When we travel aboard, we love to claim that we are there to experience the culture. We tends to look down on package tour that lock tourists up inside air conditioned coaches and only released them at specific spots to take a few snapshots. It seems the cultural experience is what distinct intelligent travelers from dumb tourists. Love to experience culture works fine when traveling to places with lovely culture. Walking down the Louvre like a French, having Cappuccino like an Italian or soaking hot spring like a Japanese all sound very cool. You can always learn something new and useful from those rich cultures by interacting with the local people.
However, there is a dilemma when traveling to places with not so lovely culture. Why would anyone want to experience the mess in India? Why would anyone want to experience the uncivilized vegetarian diet culture? It is OK to try it for the first times, so that you can claim it sucks and stay away from it forever. There is simply nothing to learn from those backward cultures. Why bother? I guess the only reason someone want to experience those culture is becoming an armature anthologist, observe the culture first hand and explain why it sucks to satisfy his academic curiosity.