By Nidhi Kinhal
When a young spoken word poet arrived in Hyderabad, early in the morning, she’d done what anyone travelling to another city would do. Check a travel and tickets website, or a hotel aggregator, find a suitable hotel, make all prior bookings, and head to the airport or station.
Except, when Nupur Saraswat reached Hotel Deccan Erragadda, she wasn’t let in despite a confirmed booking, because she was a single lady. “Somehow they decided I was safer on the streets than in the hotel. Funny huh, how patriarchy works?”, she said on her Facebook post. While solo travel among women already receives bizarre reactions like being labelled ‘runaways’, being judged for immoral character, and unsolicited safety advice, Saraswat has put her finger on a typical Patriarchal contradiction: we want you to be safe, but we won’t offer you rooms.
When she spoke up using Facebook, many rushed to support her, and Goibibo finally took notice. The PR team offered her an apology, took on the task of filtering hotels in the future, and gave her complimentary stay. After companies like TVF and their cringe-worthy responses to sexual harrassment allegations, Goibibo’s accountability is refreshing. However, this far from solves the problem. What if this happened to a woman without such social media following? In fact, it does, all the time. “This is not just a hotel, but you will find these kind of instances everywhere in the city. In the name of safety and culture, society has been controlling the freedom of women. By saying ‘this is for women’s safety’ the hotel has judged the character of a woman who is traveling alone,” women’s rights activist Jameela Nishat informed The News Minute. Solo travel for many women is a form of resistance and recreation at the same time. In a country where hotels unabashedly display their ‘no single women’ policy, Nupur has taken a stand. “So listen up – a revolution is coming. Women are going to travel alone, and travel EVERYWHERE. The companies who will survive are the ones who can keep up with this”, she said.