Originally Posted by drbond
How safe is it for a WASP American to travel around India? Where is safe, where is not? How about the Tiger Reserve? Where not to go? What not to do?
Most of India's as safe for such a person as for a well-off Indian (including Indian "WASP" which are also to be found, even if not in the numbers as used to be the case during the British occupation of India). With regards to tourist places around India, use common sense and you should be fine. Just be prepared for some hassle from a combination of people selling things and/or begging (far less of an issue in the last few years than the decades before).
The only word of caution: if the Indian paramilitary (CRPF, etc.) are running around engaged in larger scale police actions -- anti-militancy operations -- like in Nagaland, Kashmir, etc., then there's more of an issue. I doubt you'd end up in either place given that far eastern India isn't much on the foreign tourist path and that Kashmir is usually visited in the summer (while most foreign tourists not of Indian origin visit during the non-summer period when it's possible to check out more of India without extreme weather issues).
Which Tiger Reserve? Some have almost no tigers, others still have sufficient numbers to see something.