US of A ... Not so quaint and barely foreign

I hate to start my travel notes on this blog with USA, because in India i have had class A experiences when it comes to travelling.

I go travelling/touristing to a place for the monuments, the natural beauty, you know the stuff that a guide book would talk about.

I plead my guilt that i have landed in this country without a guide book. Having said that i still think there should be something to astound you and impress you when you step into a foreign country, right?

If i am drawing a no or a blank as an answer for this question for this specific country, you are smarter and wiser than me and had it all figured out since the day u heard 'USA'.

I have got to say the exposure to american culture (via american television) is so high it spoils everything. You see a trailer park, those cute row houses, the made up women, the abundance of cars, nothing strikes you as so out of ordinary. Not to mention there is nothing endearing about them anyway.

Some of the people i have come across are excessively enthusiastic in their greetings, and that is without a fail every single day they see you. The zingy "How You Doing?" makes me step back or cower for a while in self defence. On the other hand i have come across people who would be nasty to me or to other people without any reason, even when they have no business to even bother you. There was this man who before boarding a trolley was helping a family of 4 figure out which line to take to their destination and fifteen minutes after he has been on board he starts yelling on a woman sitting two rows ahead of her that when would she shut her phone off and stop yakking. So much of yelling, jeering, whining, bitching etc happens in trolleys and buses and offices it is the equivalent of eve-teasing in India. Frankly they seem really miserable here.

Yes the warmth, the candid openness of people of India is missed terribly here. The true smile. I have not seen one genuine smile here. Maybe i need to go down to a village here and look for people who have some naive trustworthiness left in them. People who aren't so frozen and isolated from others that no part of them creeps out when you come across them.

Somewhere near a tramp

Ya unfortunately i have a regular jobs Ya i am one of that pathetic lot whose jobs have led them to this blogging world.

So anyway that that disqualifies me from being a tramp. So i can sit in my cosy room and fantasize about living a trampy life. And selling street food in Thailand and living in a hut. I think Himachal or Uttaranchal sound more plausible. But .... then...