Posts by Nirvana Bhandary
How to be Culturally Sensitive in India’s Religious Cities
Millions of people travel to India for leisure every year, enamoured by the exhilarating and romantic possibilities the country holds for them. But India is not a country of just…
The Radical Nature of Women’s Spaces
A few years ago, when I was solo travelling the world and crossing paths with women travellers who felt like sisters, I would tell them about my glorious secret dream.…
White Feminism and Cultural Appropriation Beyond Clothes
You’re at a house party and a woman you don’t know won’t stop blabbering to the group about her three-month trip to India and Nepal. “I just got back! Like…
White Hippies and Cultural Appropriation
I sit in a rustic wooden house adorned with ornaments from South Asia in the middle of the wilderness in Bulgaria. It is a chilly night but inside, the atmosphere…
Being a Brown Backpacker in a Sea of White
I walk into a hostel in Italy and the common room is filled with people for the free dinner. I scan the room quickly. There is one other person of…
The Politics of Tanning
When I am travelling, there is one particular image that ignites a strong emotion of fullness and freedom within me. That image is of my tanned arm immersed in seawater…
My Time Backpacking Around the Iberian Peninsula as a Bollywood Star
Opening scene: Australia A beautiful young woman sits at her office cubicle longingly staring at a photo of the La Sagrada Familia on her computer screen. In another window, she…
My Time on The Bachelor India
“My name is Nirvana. I am 26 years old, and I am here to find the love of my life.” This is a sentence I never in my craziest nightmares…
I Moved to Morocco and Gave Up Alcohol
I used to drink ridiculous amounts of alcohol. From the ages of 18 to 22 it heavily shaped my identity and gave a human structure to my self-confidence. I was…