Bengaluru, 26 October

Have you heard of the Hummus trail? 

It is a tourist route in India frequented by Israeli backpackers. It extends from Goa to places like Hampi, Pushkar, and Kasol and Manali in Himachal Pradesh, and more recently, all the way up to Leh and Ladakh. 

The trail has existed for at least a decade, per locals, and some reports suggest it has been around since the 1980s. On it, you can not only find homestays and eateries catering to an Israeli audience, with menus, signs and posters in Hebrew, but also, more recently, healing retreats for IDF soldiers returning from military tours. 

The trail has recently come into focus after multiple reports by tourists and locals that it houses cafes and businesses owned by Israelis that do not allow Indians to enter. 

In 2025, user u/iceb3rg3r on social media site Reddit, who said they’re from Mumbai, posted that in Kasol, they came across many Israelis who seemed to be long-time residents but don’t mingle with the locals. They also said that they were denied entry into what seemed to be an Israeli-only café. 

The user further posted that they found a building with a notice saying that its security systems were improved with donations from “The Security Assistance Fund of THE JEWISH AGENCY FOR ISRAEL In cooperation with KEREN HAYESOD.” 

The latter is an official fundraising organisation for the State of Israel, while the former says, on its website, that “From founding and building the State of Israel to fostering connections among Jewish communities worldwide”, it operates “in 65+ countries globally to secure a vibrant Jewish future”.

Israeli cafes in India step up isolationism since 7 Oct attacks

Since the 7 October, 2023 attacks by Hamas in Israel, traffic along India’s so-called 'Hummus trail' has only increased as IDF soldiers come down to India after their service in the military. 

As far back as 2015, Israeli online news outlet The Times of Israel had posted a story, citing local reports, that a café in Kasol called Freekasol refused to serve Indian customers. The owner of the café was ‘widely reported to be Israeli’, it said, although some later reports say that the man was Indian. 

The report also included eyewitness and personal accounts of Indians being turned away in an ‘unpleasant’ manner. One Israeli customer reportedly said ‘Indians can’t be trusted’ because they place ‘big orders’ and then allegedly can’t pay. Furthermore, multiple personal accounts across these reports have spoken about encountering Islamophobia from Israeli tourists. 

Now, news outlet Al Jazeera’s social media channel, AJ+, has reported that some of the cafes, raves and parties have stopped allowing not only Indians but also other white foreign tourists. 

Five months ago, user u/Own-Jelly9655 on Reddit said they faced this treatment in Dharamkot, a village near Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh. A video by Facebook user Nishi Kumari says that a locality in the northern hill station is called ‘Mini Israel’ due to the number of Israeli-owned businesses in the area, especially cafes. 

A report by an outlet called American Kahani claims, “The informal Israeli community that has grown up along the Trail has developed its own supply chains, its own hospitality infrastructure, and its own social spaces — from which Indians are, in a growing number of documented cases, excluded.”

Other states affected by this trend include Goa, where the writer of this article, in 2024, experienced the existence of cafes with menus in Russian, owing to the high number of Russian tourists in North Goa. 

In the video posted by AJ+, Indian activist and educator Shrishti Khanna described the trend as a form of ‘colonisation’ and ‘Israeli apartheid.’ She further said that the trend is creating a power hierarchy similar to the one existing in Palestine, in which people other than Israeli citizens have to follow a different set of rules, and cannot intervene in the ones being followed by Israeli citizens. 

The video further claims that nearly 80,000 Israelis travel to India each year, many of whom are former soldiers, and cites Khanna in saying that they do not face the risk of prosecution for any alleged war crimes they may have committed in Gaza due to the Hindu nationalist BJP-led coalition government at the centre, which is close to Israel. Khanna likens the BJP government’s reported ethno-nationalist principles to those of Zionism. 

This becomes relevant in the case of Eitan Gilboa, an Israeli soldier and reservist of the 271st Combat Engineering Battalion. A Brussels-based Palestinian rights organisation called the Hind Rajab Foundation in June 2026 alleged that Gilboa, who had been vacationing in Himachal Pradesh, had committed war crimes in Gaza in 2024. The foundation filed complaints with the police, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs and the Bureau of Immigration, saying the acts he carried out in Gaza during his time in the military in 2024 violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, which has been ratified by India. Gilboa reportedly left India by the time the complaints were filed.

Another report by AJ+, also featuring Khanna, claimed to a show a video of Israeli citizens ‘healing’ from trauma in a village in Himachal Pradesh, by loudly beating objects and shouting. The practice reportedly drove away an Indian man who lived next to the space in which it was taking place, and hurt the revenue generated by the bed and breakfast he hosted at his residence. 

A 2025 report by Sara Radha Pelham, a London-based Bengali Jewish journalist, on Vashti Media claims that certain organisations offer Israelis the opportunity to ‘get away’ from their army experience while on tour in India. The trail has also inspired complaints of drug-peddling and drug use from locals as a result, with many former Israeli soldiers reportedly turning to psychedelics and marijuana during their time on it. 

Meanwhile, Khanna’s public Instagram account is currently withheld in India due to an order by the Indian government, per a message displayed by Meta when one tries to access the account. 

No arm of the Indian government is known to have responded to the Al Jazeera reports at time of writing, or to the complaints filed by the Hind Rajab Foundation.