I finally got my passport, but I can't stop thinking about India's reputation abroad

I didn’t expect my passport to come with anxiety.

I expected drama, yes, the bureaucratic kind. Running between addresses that refuse to agree on where you belong, hunting down documents that feel like they were issued in another lifetime, smiling politely at officials who hold your fate in a stapled file (which also happened). And then finally, that moment — the navy-blue booklet in your hand. Your ticket out. Your proof of arrival into a certain kind of adulthood.

But what I didn’t expect? That the excitement would be, diluted. Hijacked by a question I couldn’t quite shake off:

What does the world think of people like me?

Not me, the individual. Me, the Indian tourist.

The videos that travel farther than we do

If you’ve been online even half as much as the rest of us, you’ve seen it too.

The now-viral videos. The ones that travel faster than any of us ever will.

A group breaking into garba on an airport tarmac in Vietnam — festive, yes, but also wildly out of place. Another bunch dancing on Hanoi’s Train Street, a location already hanging by a thread because of safety concerns. A tourist in Japan caught shoplifting and then, almost unbelievably, trying to pay her way out of it. And my personal favourite — someone proudly decanting hotel shampoo into tiny plastic bottles like that bottle is going to sustain their entire life.

All of this in one month.

If this was a reality show, we’d call it chaotic entertainment. But this isn’t Bigg Boss. This is reputation. And unfortunately, it sticks.

It would be comforting to say this is just a phase. A few rogue travellers behaving badly. But is it?

Just a few weeks ago, four Indian tourists were called out for allegedly stealing items from a Bali resort. Around the same time, Harsh Goenka mentioned a Swiss hotel that had special rules for Indian guests. Let that sink in. Not guests in general. Not tourists as a category. Indians.

Not just an online joke anymore

And if you think this perception lives only online, it doesn’t.

A colleague who travelled to Vietnam recently came back with something far more unsettling than a bad immigration experience or bad hiking accident. She spoke about how shopkeepers’ attitudes shifted the moment they realised she was Indian. The politeness dialled down. The patience, thinner. And she wasn’t alone, several travellers have said the same thing.

Which is ironic, because Indians are everywhere right now. We’re travelling in record numbers, one of the fastest-growing outbound tourist groups in the world. We’re booking, spending, showing up.

And yet, somehow, not always welcome.

Even places we’ve historically loved and been loved in are beginning to feel complicated.

Take Thailand. A country many Indians treat like an extended weekend playground. When visa-free access was rolled back recently, what got me thinking: was it just a policy change? It felt like a shift in mood. A quiet pulling back because of Indians’ behaviour abroad.

The kind that doesn’t happen overnight.

The ugly reputation we don't want to talk about

Here’s the part we don’t like admitting: this isn’t entirely unfair.

Somewhere along the way, we’ve developed a strange travel personality. Loud where we should be mindful. Entitled where we should be respectful. Treating public spaces like personal stages, and cultural differences like inconveniences.

There’s also that subtle superiority complex we carry. The reason? We think we have come from a rising global power, the rules can occasionally bend for us (or maybe, we are the rules).

That is where we are probably fooling ourselves.

And outside our borders, that attitude doesn’t read as confidence. It reads as arrogance. Arrogance for nothing.

Paying for a reputation I didn't create

And because of some people, we are all being tagged. Because for every one person behaving badly, there are hundreds who aren’t. But the internet doesn’t amplify good behaviour. It doesn’t care about the quiet, respectful traveller who queues properly, tips fairly, and doesn’t treat hotel linen like a parting gift.

It remembers the garba on the runway.

So now, people like me, first-time travellers, passport still crisp, are left negotiating something we didn’t sign up for.

Perception.

I find myself thinking about it more than I’d like to admit. Will I be treated differently at immigration? Will a shopkeeper size me up before I even speak? Will I have to overcompensate, be extra polite, extra careful, just to not be that tourist?

It’s a strange thing, carrying the weight of a reputation you didn’t build.

It’s unfair, of course. No one should have to carry the weight of a billion people’s reputation. But perception doesn’t always care about fairness.

So, where do we go from here?

There’s no grand fix, no sweeping solution. But maybe it starts with acknowledging that this is a conversation worth having — without defensiveness, without brushing it off as “just social media noise.”

Because it’s not just about how the world sees us. It’s also about how we choose to show up in it.

Travel, at its best, is an exchange, of cultures, of respect, of curiosity. And maybe the real flex isn’t how loudly we can assert our presence in a foreign land, but how seamlessly we can belong without disrupting it.

As for me, I’m still planning that first international trip. The excitement is there, just a little quieter, a little more cautious.

Passport in hand, yes.

But also, a question I didn’t expect to carry:

Will I be seen for who I am or for where I come from?