Maybe it’s just me but when you travel to foreign locales isn’t there some kind of charm to having the “commoner” experience? Of going somewhere and moving (as my father says) “with the people”?

The Wall Street Journal called it “VIP Travel on the Cheap” but I think a better name might be (with all due respect to the anonymous maharaja in question) “People Who Want To Visit Foreign Countries Without Having to Interact with Anyone Who Actually Lives There”.

One of the hottest concepts in travel right now is the “insider” experience, where travelers are promised a chance to hobnob with celebrities, go behind the scenes where other tourists are barred and be treated like visiting dignitaries.

Companies are selling tours of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s entertaining room, visits with Olympic athletes and drinks with an Indian maharaja — complete with an elephant parade.

Now, I’m not saying you have to go to India and tan in the Dharavi slum or drive an auto rickshaw around Queen’s Necklace during rush hour or do a load of whites under the oppressive third world sun. But, if you’re going to sit in a plane and make the commitment and fly all the way around the world to India, shouldn’t you actually try to see some of it?

Candace, I ask you: Isn’t there some charm to riding in a cramped, crowded train car at the end of the day, even if you have to face the occasional indignity of being molested? Isn’t there some adventure to drinking contraband coconut water from the side of the road, even if you have to face the certain indignity of being cross-examined every time you leave the bathroom in your grandparents’ house as to whether or not you have loose motion? Isn’t there some connection to be made in an open-air market among the sights and sounds and smells, even if, lost in the dialects and language barriers and unfamiliar gesticulating, you don’t understand a word?

This “insider” experience, on the other hand, sounds kind of like the upper-echelon equivalent of going all the way to Bombay to order a Papa John’s Pizza. Which you can do now.

Part of me wonders if I’m being too sensitive and overly protective about the charms of a country I’ve never lived in because, despite that small irony, it’s always evoked a sense of homecoming I’ve never felt anywhere else in the world.

And to that end, I might have been able to look the other way, too, had Candace Jackson’s travelogue not meandered from the pages of the Journal to Talk of the Nation last week.

CONAN: Hmm. Looking at it for the other end of the telescope, as it were, for a moment, what’s in it for the Maharajah of Jaipur to offer a dinner?
Ms. JACKSON: Well, I mean, in that case, you know, the maharajas in India, a lot of times, sort of use their palaces as tourist attractions. There you’re, the special access you’re getting is, you know, a possible meeting with the maharaja himself. So, you know, on some level I think, for that one, the screening process to even be able to do it is quite high. So, he might just be interested in meeting high-profile Americans himself, or, I don’t, you know, I don’t want to speak for him.

Back at the ranch, Candace Jackson concluded her Wall Street musings with the following:

On a business trip to India, Jennifer Joseph used a travel agent to arrange for cocktails with the maharaja of Jaipur. He met her and a group of her friends at the palace gates, where they had arrived on a horse-drawn carriage, and gave them a tour of his home.

“He was a little reserved, but very welcoming,” says the 25-year-old television producer. The maharaja asked them about their travels and showed them photographs of previous visitors, including Jacqueline Kennedy. “It felt like something out of a movie.”

He was a little reserved? Dude, maybe he didn’t want you at his house.

Then again, I take some small, delightful, giggling comfort in the fact that maybe this anonymous maharaja was not, in fact, who they thought he was but rather a re-patriated IT worker — with a penchant for cocktails, Western women and Adobe PhotoShop — exacting his revenge on a world that’s willing to travel to the ends of the earth in search of perceived realities.