Recently, a foreign female YouTuber uploaded a video,
detailing the sexual harassment she faced while she was here holidaying in India.
So in this video, you are gonna hear her story straight from her.
I will take you inside the minds of these guys who have these really backward mentalities.
And then I'm gonna give you some tips so you can stay safe while you are travelling here in India.
Let's get into it and let's hear her story straight from Jordan.
Jordan: About two months ago, I got to India.
We were wrapping up our trip and that is when all these things just started happening
Men reached out and grabbed me, were touching me, groping me.
This one guy walking by kind of leaned, like his face was right here.
And he just said to me, "I want to f*** you" right into my face with Livi right next to me.
I had a five star hotel give out my personal information, my full name, my room number to a stalker
Karl: I really want to say these things are uncommon.
But unfortunately, all the experiences I've had here of meeting female tourists and just females, any females in general,
they all have a story like this, you know. Some of them aren't as bad as this, some of them are worse.
I've witnessed this first hand as well so I was on the Delhi metro and a guy just grabbed my friend's ass.
And then another time, we were walking on the road in South Delhi by Lodhi Garden and this guy just walks past and rubs his elbow across my friend's chest.
I met a girl from Thailand who had just been to Amritsar and this guy started stalking her along the streets, wouldn't stop following her.
So she decided to run into the bathroom. She thought she will be safe there in a female bathroom.
But this guy comes in and starts banging on her cubical door and asking for money.
He was trying to scare her to pay him. So she had to.. she was like so scared sitting in this cubicle right?
So she just slid a bunch of money under the door and luckily, he left.
So yeah. These stories do not end unfortunately.
And that goes for local women too. This is not a foreign women problem.
This is a woman problem in general here in India.
And it's not all men. Don't think all men are like that. They're certainly not.
It's a small percentage of men who have these backward mentalities which we will get into soon.
Jordan: Livi and I checked into a.. just normal hotel and it was about ten dollars a night.
So it's not like a nice hotel or anything. Karl: And this is the first alarm bell for me.
She is staying in a 500 rupee hotel which is as cheap as you can get in Delhi
And she is staying in Paharganj and Paharganj is hell on earth.
I can't describe it any better than that. I hate that place. You walk down the road you will see drug addicts shooting up needles in their arm.
It's 200 metres from the human trafficking and prostitution area of Delhi, GB Road..
which you do not want to go down under any circumstances, especially at night.
So she is so close to all these things: drugs, prostitution and human trafficking.
And yeah. Unfortunately, a lot of foreigners choose to stay in Paharganj because there's a lot of cheap hotels there.
But it's the worst place you can stay in all of Delhi. Please people, go stay in the residential areas where normal Indians are.
Go stay in South Delhi. Go stay and pay a bit more for the hotel
because when you pay 500 rupees or 10 dollars american for a hotel, the quality you are gonna get is terrible.
But what's more important: the staff you're gonna get are terrible.
So the staff in these cheap hotels tend to be these uneducated boys from outside of Delhi, from small areas
They have no education and they have.. and they come with these backward mentalities unfortunately.
Do not stay in 500 rupee hotels if you are a girl, okay?
Anyway, at this point she was with her boyfriend and now just wait to see what happens when her boyfriend leaves the hotel.
Jordan: And they knew that I was now in this hotel alone.
From that very morning, they started acting completely different to me.
At one point, they even.. one of them even followed me up the stairs.
They called the room and they just said into the phone, "Hey baby!"
And I hung up and they called the room again.. just silent.. not saying anything.
Um.. it was just kind of creepy. The next day, they called my room and I pick up the phone and they were making sexual noises.. breathing
Karl: Okay so let me give you some insights into the minds of these guys.
These guys are from a patriarchal system where they see women as an object and I'm not talking about all Indian men are bad.
I'm talking about a small percentage of Indian men, these backward type of guys
And so to scare a girl on the phone like that.. to grope a girl.. to pass rude comments to a girl.. this makes these guys feel really powerful.
It makes them feel like they are real men right.. which is total rubbish.
But for them, this is a form of entertainment. They get off on this. They enjoy this.
And part of it is also that here in India, couples that are not married are not respected as much.
So these guys have seen her with her boyfriend and they've been thinking, "Oh, she is going around doing immoral things with this guy.
Then why won't she do immoral things with me?", that's their thinking.
They think she is a bad girl and she is doing bad and immoral things.
It's totally crazy, right? In this next clip, you are gonna see right inside the minds of these guys.
One of the guys is a rapist and the other two are his lawyers.
And the rapist is responsible for the Jyoti Singh rape in 2012 which shook India.
Lawyer: She should not go in night hours with her boyfriend.
Karl: There is nothing more I can add to that. Those guys explain themselves perfectly.
And this is what India is dealing with: these kinds of mentalities.
Jordan: I was in my room and one of the guys knocked on the door and said, "Hello, open your door".
And I thought 'No, I'm not opening my door'.
He came back an hour later and he banged something really hard against the door. I don't know what but it made such a loud sound, startled me.
And he said, "Ma'am! Ma'am! Open your door right now."
Karl: Trust your gut. And that's exactly what Jordan did. She didn't let them in when they were telling all these lies to try to get in her room.
This is like a horror movie. And to be honest, it's really hard to understand the feelings that she will be going through at this point,
locked in this hotel room in Delhi with these guys trying to get in.
Until you are in that situation, you don't know.. you know, it's easy for us to criticize or other things.. 'why didn't you do that, why did you do this'
But until you are in a situation and if you don't have an experience of what to do, you don't know what to do.
Jordan: I knew that he had just turned off my AC. Immediately, he knocks at my door and says, "Hello! The AC is broken.
We need to come in and fix the AC. Open the door and I will come in and fix your AC."
And I just said 'No, I'm not answering the door'. Then they shut off the WiFi and said the same story that they need to come in and fix the WiFI.
Kept telling me "Open the door and let us in". I just felt so certain that if I did open the door, then because they were so desparately trying with the lies..
to get into my room and to get me to open the door, I did feel very certain that if I did, then something very bad would happen.
Karl: I say this in my 'India Survival Guide' which helps people travel safely and confidently in India:
You have to be assertive and aggressive here in India. In India, strength respects strength only.
Every day here, it's a fight, to do whatever you need to do, you know. So these guys only respect strength.
If you look weak, if you give off weak signals, people will prey on you.
These guys will prey on you. They will think you are weak.
So in this case, Jordan should have kicked up a fuss as soon as got that phone call.
She should have sent them blasting on the phone, you know 'why are you doing this?', 'don't do this', 'I'm leaving'. And she should have left.
She should have got out of there straight away after that first weird phone call, you know.
But it's easy for us to say this after the facts, you know. But in hindsight, yeah.
But Jordan has probably never experienced this type of harassment before.. so yeah.. you can't criticize her, you can't judge her.
She has no experience in dealing with these types of situations and that's one thing that I hope to change.
I want to empower foreigners to be able to deal with this kind of stuff.
And to just enjoy India because India is an amazing and beautiful country and I think it's the greatest country in the world, especially for travelling.
You just need to be a little prepared, okay? Obviously, I'm a guy.
But, I've also come across this type of harassment as a man. It was really on the lower side of things.
It's more of gay guys hitting on me and being too touchy. I had this one guy try to kiss me on my cheek..
I had a guy rubbing my thigh.. I had a guy coming upto me and say 'Lollipop! Lollipop!'
And you know.. what is it called.. knock me in my private parts gently.
And.. yeah it's creepy. But it gets me to my point: Don't be overly friendly. That was my problem.
I'm really friendly. I will chat with anybody. You know, I'll say "Hello.." and I'll chat away. And I'll go have a coffee with them.
But this is often taken as the wrong signal. You know, if you are being too friendly, guys can take it the wrong way
as in, you want to sleep with them. That's what I've experienced.
If you get into a problem like Jordan was in, you can call the Delhi Police and they will happily come,
pick you up from your room, blast the guys downstairs and file a police report against them.
And you don't have to have a sim to call the Delhi Police. You can call the emergency number anywhere in the world from your smartphone.
It's an emergency system on your phone which will connect to some cellphone network and reach the police.
And actually, this kind of harassment, it happens everywhere in the world.
So when you are travelling especially as a solo female, which I know is totally unfair, you have to be extra prepared when you are travelling.
especially alone. You know, even in this situation, in her situation in India, she wasn't alone. She was with her boyfriend.
She still had those terrible things happening to her. So you just have to be prepared.
I really hope that I haven't scared you too much with this video. I want you to come to India.
I want you to have a life changing experience in India. I want you to love India.
I want you to have a positive experience here and you know, most tourists do.
But you just have to take some precautions. You just have to wisen up and get street smart before you come here, okay?
Then you can love India like I do. And it turns out that Jordan's fears were totally legitimate.
The Police are investigating this hotel now and they have been closed.
I want to thank Jordan for telling her story. And I've link to the full video in the description and it goes on quite a lot more.
You can even see the guys standing outside her door. It is creepy.
But I want to thank her because it is such a hard thing to do, to speak out like this, to tell your story tot he whole world.
It's really really hard. And despite what happened to her in India, Jordan says she loved her time here and she wants to come back.
So if you guys go to her video, leave a comment, leave some love and invite her back to Incredible India.