This article looks at contemporary Westerners in the Indian city of Varanasi. The Westerners claim to appreciate authentic India and I argue that this authenticity refers to India's ancient, romanticised past instead of its modern present. I investigate how the Westerners encounter India and Indians and what kinds of subject positions are constructed in those encounters. The article also discusses how the authenticity becomes constructed, especially in regard to the Westerners who are studying Indian classical music in Varanasi. I argue that the Westerners 'imagine' India according their own needs and I ask how their understanding of India and Indian people relates to the 'colonial imagination'.

This article outlines a phenomenon whereby people of affluent countries move abroad in search of a countercultural lifestyle. The article compares the concept of bohemian lifestyle migration with those of neo-nomadism and lifestyle mobilities; the different concepts are understood as lenses that light different aspects of similar phenomena. The article uses two ethnographic case studies from India as lenses onto the phenomenon. Rather than merely focusing on what people say and how they define their identities and lifestyles, it is important to pay attention to the structures and circumstances within which they operate. Their transnationally mobile lifestyle not only is an individual choice but is embedded in political and economic structures that both enable and limit their actions. In particular, the article argues that paying attention to people's income strategies and to the prevailing nation state system is crucial when elaborating on the phenomenon. The article also discusses the limitations of the countercultural aspects of the lifestyle and asks whether such a privileged group of people can be defined as countercultural and if so, what kind of counterculturalism it is.

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Increasing numbers of ‘Western’ families spend several months a year in Goa, India, and the rest of the time in the parents’ native countries or elsewhere. These ‘lifestyle migrants’ are motivated by a search for ‘a better quality of life.’ This article asks whether their children can be labeled as Third Culture Kids (TCKs) by elaborating and critically probing this concept. Based on extensive ethnography, the study not only examined what children say in interviews, but also paid attention to what they do. Findings from the study problematize the presumed elitist privilege of TCKs and the assumption that the parents have an unproblematic sense of belonging to their native ‘cultures.’ The article elaborates on what it means for the children to live in the global subcultural center of Goa and on their agency in creating the social and cultural environment in which they live.

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