• Loading up on food from free breakfast buffets at hotels, often enough to last them through the day
• Shoplifting; bargaining incessantly in places with fixed prices
• Getting drunk on the plane
• Treating guides, hotel staff like personal servants; refusing to tip them
• Ogling and hitting on foreign women, even when accompanied by their wives
• Demanding Indian food in restaurants in Paris and Zurich
• Jumping queues; late for everything-and then throwing tantrums when they miss an event

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• Being late for everything—and throwing tantrums after missing an event, or losing a seat on a tour bus, because of unpunctuality.
  
• Ogling women at beaches, poolsides, pubs and discos. "It's common to see Indian men walking around waterparks, clothed from head to foot, taking pictures of semi-clad women," says one tour escort with a smile. "I've seen one half of a honeymooning couple dumping his wife on the beach with picnic stuff while he goes off to ogle. "

• High-handed behavior with tour guides, hotel staff, such as bellboys, receptionists and housekeepers, especially while travelling in Asia, where Indian tourists feel freer to be "themselves". Inconsiderate actions like swapping rooms without telling the hotel, making it impossible to figure out who's had what from which minibar.
  
• Bargaining in places that don't "do" bargains.
  
• Cheapskate behaviour like raiding breakfast buffets for fruit, yogurt and bread that will provide mini-meals for the rest of the day; or watching a show at a restaurant without ordering anything. The result, say tour operators, is that some outlets have taken to levying a higher breakfast charge or slapping cover charges on Indian tourists.

According to one particularly charitable explanation, even hitting on hapless foreign women is a form of cultural misunderstanding. "I don't excuse it, but the fact is many Indians who go abroad start with Bangkok, which is the cheapest destination, and they zero in on the sex and sleaze scene there. That colours their attitude, and leads them to believe that foreign countries are full of available women," says one agent. He recalls the time an Indian had to spend 48 hours in a jail in Pattaya for propositioning two Japanese tourists who he mistook for hookers. "It was a misunderstanding. Indians behave badly to show status, and when they feel they can get away with it, but generally avoid behaviour that might get them into jail," he says.

Shoplifting, however, seems to be an exception. Seasoned tour operators say they have bribed policemen across the world to keep Indian travellers out of jail. "It is a global phenomenon, but the audacity with which some Indians, who, by the way, have plenty of dollars with them, do it, takes my breath away," says one escort. His favourite, and scariest, story is about the time he was "lent" a jacket by a member of his group while at a store in Istanbul. "It was cold, and I had no coat on. I was quite touched when the man came up to me and said here, wear my jacket. It was only after we reached the hotel, and I returned the jacket to him, that he happily told me he had stolen it."

Fifty million Indians travelling abroad by 2020. Is the world ready for them?