Bon voyage eh, mademoiselle?

In Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran, a woman is forbidden to venture out alone in the streets by herself, unless accompanied by a man who is either her husband or a family relative. Or so I’ve read in the accounts of authors like Carmen Bin Laden & Marjane Satrapi, making the grass on my end of the world seem greener.

Yet the sense of liberty and democracy that I, sometimes, take for granted in this country is not as simple. Scraping a little into it, I find a much convoluted reality, often more difficult to comprehend and work around than in an absolute political/moral system. Women may be ‘allowed’ to do much more here but the flip side is that they still need to ‘seek permission’. So even though we have no explicit codes on dressing or our movement, the need to improvise as per the norms implicit in a certain context assures that the onus is entirely on women for their safety. It is a country where a woman is held accountable for what she wears and where she is at a certain time of the day.

Traveling or backpacking alone is vitally mentioned in any list of ‘things to do before you’re 21/30’. The idea of going off all by yourself is certainly intriguing yet more frightening to most women. Our minds are conditioned such that we’ll only dwell in the risks and threats involved. Worst is how women thrash the idea to avert the sense of guilt, that we would readily feel (courtesy our society’s mindset and attitude towards women) if things went awry in the trip.

Forget traveling alone, the greater the bunch of girls together the bigger the invitation it becomes “apparently”. I’ve had friends who were followed, photographed and in worse cases, groped by locals or fellow travelers. In a recent trip to Chandigarh, my friends and I were followed and taunted by groups of boys on different boats in Sukhna Lake. What was planned to be a relaxing item on the itinerary turned out to be a cardio burst of frantic paddling and immense irritation.

A travel buff of a friend recalls how she and her friend were followed right to their room in the resort by a bunch of men, on a recent trip to Goa. “They thought that calling us weird names in Hindi would make us fall in love with them or make us attracted towards them. Bleeeugh!”

Is it really too much to give women the pleasure courtesy to enjoy their vacation carefree?

My own traveling experience has been quite limited both for its quality and quantity with heckling for parents’ permission and being planned to the ‘t’ and under some elder’s guided protection. I’ve really not had those adrenaline rushes of adventure filled travels I’ve watched or read so much about. I’ve always envied the freedom, which men exclusively enjoy, to spontaneously take off without a care of the world on their motorcycles, stop at any Dhaba for food, crash at a crumbling motel et al.

The travel buff, indeed, has also had her share of adventure and fun. “Whether its deciding to run down the beach at unearthly hours of the morning, befriending strangers, taking motorcycle taxis in unknown places at 4am, riding through winding star lit paths or getting stranded on an island and not worrying about it and deciding to drink a few more beers instead” merrily she notes.
Traveling on your own is like a rite of passage without which no pursuit of independence and individuation is complete. Women, otherwise, are just limited to being school children with their movements and activities restricted, for a lack of better judgment, needing a hall pass to pee and a rebellious streak to bunk.

After all, why should boys have all the fun?