Imagine how strange some of our customs and priorities must seem to the people of other lands. For instance, if you were a little girl from India being entertained with tales of people in faraway lands such as Australia or America wouldn’t you just laugh out loud at the sheer absurdity of some of these things?

In the West, she is told, the most highly prized body shape for an adult female is identical to that of a starving person. In lands blessed with plenty, millions of women strive to achieve the skeletal figures of India’s poor. In Western magazines, films and television, she might continue, women who look like they have been unable to obtain enough food to eat are celebrated like goddesses for their beauty. Others try to emulate them; young girls have even starved themselves to death trying. There seems to be a mantra that Western women repeat to give themselves encouragement when they are hungry: "You can’t be too rich or too thin."

I think that one of the many advantages of travel is being able to look at your own culture from the vantage point of another. My visit to India brought into the sharpest possible focus the cruel agony that for most of the world, there is no equation between thinness and affluence. If you are too thin, it means that you are also too poor. Needless to say, with my ample proportions, I was considered to be extremely wealthy! In India, every beggar on the street is a bag of bones, so the idea of feminine beauty seen in films, television and magazines is well-rounded, well-fed and womanly. It is considered attractive for women to have breasts, hips and thighs. The sari, the most gorgeous garment ever invented, looks best when it has a few curves to hang onto.

Indian women have good reason to be smug about their saris. No other culture has ever been able to co-opt this style of dress, although various European designers including Yves Saint Laurent, have given it a try from time to time. The reason that it hasn’t caught on in the west is simply that it takes years of experience to wear one without looking like a fool. A sari is nothing more elaborate than a long rectangle of fabric, usually cotton or silk, often richly embroidered and bordered in gold. It is worn with a midriff-baring blouse and an underskirt. A sari has no seams, contouring or tailoring of any kind. You have to know exactly how to fold and tuck the whole thing into the waist of the underskirt and then fling the remaining length nonchalantly over one shoulder. If you don’t do this properly, the sari will come undone the minute you walk out the door, which is not a fashion statement most women would choose to make. I know of only a handful of Western women who can wear the sari properly, one is Sonya Ghandi - the widow of Ranjiv Ghandi.

Many Westerners consider the traditional Indian custom of eating with one’s fingers to be suspect. Many Indians, on the other hand, regard the Western practise of inserting a cold hunk of pronged metal into the mouth along with your food to be equally weird. If you get the opportunity to dine Indian-style (although not necessarily in India), you will discover that eating with your fingers can be perfectly dainty and hygienic. Some people think that maintaining physical contact with your food is a more natural way to eat.

Good travellers shouldn’t be wimpish about trying new things. Only the fingers of the right hand, which is washed before and after the meal, ever touch the food. It takes a few times to get the hang of the process, but it is not nearly as difficult as wearing a sari. You take a piece of chapatti or a little rice, roll it up with various delectable sauced dishes and pop the morsel into your mouth. (Indians do not get food all over themselves like I do when I try it!)

Travellers through India may be taken aback at first by questions which in Western society, might be considered rather personal. If so, bear in mind that for most of the people in the world the family, not the individual, is the smallest indivisible social unit. Establishing where you fit in the supposed scheme of things may be part of a perfectly proper conversation. How old are you? Are you married? Do you have children? If not, why not? What does your husband / father do for a living? What is your religion? What is your profession and how much money do you earn? These are some of the many questions that were posed to me frequently whilst I was in India by such casual acquaintances as taxi drivers, waiters, shopkeepers and children on the street. Answering their questions and yet trying not to reveal too much about my personal life was quite a challenge - I can tell you! In the end I just gave up trying to tell them the truth and just pretended to be the super rich woman of the world they liked to think that I was!

Helen Van Den Berg