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India Loves Goddess Statues, But It Won’t Protect You
A note to women planning a solo trip — your safety is not a priority here
More than a decade has passed since journalist Georgia Arlott penned her harrowing account of traveling through India as a solo woman. Revisiting her words today leaves me with a stinking feeling — not because they feel dated, but because they don’t. If anything, her account could be published today, and it would still resonate just as powerfully. That’s how little has changed.
The stories she narrated — of groping hands in crowded streets, lingering stares that reduce you to prey, relentless stalking, and the ever-present threat of sexual assault — are not rare, isolated experiences. They are patterns. Predictable, recurring, normalized patterns that every woman, local or foreign, is taught to anticipate and navigate.
And so, I find myself asking — what has truly changed? Can women, whether born here or visiting, afford to hope for a future where safety isn’t a privilege but a given? Or is that still too radical a dream?
