Sure I’ll always remember Agra,” said the Australian woman bitterly, “but not for the Taj.” Shauna is a seasoned traveller; she’s backpacked around Australia and New Zealand, spent months in Nigeria and Zaire, lived in Europe, Canada and Chile.

The day before she’d left for a tour of Agra, Jaipur and Varanasi, she’d responded to our gentle words of advice by pointing to the relevant section in the online travel advisories about India: “So-called ‘eve-teasing’ or verbal and sometimes physical harassment of single Indian women is not unusual. There have been more reports in the past year of foreign women being harassed in this manner.”

“I’m prepared,” she told us. “I’ve packed conservative clothes, done my homework ? Babs and Ron will meet me in Varanasi and we’ll go to Agra together. I’ll be fine.” When she came back, she was shattered. Jaipur had been great. The trouble had started in Varanasi; she and Babs were never safe. She hated the term “eve-teasing”; she hated the term “harassment”. It didn’t begin to cover what she had experienced as a constant, nerve-wracking barrage of catcalls, leers and groping.

Agra threw her completely. As the city of the Taj, Agra should have been used to women tourists by now. And it is; it now knows women tourists make good targets. Shauna narrowly escaped rape; Babs had her purse stolen. Their stories of men following them, getting aggressive with Ron when he was around were horribly, sadly familiar.

In the years that I’ve travelled in this country, I’ve never had a bad experience ?but there have been a few really close calls. High-end hotels with bad security; mid-level hotels with no security; hotels so shady that they’re the security problem. Cab drivers in a strange city who try to take the loneliest roads, bus drivers who try to make sure you’re the last one to get off. Like most women travellers, I learned to trust my instincts, to plan ahead, when to dress down, when to get aggressive, when to find cover.

Foreign women, especially those with white skin, are often regarded (in North India especially) as highly desirable and as morally loose. Indian women can often find protection in groups; foreign women travelling alone are at a very high risk, but even in groups, they are seen as natural targets. Foreign women of colour face an entirely different set of problems ? black women face racism even as they are seen as vulnerable targets. What bothers me is that as more places get used to tourists, the automatic protection that used to be accorded to “foreigners” is increasingly being withdrawn. Familiarity, if you’re a white woman, breeds attempt.

Shauna spent a week recovering from her trauma in Delhi; then she hit the road again. She had a marvellous time in Sikkim, enjoyed Kerala and is exploring Goa. Neither the south of India nor the east are axiomatically safe for women, she says, and other women travellers have their own stories of misunderstandings, harassment, assault. “But it’s okay, it’s at acceptable risk levels in these parts of India. I don’t mind facing reasonable odds. But I mind the fact that being white and a woman puts a bull’s-eye on my forehead.”