 16 to 18-year-olds in the UK is that Facebook is not just on the slide, it is basically dead and buried," said Miller. 

Children and teenagers are increasingly communicating through newer contenders such as Twitter, Instagram, SnapChat and WhatsApp. 

The young people are apparently logging off to avoid the stigma of using the same site as the older generation - and to keep their indiscretions private from relatives, 'The Times' reported. 

"What appears to be the most seminal moment in a young person's decision to leave Facebook was surely that dreaded day your mum sends you a friend request," he wrote on the website theconversation.com. 

"Parents have worked out how to use the site and see it as a way for the family to remain connected. In response, the young are moving on to cooler things," he wrote. 

Miller said the switch was taking place despite the fact that none of the rising stars of social media apps can match Facebook for ease of use. 

"In my school research, the closest friends are connected to each other via Snapchat, WhatsApp is used to communicate with quite close friends and Twitter the wider friends. Instagram can include strangers and is used a little differently," said Miller. 

"Facebook, on the other hand, has become the link with older family, or even older siblings who have gone to university," he said. 

"I don't expect Facebook to necessarily disappear altogether. But I think it's finished for the young in the UK and I suspect other countries will follow," Miller said.

New Banking Product : iWish Recurring Deposit

Review of iWish Recurring Deposit from ICICI Bank : Jagoinvestor

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Review of iWish Recurring Deposit from ICICI Bank Posted: 25 Dec 2013 09:58 PM PST Around December last year, ICICI Bank launched a flexible Recurring Deposit scheme called “iWish”. Customers with an ICICI savings account and who have access to Internet banking can use the iWish facility. Here’s how Login to the iWish section in your ICICI saving bank account Define a goal (like buying a laptop, vacation, down-payment on a house, etc.) Define the amount and tenure Make the starting contribution and the iWish goal starts After this point, you are free to deposit additional money in your iWish account anytime you have surplus funds. Also, you can clearly see how much of goal is completed in % terms at any stage of the process. Interest rates on the iWish scheme range between 7.75% and 8.5%. Rates depend on the tenure of your goal – which can be between 6 months and 10 yrs. Source Page Where iWish really innovates, is by bringing a social networking aspect into the picture. Users have the ability to share their goals (and the money required to achieve them) on their Facebook account and friends and family can then contribute money to the goal if they wish. By getting users to make a public declaration of their goal, the scheme hopes to prompt greater accountability in individual financial decisions. To learn more about ICICI iWish Scheme, please watch the video below. How its different from normal Recurring Deposit ? Compared to a standard Recurring Deposit, the iWish scheme does not make it compulsory for users to make payments on a fixed date and also gives them the power to categorize savings into goals – which is a more human way to visualize and save your money. Personally, I see iWish as a mechanism to define goals and save for them through Recurring Deposits. While standard Recurring Deposits just help save money for an unlabeled goal, iWish helps you define and prioritize your goals – helping you decide which goal to save for first. It also helps build a focused saving approach as once someone defines a goal, they are more likely to be serious about achieving it. The scheme is clearly going to benefit the young generation, who are new to investing. For a generation who rely a lot on visual stimuli, the ability to see defined goals and a visual image of progress towards that goal (e.g. 34% of your ‘new car’ goal has been achieved) is a huge plus. Fine Prints and things to know While, on the whole, the iWish Scheme is good, there are few things one should be aware of to avoid a mismatch with expectations. One can create maximum of 10 goals (wishes) and the maximum goal amount can be Rs 10 lacs The minimum installment amount per month has to be Rs 500 If you want to withdraw the money on maturity or even before maturity, you need to open a request online for that. There is no compulsion of making payments each month, so you can skip the installments if you want Disadvantage of iWish from ICICI By now, you must be wondering what the downsides of the iWish scheme are? Simply put, it is the problem of “manual intervention”. I am convinced that it takes a great degree of resolve and discipline to properly manage one’s personal finance and investments. Unless the saving process is automated, people are tempted to be a little relaxed about saving in every period. While iWish touts its ‘flexibility’ as an innovative feature, in real life it might not help, as people are more likely to stop ‘voluntarily’ paying into their goals after 2-3 contributions. With a traditional recurring deposit, the process of investing is compulsory and forced on you and in essence, you are compelled to make payments on a fixed date. Furthermore, the knowledge that there is an auto-debit leads you to ensure the monies are there in the account on the designated date. All this means that over 1-2 years, the Recurring Deposit really works and creates the money pool you need. While iWish is a fancy product, I do not see it as an improvement over the traditional Recurring Deposit. Only in selected conditions and situations, iWish seems to work better than normal Recurring Deposit. An example would be when the investor’s income is not stable (one does not know if the bank account will really have the required balance on a certain date). For all other cases, I would prefer using traditional Recurring Deposits. Choose a goal, fix the amount, divide it by number of months and just start the RD for that amount. That should get the job done without needing my involvement every month.

Fairytale of Beijing

( From Letters to the Editor, the

Economist)

SIR – Perhaps China will worry its neighbours further and make a claim that the North Pole is actually an extension of northern China, as found on an ancient map made during the Qing dynasty (“Regional turbulence”, November 30th). An air exclusion zone will be implemented and even Santa Claus will need to file a flight plan or be challenged by Chinese stealth fighters.

Its added leverage is that most of Santa’s toys are made in China, as many elves were laid off for cost-cutting reasons elsewhere. Santa will eventually become a citizen of the North Pole Special Autonomous Region and enjoy Chinese consular protection.

Neil Alexander
Vancouver  

MySnaps : Ancient Daitya Sudan Temple, Lonar

Daitya Sudan Temple has beautiful carvings similar to what is seen at Khajuraho temples. The deity of this temple is made of an ore with high metal content and looks like stone. Area out-side the sanctum is dark and the ceiling reveals beautiful carvings under a torch light. It is a Vishnu temple dated to the Chalukya Dynasty which ruled Central and Southern India between the 6th and 12th centuries. It belongs to the Hemadpanthi class and is built in the form of an irregular star. The exterior walls are covered with carved figures. The temple has beautiful carvings similar to what is seen at Khajuraho temples. The deity of this temple is made of an ore with high metal content and looks like stone. Area out-side the sanctum is dark and the ceiling reveals beautiful carvings under a torch light.The plinth of the temple is about 1.5 m in height and was probably destroyed by the invaders. Some of my pictures from the site :

Four Stages of Life !

Sai Bhakt Dog

IBM reveals its top five innovation predictions for the next five years

IBM

IBM director of education transformation Chalapathy Neti.

December 16, 2013 10:30 PM

Dean Takahashi

IBM revealed its predictions for five big innovations that will change our lives within five years.

IBM

The IBM “5 in 5″ is the eighth year in a row that IBM has made predictions about technology, and this year’s prognostications are sure to get people talking. We discussed them with Bernie Meyerson, the vice president of innovation at IBM, and he told us that the goal of the predictions is to better marshal the company’s resources in order to make them come true.

“We try to get a sense of where the world is going because that focuses where we put our efforts,” Meyerson said. “The harder part is nailing down what you want to focus on. Unless you stick your neck out and say this is where the world is going, it’s hard to you can turn around and say you will get there first. These are seminal shifts. We want to be there, enabling them.”

In a nutshell, IBM says:

• The classroom will learn you.
• Buying local will beat online.
• Doctors will use your DNA to keep you well.
• A digital guardian will protect you online.
• The city will help you live in it.

Meyerson said that this year’s ideas are based on the fact that everything will learn. Machines will learn about us, reason, and engage in a much more natural and personalized way. IBM can already figure out your personality by deciphering 200 of your tweets, and its capability to read your wishes will only get better. The innovations are being enabled by cloud computing, big data analytics (the company recently formed its own customer-focused big data analytics lab), and adaptive learning technologies. IBM believes the technologies will be developed with the appropriate safeguards for privacy and security, but each of these predictions raises additional privacy and security issues.

As computers get smarter and more compact, they will be built into more devices that help us do things when we need them done. IBM believes that these breakthroughs in computing will amplify our human abilities. The company came up with the predictions by querying its 220,000 technical people in a bottoms-up fashion and tapping the leadership of its vast research labs in a top-down effort.

Here’s some more detailed description and analysis on the predictions.

IBM

In five years, the classroom will learn you to help tailor instruction to your individual needs.

The classroom will learn you

Globally, two out of three adults haven’t gotten the equivalent of a high school education. But IBM believes the classrooms of the future will give educators the tools to learn about every student, providing them with a tailored curriculum from kindergarten to high school.

“Your teacher spends time getting to know you every year,” Meyerson said. “What if they already knew everything about how you learn?”

In the next five years, IBM believes teachers will use “longitudinal data” such as test scores, attendance, and student behavior on electronic learning platforms — and not just the results of aptitude tests. Sophisticated analytics delivered over the cloud will help teachers make decisions about which students are at risk, their roadblocks, and the way to help them. IBM is working on a research project with the Gwinnett County Public Schools in Georgia, the 14th largest school district in the U.S. with 170,000 students. The goal is to increase the district’s graduation rate. And after a $10 billion investment in analytics, IBM believes it can harness big data to help students out.

“You’ll be able to pick up problems like dyslexia instantly,” Meyerson said. “If a child has extraordinary abilities, they can be recognized. With 30 kids in a class, a teacher cannot do it themselves. This doesn’t replace them. It allows them to be far more effective. Right now, the experience in a big box store doesn’t resemble this, but it will get there.”

IBM

In five years, buying local will beat online as you get online data at your fingertips in the store.

Buying local will beat online

Online sales topped $1 trillion worldwide last year, and many physical retailers have gone out of business as they fail to compete on price with the likes of Amazon. But innovations for physical stores will make buying local turn out better. Retailers will use the immediacy of the store and proximity to customers to create experiences that online-only retail can’t replicate. The innovations will bring the power of the Web right to where the shopper can touch it. Retailers could rely on artificial intelligence akin to IBM’s Watson, which played Jeopardy better than many human competitors. The Web can make sales associates smarter, and augmented reality can deliver more information to the store shelves. With these technologies, stores will be able to anticipate what a shopper most wants and needs.

And they won’t have to wait two days for shipping.

“The store will ask if you would like to see a certain camera and have a salesperson meet you in a certain aisle where it is located,” Meyerson said. “The ability to do this painlessly, without the normal hassle of trying to find help, is very powerful.”

This technology will get so good that online retailers are likely to set up retail showrooms to help their own sales.

“It has been physical against online,” Meyerson said. “But in this case, it is combining them. What that enables you to do is that mom-and-pop stores can offer the same services as the big online retailers. The tech they have to serve you is as good as anything in online shopping. It is an interesting evolution but it is coming.”

IBM

In five years, doctors will routinely use your DNA to keep you well.

Doctors will use your DNA to keep you well

Global cancer rates are expected to jump by 75 percent by 2030. IBM wants computers to help doctors understand how a tumor affects a patient down to their DNA. They could then figure out what medications will best work against the cancer, and fulfill it with a personalized cancer treatment plan. The hope is that genomic insights will reduce the time it takes to find a treatment down from weeks to minutes.

“The ability to correlate a person’s DNA against the results of treatment with a certain protocol could be a huge breakthrough,” Meyerson said. It’ll be able to scan your DNA and find out if any magic bullet treatments exist that will address your particular ailment.

IBM recently made a breakthrough with a nanomedicine that it can engineer to latch on to fungal cells in the body and attack them by piercing their cell membranes. The fungi won’t be able to adapt to these kinds of physical attacks easily. That sort of advance, where the attack is tailored against particular kinds of cells, will be more common in the future.

IBM

In five years, a digital guardian will protect you online.

A digital guardian will protect you online

We have multiple passwords, identifications, and devices than ever before. But security across them is highly fragmented. In 2012, 12 million people were victims of identity fraud in the U.S. In five years, IBM envisions a digital guardian that will become trained to focus on the people and items it’s entrusted with. This smart guardian will sort through contextual, situational, and historical data to verify a person’s identity on different devices. The guardian can learn about a user and make an inference about behavior that is out of the norm and may be the result of someone stealing that person’s identity. With 360 degrees of data about someone, it will be much harder to steal an identity.

“In this case, you don’t look for the signature of an attack,” Meyerson said. “It looks at your behavior with a device and spots something anomalous. It screams when there is something out of the norm.”

IBM

In five years, the city will help you live in it.

The city will help you live in it

IBM says that, by 2030, the towns and cities of the developing world will make up 80 percent of urban humanity and by 2050, seven out of every 10 people will be a city dweller. To deal with that growth, the only way cities can manage is to have automation, where smarter cities can understand in real-time how billions of events occur as computers learn to understand what people need, what they like, what they do, and how they move from place to place.

IBM predicts that cities will digest information freely provided by citizens to place resources where they are needed. Mobile devices and social engagement will help citizens strike up a conversation with their city leaders. Such a concept is already in motion in Brazil, where IBM researchers are working with a crowdsourcing tool that people can use to report accessibility problems, via their mobile phones, to help those with disabilities better navigate urban streets.

Of course, as in the upcoming video game Watch Dogs from Ubisoft, a bad guy could hack into the city and use its monitoring systems in nefarious ways. But Meyerson said, “I’d rather have the city linked. Then I can protect it. You have an agent that looks over the city. If some wise guy wants to make the sewage pumps run backwards, the system will shut that down.”

The advantage of the ultra-connected city is that feedback is instantaneous and the city government can be much more responsive.

India poised to become global solar power: World Bank

The Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission Phase-1 (JNNSM) is well-poised to make India a global leader in the development of solar power as its green growth agenda increased the installed capacity of solar power from around 30 MW to more than 2,000 MW, a new World Bank report said on Thursday.

What is significant is that JNNSM has been instrumental in bringing down the cost of solar power to a level that is competitive across the world, says the report. It has reduced the costs of solar energy to $0.15 per kWh, making India amongst the lowest cost destinations for grid-connected solar Photovoltaic (PV) in the world.

The report, ‘Paving the Way for a Transformational Future: Lessons from JNNSM Phase1’ says solar power can reduce India’s dependence on imports of diesel and coal for power generation, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and contribute to energy security. Growth in this sector will help India increase its share of clean energy and help meet its target of reducing emissions per unit of its GDP by 20-25 per cent by 2020 over 2005 levels. 

“In a short span of three years, India has made impressive strides in developing its abundant solar power potential. With more than 300 million people without access to energy and industry citing energy shortage as key growth barrier in India, solar power has the potential to help the country address the shortage of power for economic growth,” Onno Ruhl, World Bank Country Director in India said at the release of the report. 

However, while India is clearly emerging as a global leader in the area of solar power, to achieve its target of adding 20,000 MW of solar capacity by 2022, “it needs to address the key barriers and constraints that could come in the way of scaling up the solar program”, he added.

“Building on the success of Phase 1, the programme now needs to focus on promoting financing of solar projects by commercial banks, developing shared infrastructure facilities such as solar parks and identifying comparative advantage of Indian manufacturing across the supply chain,” Ashish Khanna, lead energy specialist and one of the authors of the report said.

The report has recommended publicly developed infrastructure such as solar parks to help increase efficiency and lower costs. A solar park in Charanka (Patan district) in Gujarat is now the largest solar park in Asia. Such shared infrastructure facilities helps in developing critical infrastructure, including facilities for power transmission, roads and water, thereby ensuring the rapid development of solar projects as well as local employment generation, the report added. In addition, India’s plans to develop ultra-mega solar projects will help showcase the potential for large scale grid connected solar projects to the entire world, it says.

Is India a good travel destination?

Kyle Pennell, an American back-packer, talks about  10 weeks in the NW parts...

I'll give my perspective on traveling in India as an American backpacker.  I traveled solo in Northwest India for 10 weeks in late 2013.  

I spent most of my time in Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Mumbai. India is enormous and I barely skimmed the surface.  Also, I'll admit that I spent a lot of time in traveler heavy spots vs. getting off the beaten track. 

Loving Leh

I'll talk about the rewarding and challenging parts of traveling in India from my perspective.  

I've also traveled/lived in Latin America (16 months total) and traveled around New Zealand (4 months).  I realize those are entirely different places but I can't help but draw comparisons between traveling there vs. traveling in India.
  
TLDR: 
India is an incredibly diverse, interesting, and affordable place to backpack around.  Most Indians are very welcoming and helpful.  It's quite cheap to be there and you'll practically never run out of things to do/see.  
However, India can be extremely challenging for many travelers. Most travelers will have to deal with many hassles, annoyances, sicknesses, and cultural differences.  India is definitely not for everyone(and perhaps not for most).

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The rewarding parts of traveling in India

India is alive

Here's the way I will try to describe India if someone asked me.  Imagine your senses are a bunch of analog volume knobs.  Volume is used to describe sound but let's imagine you have volume knobs for your other senses as well.

India turns the volume up on all of them.  I feel that could help someone understand what it feels like to be there.  The smells, the density of people, the stares, the rickshaws, the saris/turbans/burqas, the flavors, the honking, the bells, the animals, the crazy driving, the temples, the smiles, the monkeys...everything is on full blast.  Imagine full blast in your head phones, then transfer that to your other senses.

I just got back from my trip and I was in Seattle on a cold December day.  I'm left wondering 'Where is everybody?!  Who turned the volume down?  Where did the animals go?  The vendors?  The honking?  The garbage?  The shouting and smiling?'  I'm not going to hate on Seattle (too easy) but it just feels so white, organized, lonely, and quiet compared to India.  

Morning visitors

I have this urge to walk around with a boombox held above my head blasting salsa music just to wake everyone up and to feel alive again.

India's sensory volume can be very overwhelming (in a negative way) but it's often exhilarating and fascinating.

Extreme Diversity
India is roughly 30% the size of the US but has 1.2 billion people who speak nearly 1600 languages in that land area.  Around 30 of those are spoken by at least a million people.  A majority are Hindu by religion but there is also a large number of Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, and a couple others. 

India has 20000+ ft mountains ranges next to Jungles, coastlines, and desserts.  As you travel through it, the terrain changes fast.  Many regions of India have their own distinct cuisine as well.  

Coming from Washington State, I felt home in many parts of Kashmir

It's very hard to say the phrase "Indian Culture".  The singular "culture" doesn't do India justice.  I feel you could maybe get away with "Mexican culture" or "French culture" and generalize ok.  In India, much less so.  We should say "cultures".  There are entire swaths of people who don't speak a common language.  Hindi is probably the only language most non-Indians know about and they're often surprised when I tell them that only 41% of Indians speak it as their native language.  In addition to the language differences, there are people are living so drastically different from one another that it's hard to say they have the same culture.

Golden Temple

As a traveler, you can sometimes feel like you're entering a new country when you take a 12-15 hour bus ride between places.  This opens up new places to see, new words to learn, new foods to try, new terrain, flora/fauna, etc.

When I'd talk to other travelers there, it'd blow my mind how many things there were left to see.  X caves here, Y temple or fort there, this swimming hole, this beach, that festival, and so on.  You're never done in India.

Cheap
Traveling in India is very affordable.  Granted, in 2013 when I traveled, the rupee was quite low at approximately 60 to the dollar.  But even when it was at 45 ish to the dollar, India was cheap.  India is simply very affordable for most UK/US/EUR/AUS/CAN travelers.

Here are some costs of things (in USD) in late 2013:
Delicious Potato Paratha on the street (my breakfast in Mcleod Ganj) = 30 cents
Chai (tea) on the street = 10 - 15 cents
Decent Room with my own bathroom in touristy Udaipur = $4
16 hour train ride = $7
Meal in a clean healthy restaurant = $2 - $4
Bollywood Film in fancy theatre = $2 - $3
Starting fare on a rickshaw ride in Mumbai = 25 cents
30 minute cab ride in traffic in Mumbai = $2 - $2.50
2L of Water = 50 cents

Mountain Bike ride down world's highest pass. $16.

Haircut and Shave. $1.20

Food, Water, Lodging, and Transportation are the bulk of your costs when traveling.  You can travel quite easily in India on $500 per month.  You could push this down to $300 if you ate more street food, avoided touristy spots, and shared rooms with others.

What the fun?

People usually think of SE Asia when they think of cheap travel.  Thailand and Vietnam would be considered expensive compared to India.  From what I've heard from other travelers and looking on Hostel Booking sites, a dorm bed in many parts of Thailand goes for around $9-$12.  In India, you'll get your own room for 30%-50% of that.  

I haven't heard of any other popular backpacking destination that's as cheap as India.  Tell me if there is one.

Food
I loved it and found most travelers felt the same.  There's so many delicious things to try.  There are a plethora of plates, breads, beverages, and snacks that we don't get in Indian food in the US.  I would try dishes at random on the menu in many restaurants and like them almost every time.

Perhaps the best Dosa I'll ever have

The majority of my very limited Hindi describes food.  I don't like much spice and I rarely found the food to be too hot.  I ate meat only a handful of times in those 10 weeks.

Learning how to make some of it

There is too much sugar, fat, and starch in some dishes.  I almost always had to remember to tell restaurants to put less or no sugar in my tea.  The sweets in India (imo) are gut bombs of sugar and fat.  Indians eat a lot of carbs/sugar and not a lot of protein.  Also, the portions can be quite small.  

Those are minor gripes though.  Most of the food is delicious, nutritious, cheap and vegetarian by default.

Helpfulness of average people
Many Indians believe that "guest is god".  It constantly surprised me just how helpful average Indians would be to travelers in their country.  If I got stuck somewhere or was confused doing something, average people would really take their time to really help me.  I thought no one could beat Latin hospitality but Indians just might have.  

Man with kind beautiful smile who helped me with Mumbai trains

I told my dad about times where average working class people would take me on impromptu tours for 30 minutes - 2 hours and he was like "Really? And they didn't want anything?"  If they aren't in the tourism business, they don't.  They truly just want to be helpful.  Experiencing this made me ashamed for how little I've done for tourists in the US.  I've taken a couple couchsurfers around and made some people's days, but I've never just seen a backpacker on the street in Seattle or San Francisco and been like "Hey stranger, I'm going to take you around for the next 2 hours to make sure you have an excellent time here."

Rickshaw driver who saved me my ass when I rolled in Chandigarh sick as a dog and almost every hotel was full.

I knew of other travelers who got invited to stay with people in their villages or homes.  The people who were extending this hospitality were mostly of limited means.  It's nice to be welcomed and taken care of.  Especially when you're traveling by yourself and overwhelmed by India.

Very cool travelers
India attracts a certain type of traveler and I liked most of them.  They tend to usually be a little older and more experienced in life than many of the travelers I meet in Mexico(though I like them too).  They are often open to a certain type of adventure, personal growth, and occasional difficulty.  Some are there specifically for yoga or meditation.  Many are the types of people you'd meet at Burning Man or hippie-esque music festivals. 

Astrophysics students who like to dance in hotel rooms

 They are educated and interesting with strong spiritual and liberal roots.  You do find a some of the holier than thou hippies as well, but most were very down to earth.  Though I also like the early 20s travelers, it was nice to be a slightly older crowd.  I heard travelers in their 30s say they felt a little more comfortable in India vs. SE Asia (because of age). 

So many fun nights and conversations with these ladies

You don't get the drug/prostitution travelers that you sometimes get in Colombia or the child prostitution travelers you hear of in Thailand/Costa Rica.  Outside of Goa or Mumbia, India isn't much of a party destination so you don't get the party travelers either (though I ain't hatin').

I met many interesting cool travelers in India.  We had great conversations in restaurants and on rooftops.  I wish I could have known them longer.

Friends made on night out in Mumbai

Little physical violence
Compared to Mexico and Colombia, you're very safe from physical violence in India.  The people who rob you in India do it smiling and shaking your hand.  In many parts of Latin America, you have to legitimately worry about getting mugged or beaten up.  In India, many tourists walk around with their expensive DSLRs dangling from their necks.  I never thought twice about having my debit card or iPhone on me.  In many parts of Latin America, you'd be really asking for it by doing that.  I'm sure muggings happen but I didn't hear of it happening to any travelers I met.

I also worried less about pickpockets and bags getting ripped off in India.  I never heard of a tourist/traveler getting their bag simply ripped off while they were sitting in a rickshaw (for example).  If they had rickshaws in (more of) Latin America, you'd hear of a lot of bags being ripped off in traffic.  They'd nab your stuff and bolt the other way.  It was nice not having to sweat this so much in India.  I hardly ever looked over my shoulder.

English Speaking
You can get by quite easily with just English.  Enough people speak it fluently or ok enough to get your necessities taken care of.  This makes it harder to learn a local language but more convenient to get around.

Very easy to get off the beaten track
Outside of a few popular areas, it's very easy to find places in India with few tourists.  I've never felt burdened by being around other tourists in Mexico or Colombia but I've heard travelers in Thailand sometimes feel overwhelmed.  In India, it's very easy to find that 'authentic' locals-only experience that some travelers really covet.


It's very different than the US
 With the right attitude, India is intensely interesting.  It's just so dang different to where I'm from.  What a cool thing it is to witness (a bit of) the other side of the world.  I caught myself sometimes checking the moon and sun and thinking "Ok, same planet." 

Same planet

I'd never seen a movie where people break into song and dance routines every 20 minutes.  Or camped next to families whose goats are their livelihood.  Or ate on the floor with a Muslim family.  Or hung out with a couple thousand Sikhs.  Or had a group of monkeys run by me when I'm having my morning meditation on the hotel roof.

His goat got attacked by a bear and had to be put down

It was only 10 weeks and this list goes on.

I left with a richer understanding of what the world is up to. 

It's one thing to read or hear about India. It's something else to take it in with your own senses.

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The challenging parts of traveling in India

Unreliability
A lot of things don't work how they're supposed to work in India.  You can have your bus get cancelled at the last second or have your hotel owner switch something up on you.  You'll find your door doesn't close, your bathroom smells like sewage, your bus breaks down the middle of nowhere or your food doesn't come with what you agreed on.  India has extremely variable quality in many things.  You can't trust in much there.

Visas and Vaccinations
Getting an Indian visa can be quite time/energy consuming.  In the US, they've contracted visas out to a firm that isn't handling them well.  I had to go to the office 5 times to get my visa.  I heard of many people having to change or miss flights because they didn't get theirs in time.  

Thankfully, in 2014, many countries will now get visas on arrival.

You need to get many vaccinations for India.  Mine cost around $240 total.  This is an added expense and hassle.

Noise
India's sensual volume can be thrilling and interesting but it can also be tiring.  It's hard to find quiet and solitude in India.  There aren't many negative spaces (in the design sense) where you can recharge and rest your nerves.  You're often being looked at or sold to.  The sidewalks and parks are full of activity.  India can be extremely overwhelming and exhausting.  Sometimes you just want all the noise to stop for a second so you can catch your breath. 

It's pretty normal to get woken up in the night by dogs, cows, horns, fireworks or sometimes prayer calls.  

Love me a good mosque but could do without the 5am prayer call

You somehow get used to it.

Scams
I haven't heard or been to a place with as many scams as India.  In most places I've heard of, there are a scam or two.  You'll know a friend of a friend of a friend whose dad got scammed in X country.

In India, it seemed like 30-50% of travelers got scammed in some form.

The hardest scam is the one that gets you when you've just gotten to the country.  Many fly into Delhi.  You grab a cab at the airport at 1-2am and then the cabbie takes you close to where your hotel is.  On your way to your hotel, the driver either "calls the hotel" (his friend), tells you they're full, or says the street is closed or something is blocking the street.  They are so good at what they do and you'll actually be convinced the guy is on your side.  Then they take you to a different hotel that costs between $75-$150 dollars a night (when your hotel cost $10-$15).  They also find interesting ways to strong arm you into booking their tours by lying to you or scaring you about booking things on your own.

Welcome to India!!!

What a terrible way to treat newcomers.  This didn't just happen to the friend of friend of friend.  This happened to so many people when they come into India.

The other common scam are the 'Incredible India" tour offices that operate around the backpacker spots.  You'll find people everywhere who will tell you trains or busses are full or unsafe.  They'll tell you anything to get you into their tour office (to book a package).  You're jetlagged, confused, scared, overheating, and many of the guys are very good about seeming trustworthy.  Only later do you realize that you've been had.  I met so many people later who were laughing/crying about how well they'd been had.

In case they read

I fell for the Srinagar scam(long story).  In Srinagar, after you realized you've been had, you'd run into other travelers and you laugh "you too?!" "Yeah, they got me too, hahaaha!"  You'd laugh and just try to roll with it.  What are you going to do at that point but laugh?

I heard other stories of people taking tours and then have the bus driver refuse to drive them to places until they spent a certain amount at each stop.

Ok, enough scam stories.  The scams really don't cost you THAT much.  I got scammed for a couple hundred bucks.  Oh well.  Most people don't lose much.

But scams do suck because they undermine your trust in everything in India.  You stop trusting people who might just be trying to be helpful (as per my point in the previous section).  It takes longer to get from A to B or book tours because you're constantly on the look out for scams.

Touts
Touts are people who are aggressively trying to sell you stuff in India (is that a UK or Indian word?)  In some places, they are everywhere and they stop after you've basically said no 5 times and walked off.  

It's especially frustrating when you can't tell the difference between a tout and an Indian who just wants to hang out.  It makes you distrustful and limits your ability to connect.  You'll get these guys who are hanging out for a bit with you and then drop their sales pitch out of nowhere.

Mostly it's just plain annoying and exhausting to not be able to walk in peace.  You're almost always getting sold to.

I resorted to interesting measures to ward off touts.  I started just not saying anything to them while making strong eye contact as I walked by (basically saying "Shut your face, motherfucker...").  Other times, I would just start shouting gibberish as I walked by to get them to stop.  Sometimes I would shake my head and face around like a rabid deranged dog as a confusion tactic. My thinking was "Either laugh and have fun with this or be annoyed".  You're not harassing me if I harass you back.

Tout proof

A Dutch girl said a bow with hands in prayer position worked well too but I prefer gettin crazy.

Staring
The Indian stare is intense.  They don't do the non-chalant glance.  It's a long stare that is held.  You can stare right back and they won't look away.  They don't get that it's annoying.  Colombians stare at foreigners as well but they'll usually back down when you meet their eye contact.

Most of the time, it's fine.  You get used to it.  If you act natural and don't stand in the middle of empty spaces, it calms down.  Most Indians are extremely friendly and curious and just want to know where you're from.

But it's wild when you get a group of people 15-25 deep staring at you and taking pictures.  If you sit in a public area in a place that's not used to tourists, people will come up and take your picture from 3 feet away without asking. A crowd of papparazi will form and you'll have to move on.

Papparazi rolling deep

It's worth pointing out that while India has 1.2 billion people, it only has 6.5 million tourists per year.  By comparison, China has 1.4 billion people and 57.7 million tourists.  Thailand has a population of 66 million and has 22 million tourists(in 16% of the land area of India).  Most Indians aren't used to seeing foreigners.

It's challenging for foreigners because we do want to be friendly.  We don't mind posing for the occasional photo.  But after you've done 15 photos in an hour, you're spent.  It's too much.  You just want to relax in peace.

Wild eyed mountain kids

When I was at the Golden Temple (awesome Sikh holy place), my travelmate and I would stake out a spot where we weren't visible.  We could relax and take in the scene.  But in 20 minutes, tops, we'd be discovered.  People would show up and start wanting photos.  "They're here, covers blown, " one of us would say.  We'd pose for a bit and then move onto a new hiding spot.

I can tell it's not done with ill intent.  When you see people post the pics they took with celebrities on Reddit, it's not done with malice.  They're just stoked because "hey, I saw Bill Murray!"

Sometimes it's fun to be talked to and treated like a celebrity.  But when you want to explore or be out in peace, it's really exhausting.

Bad Service
Sorry. I can't pull punches on this one.  Indian service, by US standards, is mostly horrible.

You'll order something in a restaurant and get it 40 minutes later (after asking 3-4 times).  Hotel owners treat you like you're a complete nuisance.  People don't listen when you ask for something to be done in a specific way.  Guys will walk into your dorm and starting cleaning out the bed at 8am.  Bus station attendants don't even try to help you out when you're obviously confused by Indian's byzantine bus system.  Waiters regularly do your bill wrong (to get more).  Hotels will claim you didn't pay for a night you did.  Ticket booking agents hang out on Facebook while you wait and watch.

How hotel owners look at you when you try to pay

If average Indian people are about as helpful as can be, the people who's job it is to help are as unhelpful as can be.

There are exceptions to this but Indian service is often laughably bad.  If you don't laugh, you'll start crying.  I've never seen so many foreigners tearing there hair out.


You learn to roll with it or let it ruin your day.  

It's worth realizing that there isn't much tipping and the service is often getting paid 3-6 dollars per day.  There just isn't the education or incentive to provide good service (my guess).

Health and sanitation issues
India doesn't mess around when it comes to bacterias and viruses.  Most travelers have to get several hundred dollars in vaccines done before going there.  Most travelers will get sick, sometimes seriously so.  I heard of people getting Hepatitis B or Typhoid.  Some travelers forgo malaria meds (their fault) and get that.

People tell you that "You'll get sick once for a couple days and then you'll be immune."  I didn't see that. I heard about people getting sick for a week at a time.  I had bad Diarrhea for 25% of my trip.  There were common stories of the good ol 2 exit evacuation sicknesses and people getting sick all over their hotel rooms.  There were stories of people being sick for the entire duration of their trips.

One sick tired lonely mofo

Many Indians don't understand proper sanitation (and they are using their hand in lieu of toilet paper).  I watched people wash their hands in various places and I've only ever seen 1 Indian use soap.  In restaurants I was eating in, I'd commonly watch employees just coughing and reaming all the mucus out of their nose right into the sink people use to wash their hands.  And then not wash.

Antibiotics are so overprescribed in India that many of the basic ones no longer work.  So you could catch a bug that's more resistant to antibiotics that your bugs back home.

I'm not trying to scare people but I do think it's worth being honest about.  Most travelers get quite sick in India.  This does make it challenging to travel by yourself.

No hostels
There are very few backpacker hostels in India.  I only went to a small part of the country but I'm relying on other traveler's accounts.  You stay in cheap hotels or guesthouses.  Overall, this is fine.  My only gripe is that it's harder to meet other travelers this way.  The common areas and kitchens in hostels is usually where you do this.  In India, it can be tricky to find the hub for connecting with other travelers.  This made for some lonely days in new places until I found the meeting spots.

No talking with the local women
In the other places I've traveled, you can often chat or flirt with local women.  This is fun and makes for quick language learning.  In most parts of India, you just don't talk to the women.  It doesn't feel appropriate to.  You don't see them out and about very often.  

In the 10 weeks I was in India, I spoke with Indian women for around 15-20 combined minutes.  If someone asked me what Indian women are like, I'd shrug.  If I had spent more time in the more liberal metro areas like Mumbai and Bangalore, perhaps this would have been different.  Maybe I read it wrong or navigated it wrong.  Hey, it's all good.  I didn't go there for that.

Didn't want to talk to you either, Deepika!

Foreign women will definitely get talked to by local guys. Often more than they care to.

Sexual Harassment
I won't dig into this too much since I didn't directly experience it.  I talked to several women who experienced some form of sexual harassment.  Pinching and groping of foreign women happens fairly often in crowded areas.  I heard of women who woke up on sleeper trains with guys fondling them.  One woman said that a man on the lower bunk was reaching up and grabbing her indiscriminately.

One woman had a guy say to her "It seems like your root chakra is blocked.  Would you like it opened with some divine sex?"  I know sexual harassment shouldn't be funny but it's hard for me not to laugh at that one.

Some women who got a massage from a renowned Masseur in Udaipur had him ask them when was the last time they had sex while he was sitting on their legs working on their bare ass.

A straight guy with a lip ring got a dozen or so propositions for sex from Indian gay guys.  The lip ring must mean something different there.

Sexuality and expressions of it work pretty differently in India.  I sense there's a lot of confusion around sex (well, more than in the US).  Some (too many) Indian men have very distorted or misguided ideas for what's acceptable to say or do to Western women.  Most of the women seemed annoyed with it but weren't letting it ruin their trips.

Crowds and Availability
As a backpacker, I often travel on a whim.  I decide where I'm going to go at the last minute.  It's freeing to rock up to a bus station with 3 options in your mind and go with the one you're feeling at that moment.
It's hard to travel spontaneously in India.  You often need to book things in advance, especially in popular areas like Goa or Rajasthan.  There are tens of millions of people traveling in peak season and things fill up easily.

Full

It's not the end of the world but it does make your trip feel less free.  You do need to book ahead in many parts.

Driving
It's a different level of crazy.  You basically play a lot of chicken with the oncoming traffic.  You'll see a lot of near misses (and some crashes).  

Most Indian drivers don't care at all about pedestrians.  They'll zoom right by you and miss you by 6-12 inches.  Motorcyclists are even worse.

You get a bit used to it but it's still unnerving.

Pollution
You'll breath in a lot of dust and smoke in India.  In most towns I was in, they simply burn their garbage, plastic and all.  You rarely get a clear view of mountains or surrounding areas because of all the smoke everywhere.

You'll see rivers that have turned black and soupy with pollution in many places.  
Most people just throw their garbage out wherever they please.  Hiking high in the Himalayas I'd still find plastic out in the middle of the woods.

This is profoundly depressing to see.

Finding lodging information
When you travel in Mexico, Colombia or Thailand (I've heard), it's very easy to figure out which hostel to go thanks to the hostel booking sites.  It's quite easy to find where the gems are.  In India, you need to talk to other travelers to figure out where to stay.  Trip Advisor and other review sites don't know about the good cheap places.  Wikitravel and Lonely Planet often don't either.  This took getting used to but once you know, you start taking good notes from other travelers.

Winter was coming in Leh

India is a very interesting place to travel if you have the right attitude and resourcefulness to deal with some extreme challenges.  

I'm very glad I traveled there (in the end) but there were some very challenging moments.

Next time, I want to do more treks in Kashmir, party more in Mumbai, and chill out in Kerala.

Soaking it up