I admit that there have been many times when I have pointed out the odd tourist to Matt and had a giggle. Purple pants. Knee-high argyle socks with knickers (no golf course for miles). Safari vests when there is obviously no safari. It’s a little bit different being at the other end, when other tourists are entertained by you. So far, this has happened blatantly happened twice during our time in India. The first was by Dharamsala. Matt and I had hiked up to a waterfall and I was cooling my feet in the water while he got us a snack from a nearby stand. All of a sudden I found myself surrounded by 3 or 4 young Indian males who I recognized from a group of vacationers we had passed earlier. The rest of their friends were on a clump of rocks about 10 feet away. “Okay,” I thought, “I guess they just want to check out the water over this way, maybe their sense of personal space is a little different from mine.” But then they started talking to me and it became apparent that this group of tourists wanted to take a picture with me. Not in the mood, I promptly said, “No,” and tried to turn away (which was hard to do since I was surrounded). I told them I was waiting for my husband, which worked to briefly deflect them. Unfortunately, just as I thought they had given up, Matt came back and agreed to take their “one snap” which turned out to be several pictures on multiple camera phones. Oh well.
It happened again yesterday, but this time I was caught so off-guard that I didn’t have the presence of mind to say much of anything in response. I had run upstairs to our hotel room to grab something I had forgotten while Matt waited in the driveway below. I saw them out of the corner of my eye as I hurriedly unlocked our door. Two older Indian gentlemen, sitting in plastic chairs outside of their room down the corridor. As I reemerged from my room, one of them approached me.
“Excuse me please, you from Japan?” Common question, I thought, worth an answer.
“No,” I matter-of-factly stated.
“Oh, haha!” he laughed. “My friend just wants to take one picture,” he informed me as the other gentleman swiftly walked towards me as the first guy, camera in hand, walked further down the hall to get a good shot.
“Um ok, but please be fast, my husband is waiting,” I tried to use the husband factor again to deflect attention.
“Husband waiting, ok. Haha, he just wants one picture,” the second guy informed me. I half smiled, he snapped, and then it was over. As I turned to make way downstairs one of the guys bid me farewell with, “Japan. God bless you.”
Not only was that the first time I’d heard “God bless you” in a while and in that context, but as I walked away I wondered what part of “no” as in, I’m not from Japan they hadn’t understood. Oh well. At least they seemed happy to have gotten their picture, I’m not famous enough to end up in the Enquirer or Star, and in the end no harm was done. But it got me thinking, maybe I need to work on my “snap” collection of the interesting tourists I see?!