Abstract: The article examines the complex intersections between travel writing, tourist practices and ethnography in Ilija Trojanows collection of travel reports ‚Der Sadhu an der Teufelswand. Reportagen aus einem anderen Indien‘ (2001). While clear-cut distinctions between travellers and tourists are increasingly questioned and challenged by recent scholarship in the field of tourism research due to the ubiquitous and dominant nature of tourism as a global phenomenon, Trojanow’s travel texts present an ostensibly anti-touristic narrator defending the possibility of an authentic, genuine travel experience unaffected by tourism's global sway. On the basis of this text collection, the paper addresses the contradictions inherent in the narrator’s strategies to distance himself from tourist modes. The narrator employs ethnographic writing strategies and practices to set himself apart from other tourists. By highlighting the affinities between ethnography and tourism, however, the paper questions the effectiveness and rhetoric persuasiveness of the narrator’s attempts at dissociating himself from tourism.