The Travelers Bible is loved and hated by many. Travelers love the
information but hate what it creates. Hotels and restaurants mentioned
become hubs for travelers. Even in low season Lonely Planets
recommendations can be full. This success often goes to businesses
heads and prices sky rocket while standards drop. No matter how high
prices go and how far standards drop people keep going. Often the
cheap clean place next door is dead, despite 50% commissions for any
rickshaw driver who can a get a tourist through the door.
This creates a culture of knockoffs. Sure Lonely Planet may recommend
Baba's Pizza in Pushkar but which of the three identically named
restaurants on the same block did they mean? Pizzas are recommended as
delicious in a certain restaurant and pretty soon everyplace catering
to tourists with woodfired pizza on the menu. Hardly an authentic
Indian experience.
Follow the recommended Lonely Planet travel schedule and you will meet
the same travelers staying in the same recommended hotels, eating in
the same recommended restaurants.
In fact it is entirely possible never to eat in the same restaurant as
a local or stay in the same hotel as an India. Is this what traveling
is about? Stay at a local hotel and it is probably filthy with red
spittle lining the halls. Indians tend to be fairly loud and they
wander around the halls knocking on random doors to find their friends
in the middle of the night. In the morning you are guaranteed to wake
up to the sound of people bringing up flem from the core of their
body. Certainly a different experience.
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