ABSTRACT
English-language guidebooks routinely advise Western women travelling in India to avoid dress and behaviour that will be interpreted by Indian men as communicating sexual availability and inviting unwanted sexual advances. Advice to women tourists draws on simplistic renderings of cultural Indian norms referencing family, gender, appropriate behaviours and modest dress. The authors of these guidebooks presume that female European American tourists, particularly those travelling alone, are likely to challenge many gendered social norms, and therefore, be subject to harassment. Tour books on India in general and Rajasthan in particular published over the past two decades repeat verbatim advice about modest dress and behaviour. Recently, the Internet has become a ubiquitous source for the perpetuation of this advice, which has obtained the status of ‘master narrative’ in tourism discourse, naturalized as indisputable in its authority and veracity (see chapter by Karatchkova this volume).
