At Cairo’s Khan al Khalili market, only one Indian is your passport to bargains, goodwill, cups of piping hot Turkish coffee and a hookah – ‘Amita Baccha’ – Amitabh Bachchan to you and me.

Have you noticed how India follows you wherever you go? Reinvented, remixed, regurgitated, a little bit of India keeps popping up to greet you as you journey to the distant corners of the world. Even when you are travelling to escape India, says Geeta Rao

If you’ve paid a lot of money to travel abroad the one thing you want, is to feel you are abroad. Or you want your money back. Visiting London for example is like going to South Ex in Delhi – it has become such a close extension of India. What do you do in a country where chicken tikka is rated the national dish and every McDonald’s is serving chicken tikka in a roomali wrap? Or when you hope to catch a truly British West End musical and you get Bombay Dreams…boy-meets-girl Bollywood style? You want your money back pronto that’s what you want. But there is no escape. In bits and bytes, in perceptions and reality, by migration or transmigration, India pops up wherever you go.

In little Delphi tucked away in the mountains of Greece, known for its Oracle (the one that foretold the fate of Achilles and Agamemnon), I stand breathing in the atmosphere, the great sense of history and eternity, under the marble columns of the ancient Greek temple. And am brought sharply out of my reverie with joyful voices shouting, ‘Indira Gandhi, Indira Gandhi’. It is an old couple that speaks only Greek. Soon more people join in and everyone choruses with Delphic wisdom, ‘Indira Gandhi, Indira Gandhi’. I wonder briefly if I should enact the gunshots that killed Mrs Gandhi, in this land that invented the phrase ‘Greek Tragedy’ but I am not sure if it matters. In this teeny town with a population of 1200 with the blissfully happy smiles that grace all its inhabitants’ faces, I decide it is better and more fitting that Mrs Gandhi remain a cross cultural concept. Besides, it may break their hearts.

At Cairo’s Khan al Khalili market, only one Indian is your passport to bargains, goodwill, cups of piping hot Turkish coffee and a hookah – ‘Amita Baccha’ – Amitabh Bachchan to you and me. Street boys and shopkeepers yell his name, some even naming his movies in Arabic. The names make no sense but the posters look familiar. And the welcome at Khan al Khalili is certainly Big B sized.

And in Morocco…it is clearly Shah Rukh Khan. I suppose it can be traced back to a smart distributor of Indian origin. In Rabat or in the medinas of Casablanca or with taxi drivers ferrying you around, Shah Rukh Khan is always by your side even if you think you left him safely behind in ‘Mannat’ in Mumbai. Between Berber and English, Shah Rukh Khan is our shared language evolving into a basic grammar. This is reminiscent of uncles, aunts and parents of friends who went to Russia in the days when Russia was the place to visit and came back with stories of Russians singing ‘Mera joota hai Japani’ as a greeting to Indians because they loved actor-director Raj Kapoor’s films and knew the lyrics of his songs but couldn’t understand the meanings.

England, of course, shows off colossal 17th century elephant armour from India in a medieval Wadsworth castle somewhere near Berwick, deep into Northumbria or thereabouts. I am chasing a 16th century British queen and a 20th century Indian director so I suppose this is not a surprise. I am in the process of tracking down six castles following director Shekhar Kapur’s locations from the film Elizabeth, for a feature I’m writing. Wadsworth is unique in its haunted charms. ‘The Jodhpurs, my dear! The Jodhpurs!’ sighs Sir Humphrey, Lord of the manor or whatever it is that owners of castles are called in England. He is not referring to his breeches but to his friends, the Jodhpur royals after whom the riding breeches are named. In this remote and freezing corner of England it seems strange to talk of the desert and the royal hunts of Jodhpur which I am no authority on. But I try.

In the historic New Forest, also in the north, amidst picturesque inns, 11th century thatched cottages and New Forest horses, I drive past a little road called Meerut Road. Named after the old Meerut Cantonment in Uttar Pradesh because wounded Indian soldiers who fought in World War I were hospitalised here. The memory I have of Meerut is hazy, of endless, dusty, crowded bus journeys from Delhi into Uttar Pradesh as a child and they do not match this pastoral little English spot. A British title in an Indian body greets me courteously in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. “I am Lord Hartlepool of Harpool,” says an elegantly clad Bengali gentleman as he serves me a hot naan. He is from East Bengal. We are sitting in his restaurant, a Bangladeshi curry joint which he started after he migrated from India. He obviously made a fortune from running it and bought himself a title but prefers to continue working in his restaurant.

At the Chinese Palace Museum, in Taipei, where the finest collection of Chinese art in the world resides, I am immersed in Sung, Quing and T’ang dynasties when up pops apna Hindustan again. “Hindustani jade,” says the museum guide, reverentially pointing to an exquisite piece of Quing Dynasty jade. The Emperors of China, she explained, sent the finest jade to India because the best workmanship, filigree work, enamelwork and gold leaf came from India.

At Chungshio Fushing, a bustling part of Taipei, the taxi driver recognises the fact that I am Indian but is fatally disappointed that I am not an IT person. “Brains, Indian brains,” he says admiringly, making me feel naturally deprived and mentally challenged. For I am merely in advertising. But he reflects a growing stereotype about Indians in Asia. Jakarta, Indonesia, is closer home culturally but still the strains of the famous Hindi film song, Saawan ka mahina, pawan kare shor, lilted by Sunil Dutt and Nutan in the ’70s film, Milan, comes as a pleasant surprise. I am told this song is lisped artlessly by young singers in karaoke bars as well as heartfully belted out by music bands who haven’t a clue what the words mean. It is sung heroically down to the famously sensual, ‘arre baba…sor nahin shor’ bit. Ambica Kuthiala, a channel head based in Indonesia, says film star Nargis was a known name in Indonesia and Sunil Dutt was her husband, hence the strong connection. But why specifically Milan and why Saawan ka Mahina and why 30 years down the line, will remain a mystery.

Parisian newspapers had exulted in John Galliano’s collection inspired by Bollywood. The sort of stuff generations of Bollywood designers have been making for generations of movie heroines but, Galliano’s was a remix without the key element of Bollywood design – the discreet filmi padding that is mandatory for all Bollywood heroines. Jhalli (only a Punjabi word can describe this taste) pink sarees with big butties, mix and match blouses, lace borders – kitsch, glitz and terribly filmi. ‘Gulabi, ferooozi, turqueez,’ is how the local tailor masterji living in Vasai or Bhayander or Mira Road would have described it. But, from the ramps of Paris it came to us via the International Herald Tribune and Suzy Menkes.

Tokyo’s Shibuya district is known to be the spot where fashion trends arise for the rest of the world. Girls sport Indian bandhini, Indian bridal wear…matha patties and tikkas, white kabuki faces, black boots and camouflage pants. This is a strange mix that has a surreal familiar with an unfamiliar quality to it. The contexts have changed the reference points and seeing a matha patti without a bride is visually disconcerting.

Now, Mauritius suffers from a food disconnect. Everyone raves about dholpuri, the ultimate street snack. Tingling with anticipation, I discover that this is a bland mix of chana daal and puri, masquerading as a French puff pastry. This is in actuality, as I later stumble upon its history – Bihari chana daal and puri brought over from a century ago – now mixed with French-Creole and African ancestry.

Sometimes, you don’t have to travel to a place to be reminded of India. An American colleague meeting me for the first time in Bangkok gushed, “Oh, you remind me so much of New York!” I must admit to preening a bit at this, thinking it was my attitude that makes me sooo New York. “It is your accent,” she continued insouciantly. “It reminds me of all those Indian taxi drivers back in Queens.” I rest my case.

[Ad-woman, columnist and regular Verve contributor, Geeta Rao spent two years as regional creative director, Ogilvy, based in Thailand and worked across the Asia-Pacific region. She is now back in India with a fund of traveller’s tales and her own communications consultancy.]