Would you travel in a country where police take 12 hrs to answer an emergency call?

TRIGGER WARNING: This article deals with an account of rape/sexual assault and may be triggering for survivors of abuse.

When the Delhi metro pulled into the station on my first morning in India and it became apparent that it was not only shoulder-to-shoulder crowded, but with mostly men, dread washed over my body. I was trying to stay cool – of course news travels quickly overseas about brutal crimes and hatred against women in India, but these things happen everywhere, right?

But, thrown into daily life on the streets of Delhi, I couldn’t help but be reduced from a confident traveler to a blonde girl in a sea of potential predators, a stereotype that I must constantly keep in mind in the name of staying safe.

The stares are relentless – some obviously from curiosity, some more sinister. Whether I’m on a train, walking down a street or even eating in a restaurant. I’ve covered my head since day two in India, but you can’t cover a pale face and blonde eyebrows. (It doesn’t help that I’m currently beach-blonde after two months in Southeast Asia.)

I hear the voices of my parents in my head repeatedly, telling me to come home. That attitudes in India are different and it’s not a safe place for a traveling woman. That was all before the latest news of the rape and murder of two teenage girls in Uttar Pradesh, the state I was currently in, emerged on the global scene.

The two girls were around 14 and 15, innocent except for their gender and birth into a country, especially a state, where crime towards women is common, often tolerated and even met with inaction. These two girls made the news, but what about the other women that were attacked or gang-raped in Uttar Pradesh in the last week? That happened too.

Almost as bad as being female, these girls were also of a low caste – they were low members in a societal framework that leaves a large chunk of India’s population suffering in poverty and squalor. The two girls were out in the field on the night of their death because they needed to defecate – censuses in recent years have revealed that half of the homes in India don’t have toilets. The result: millions of people take to the country’s fields and railways to do their private business in public, and, in turn, girls and women are exposed to potential danger.

Their caste keeps these girls and their families at the bottom of society where safe, private toilets are rare, but also exposes them and their equals to unpunished violence from members of higher castes. In the past, rape, beating and similar brutality towards low-caste Indians was acceptable, and the state of Uttar Pradesh seems to be stuck in the past.

Mulayam Singh Yadav, a past leader of the state’s majority party, is known to have responded to rapes by saying “boys are boys, they commit mistakes” and police officers in the same party have met criticism in this most recent case for failing to immediately seek the girls’ rapists for arrest. Police took 12 hours to respond to calls that the two were missing.

Caste didn’t play as much of a part in the rape and murder of a 23 year old Indian woman aboard a moving bus in Delhi in 2012, though. Despite the fact that this woman was traveling with a male friend, she was attacked by the group of joyriders that were illegally driving the bus and repeatedly raped and beaten with a metal rod before being tossed onto the street, where the group then tried to run her over with the bus. The woman died from her wounds days later and all of her rapists were arrested and tried, some sentenced to death.

That I’m traveling with my boyfriend may once have offered a sense of safety, but in the 2012 case, one man was nothing against a gang. Plus, Indian women and girls aren’t the only ones who face the risk of rape in the country – in 2013 and 2014 several foreign tourists from Europe and the USA were raped in both the country’s north and south, often in touristy areas.

My time spent outside my hotel room in India is marked by the need to have a heightened focus on protecting myself. Entering crowded trains, getting in taxis that are too often manned by more than one male driver at once for no obvious reason, or even just getting in a tuk-tuk without a sense of my intended direction feels too risky in a world where rape happens just around the corner. I’ve taken to tracking my movements on the GPS map on my phone, just to be sure that my drivers are honest.

It’s not that I think every man in India is trying to rape me and it wouldn’t be fair to believe so. It’s more that I’m overwhelmed by the sheer volume of them. Large groups of men are everywhere I turn in India – train stations, parks, monuments and tourist attractions, and my parents are right – attitudes are different here. I saw that for myself when the friendly, if not a little condescending, owner of a home-stay I stayed at in Uttar Pradesh suddenly raised his voice at me when I tried to move a table closer to my seat to eat. Apparently his tabletop was marble and could have fallen over – I’m still not sure if he was more concerned about me or the table. How could I be so stupid?

This discussion would be incomplete without mention of systems that are in place in India to help women. Entire train cars are dedicated to “Ladies Only” on the Delhi Metro, though I haven’t been able to use those since I’m traveling with my boyfriend. Women line up and are patted down (by other women) separately from men when entering attractions and train stations, and, most promisingly, India’s new prime minister and government have responded to the recent rapes by creating a “rape crisis cell” for speedy reaction to future rapes.

Many of the highly publicized rapes that have happened in the recent past have been met with mass protest by both women and men. Today, protests against inaction in the case of the young girls are turning violent in Uttar Pradesh. As a result, some of the girls’ rapists have been apprehended along with two incompetent police officers. Other officers involved have been fired. Parts of India’s population are clearly calling for reform – more protection for women and more accountability for their attackers. When, if ever, will the rest of the country respond?

Elspeth Velten is a writer from New York currently eating, shopping and sweating in India. Follow her journey on Twitter (@elspethvelten) Instagram (@elspethvelten) and on her website, ElspethVelten.com.

Have you ever been overseas, and felt unsafe because you were in unfamiliar surroundings or a different culture?