The man to my right does a double take as we whizz past, as do the two men squashed onto a moped to my left. I’m sitting in the back of a cheerful pink rickshaw, being driven by a woman – a rarity in India. We are flying through the centre of Jaipur, known as the ‘Pink City’, where even the rose-hued buildings seem to be quietly in support of this revolution on wheels.
The Pink City Rickshaw Company is a female-led transportation service and a defiant outlier in the bustling urban centre. My driver, Hemlata, laughs as she recalls a man actually choking on his water when she first zoomed past him years ago.
“When [women] drive, they get a lot of comments from male drivers,” explains Renu Sharma, another driver – and one of the first women to respond when the company placed an advert looking for staff in a local newspaper back in 2017. “[They say] nasty things like, ‘This is not your place, go home and do your housework’, but our job is to provide for our guests”. Since Renu came on board nine years ago, the enterprise has gone on to train more than 200 women.
This company is just one example of how India is attempting to level the gender playing field when it comes to gender equity, albeit at a glacial pace by some standards. Tourism in particular is providing a much-needed bridge for women to earn money independently of their husbands – all of which is central pillar of the Intrepid Women’s Expedition to India, a tour designed to show travellers the country’s changing face of feminism through the eyes of the women living it, providing tangible support to them in the process.
The expedition spans Delhi, Jodhpur, Jaipur and Agra – and for many women in northern India the path to independence is blocked not only by societal attitudes, but even by the likes of architecture designed to keep them invisible. In many areas, houses are set back in courtyards so that women remain unseen. “It’s not really your life in India as a woman,” our Intrepid guide, Anjali, tells me. “Your father decides everything, then your husband, then if he dies, your son”.
However, the tourism sector is beginning to break down these physical and cultural walls. Intrepid Travel, for instance, partners with local women who host homemade dinners in said courtyards, offering tourists the chance to see inside a real, multi-generational Indian family home (and I can confirm both the food and conversation during our visit was phenomenal).
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The company also actively presents at universities to inspire women to become guides; sometimes the women are ready, but their parents are not. It requires a profound mindset shift, one that Anjali Singh has navigated firsthand.
Her journey began in Siwan, a small village near the Nepal border, where the traditional expectation was marriage by age 18, but instead took on a government scholarship and "escaped" to Delhi, for a Master’s in Travel and Tourism. (In 2005, women made up around 40% of students in Indian higher education, compared with close to 49% today, marking a steady narrowing of the gender gap in universities).
“I wanted to be financially independent. People used to say to my parents, ‘You guys are letting her go to Delhi, she’s going to bring shame on the name of the family’,” she recalls. Now, when Anjali sends photos of the groups she leads gathered high in the hills of Jodhpur or outside the Taj Mahal, and her mother replies, “Where are their husbands? Who is taking care of them?” Anjali’s reply is simple: “I am!”
A Lifeline for Survivors
While there are many positive stories like Anjali’s, it’s impossible to ignore the grim reality that often defines India in the global news cycle: there are grave statistics regarding violent sexual assaults.
In 2022, according to a BBC report, India recorded 428,278 crimes against women, marking a 26.35% increase since 2016. Many cases involved domestic violence, kidnapping, and sexual assault, with specific reports of 107 acid attacks and over 1,500 instances of trafficking. Many incidences go unreported, so it is difficult to know the true extent of male-perpetrated violence against women and girls.
The perception of India as unsafe is precisely why female-only travel groups have surged in popularity. Intrepid’s Women’s Expeditions launched in 2018 with only four departures; this year, it’s set to run the trip more than 20 times, a testament to the demand for curated access to the country. Traditions like sati (the historical practice of burning widows alive) may have been banned in 1949, but the weight of being a woman very much persists.
Even the celebration of Holi can be a double-edged sword; the beautiful festival of colour carries major safety concerns that often mean women choose to celebrate in private to avoid drunken crowds – which is exactly what we did as our visit coincided with the event. While enjoying the celebrations and dancing in the safety of the hotel garden, I chatted with a fellow guest who said she’d initially attempted to party in the street outside but was quickly groped.
Even with a professional guide, the experience of being a woman in India is one of constant hypervigilance. At Jama Masjid, a 17th-century mosque in Delhi, our group was slowly surrounded by men attempting to take photos of us and later, in Jodhpur, Anjali had to call out a man for approaching us to snap pictures for his social media – proving how worthwhile it is to travel with a local.
“It comes from a place of curiosity,” she explained, but the discomfort was palpable. But, Anjali says, tourism acts as a mirror and is reducing incidents like this. When local men see Western women travelling alone, or when they see Anjali leading a group of visitors, she hopes it plants a seed. “They think, ‘If they can, then maybe my daughter can too’,” Anjali says.
India’s leaders have implemented several measures in an effort to address the safety concerns. There is the Himmat Plus app, a government-backed safety initiative for women that can send your location to the Delhi Police force if needed, and the famous women-only carriages at the front of metro trains.
There is a growing presence of female officers across the bigger cities and states, too. Yet, as Anjali notes, “The system is getting better... but in terms of women's safety, still India has a long way to go”. This is evident when, as we approach Delhi, all the curtains are removed from our bus, as following a brutal gang rape in 2012 (that took place on a coach with poor visibility inside), the state declared all lights must remain on when a bus is travelling at night.
Still, just as you feel spooked, the resistance to these horrors presents itself again – and nowhere is the pushback against gendered violence more visible and inspiring than at Sheroes Hangout in Agra. The café is managed by survivors of acid attacks, a horrific form of violence that primarily targets women. These attacks often stem from rejected marriage proposals or domestic disputes, designed by men to ‘mark’ women permanently and exclude them from society.
For Dolly, a survivor who joined Sheroes in 2015, the café has been a literal lifeline. In 2013, when she was just 13 years old, while sat at home playing a board game with her siblings, a 35-year-old man she had rejected for months prior burst in and threw acid on her. The pain was unimaginable.
She spent the following two years housebound and crying, hidden away from a world she felt would only judge her. “I thought it happened only to me,” Dolly says, as we speak inside the café which plays videos on the wall detailing individual staff members’ stories.
It operates as a survivor-led space where women refuse to cover their faces, challenging the stigma that they should be the ones in hiding. By working in public roles, they are reclaiming their visibility and place in the world.
Money is the key to freedom
At Sunder Rang, a craft studio in the village of Chandelao (just outside the city of Jodhpur), women are tailoring and beading their way to financial independence. They earn a daily rate plus a profit share of what they sell, which ranges from cushion covers to chic dresses. The centre was established back in 2007, as a way to encourage local women to start earning money independently of their husbands; oftentimes women in rural Indian villages feel their role is to stay at home with their children or assist with farming, and alternative opportunities, including the right to an education, are limited (or non-existent).
Sunder Rang’s design studio allows women to take part in flexible work as seamstresses, and offers reading and writing lessons too, plus an annual road trip somewhere else in the country – the chance of a lifetime for most, who would not be able to travel outside of their small village otherwise. Crucially, the workday is 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM, allowing them to finish their domestic chores before coming to work.
This idea of flexible work for mothers is echoed by the rickshaw drivers in Jaipur. Many of the 30 drivers support up to five people on their monthly salary of 6,000 to 7,000 rupees (around £47).
When I asked a gathered group of female drivers what they dreamed of being as children, the response was heartbreaking: “There were no dreams here”. Most did not get past secondary school. Now, they are the ones driving tourists to monuments and claiming space that was previously denied to them.
“This is teaching women their work is as important as the man’s work,” Remu explains firmly, as another driver jokes that her husband has even started helping her to prepare dinner by chopping vegetables.
This movement, these small shifts towards a more equal society, are visible everywhere – if you know where to look. It is in the Pink City Rickshaw drivers, in the survivors at Sheroes, and in posters of India’s President, Droupadi Murmu, who became the first tribal woman to hold the office back in 2022.
The momentum is undeniably moving forward. Indian women are now pilots, doctors and successful scientists – and, of course, they are seamstresses, waitresses and rickshaw drivers. As we pull up to our destination in Jaipur, a small girl on a passing moped points to us with wide eyes. She is seeing something her grandmother never could: a woman at the wheel, navigating her own path.
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Visit on Intrepid Travel’s 13-day India: Women’s Expedition from £919pp which includes accommodation, ground transport, some meals and activities, and services of a local leader. Departures every month in 2026 exc. May, June, July. International flights are extra. Book at intrepidtravel.com or call 0808 274 5111.
Jennifer Savin is Cosmopolitan UK's multiple award-winning Features Editor, who was crowned Digital Journalist of the Year for her work tackling the issues most important to young women. She regularly covers breaking news, cultural trends, health, the royals and more, using her esteemed connections to access the best experts along the way. She's grilled everyone from high-profile politicians to A-list celebrities, and has sensitively interviewed hundreds of people about their real life stories. In addition to this, Jennifer is widely known for her own undercover investigations and campaign work, which includes successfully petitioning the government for change around topics like abortion rights and image-based sexual abuse. Jennifer is also a published author, documentary consultant (helping to create BBC’s Deepfake Porn: Could You Be Next?) and a patron for Y.E.S. (a youth services charity). Alongside Cosmopolitan, Jennifer has written for The Times, Women’s Health, ELLE and numerous other publications, appeared on podcasts, and spoken on (and hosted) panels for the Women of the World Festival, the University of Manchester and more. In her spare time, Jennifer is a big fan of lipstick, leopard print and over-ordering at dinner. Follow Jennifer on Instagram, X or LinkedIn.
