The Global Life: India Unvarnished

Visitors to the Taj Mahal all confront the same eternal mystery: How could the people who fashioned the world’s most serene monument to love also build on its doorstep one of the ugliest, filthiest and most cacophonous cities in existence? If the heartbroken Shah Jahan’s mausoleum for his wife Mumtaz Mahal is everything India should be–spiritual, awesome, peaceful–Agra, with its choking traffic, litter-strewed dirt roads and throngs of grotesque beggars is everything it unfortunately still is. “This not what I expected,” says Camilla, 22, a psychology student visiting from Sweden. “Not at all. I mean, you’re in Indiayou’ve got to see the Taj, the lovely, beautiful Taj. But all I’ve been doing since I got here is shouting and screaming at ricksha drivers. The whole thing is just one big irritation.”

But even if a passage to India isn’t for the fainthearted, the country is fast becoming a hot spot for the jet set. A growing global awareness of Indian culture–thanks to offerings like Bend It Like Beckham, the writings of Jhumpa Lahiri and modish curry cuisine (not to mention Indian software and telephone expertise)–has raised the subcontinent’s profile and put it firmly on the traveler’s map. The number of foreign visitors to India last year rose 16.5%, to 2.75 million, and the World Travel & Tourism Council predicts India’s tourism industry will grow by 7.9% over the next decade, to $28.4 billion, or 4.8% of GDP. India’s normally lackadaisical tourist authority has helped refine the allure with an advertising campaign featuring a stunning series of photographs of attractions ranging from Himalayan peaks to deserted, pristine beaches to Ayurvedic massages–all accompanied by the slogan “Incredible India.” The tourism industry is experiencing its “best year ever,” says G.P. Francis, general manager of the award-winning boutique Malabar House in Kerala, a southern coastal state that rivals Thailand as the home of the Asian spa.

Hotels across the country were fully booked last month and are warning of an acute room shortage. In Udaipur, the general manager of the famed $400-a-night Lake Palace Hotel, Peter Whyne, says this year’s bookings have taken a quantum leap. “The music, the food, the fashion, Incredible India, the IT industry–it all adds up and generates a curiosity and gets India into people’s consciousness,” he says. “People are riding that all the way here.” Here, in this case, means India’s most famous hotel, a former maharaja’s palace that rises like a colossal wedding cake out of a lake in the Rajasthani desert.

As a result, nearly every high-end chain is expanding. The Shangri-La, Oberoi, Le Meridien, Hyatt and Taj chains are either upgrading or searching for new properties. In Rajasthan, for example, which shares a border with Pakistan, the ritzy Amanresorts International is opening two exclusive destinations, one a tented camp near a famous tiger reserve and the other, a hotel inside a palace in the so-called Blue City of Jodhpur, where virtually all the buildings are painted the same bright hue.

The bad news is that in India, you get first-class resorts built on a Third World foundation. Substandard road networks and power grids still place much of India deep in the developing world. While the government talks about revamping its decrepit state airlines and airports, it has yet to take action. “Appalling, desperate,” is how one Western airline executive describes the first impression visitors tend to have of India’s airports. Even so, she says, there is sufficient passenger demand to triple the number of flights into the country. But for decades, plans to open new routes and increase flights have been largely stifled by a combination of red tape, corruption and concerns over the survival of bloated state carriers Air India and Indian Airlines.

But perhaps we should cheer such inertia. Changing things too fast, after all, could ruin the experience. The attraction of India is its offer of a journey of astonishment–involving both the good and the bad–rather than an easy holiday in the sun. “For all its faults,” says Uttam Dave, CEO of PKF Travel Consultancy, “it’s one of the few places in the world that has its own character that is uniquely its own, something that has not been bastardized by globalization.” Whatever the horrors of Agra and the frustrations of its millions of visitors, no one has yet complained of missing out on the real India.