THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE TAXI SCAM IN THE NIGHT

Leaving the moderate safety and security of our hotel, we found ourselves on the streets of New Delhi, people, mopeds, rickshaws, tuk-tuks, taxis, cows, goats, street vendors, pickpockets, and not another tourists face in sight.

We had a mission: to buy train tickets for the rest of our adventure in India, something we have achieved in dozens of countries around the world, but one we were destined to fail this time around. The train station wasn’t far from the hotel so we headed in that direction by foot.

We didn’t turn up in India completely clueless: we had been warned of various scams which run; had been told to watch our pockets/possessions at all times; not to eat food from street vendors, and to sanitize our hands more or less every five minutes! We thought we were prepared enough – we were wrong.

We got to the station, trying to be inconspicuous, maybe no one would realize we are tourists: the only white faces in the street, with backpacks, cameras strapped to our waists and a look of confusion plastered to our faces. As hard as it will be for you to believe this,  somehow our true identities as clueless tourists were spotted and exploited. “You can’t come in here” shouted one chap as we walked towards the station “this is just the exit, the entrance is the path along”. We looked at each other, back at him and then surveyed our surroundings – lots of Indians bustling out of the station or milling around, but no one obviously going in. So we heeded the advice (little did we know, by doing this we instantly had a mark placed on us).

We continued walking to the next path and again started walking towards the station, “Hello, are you looking to buy train tickets?” a different man asked us. We had decided at this point not to interact with anyone, as everyone seemed to be trying to sell us something, or take us somewhere, so we simply ignored him. But he persisted, “Hello, I know you are probably suspicious of people talking to you, but I actually work for the Government’s Tourist Office and am posted here to help people”. We looked again at each other, we didn’t believe him and started to walk off, but he opened his wallet and showed us his Government ID, “Check my ID, I am here to help”. So we looked at his ID, sure enough, it seemed to be a government ID, in date, with a photograph that seemed to match him. He asked what we were doing, how long were we in India, where we needed to get train tickets to and from, and explained the best way for us to get tickets would be from the foreign ticket office/desk which is in the next building to the station. This all sounded reasonable, so we received directions from him to get there and went on our way. We almost made it away, safe and sound, but as we walked off, “By the way, do you know the difference between a registered tuk-tuk and an illegal one?” he asked. We looked confused/puzzled and said we did not. So he pointed at a tuk-tuk and said, these are the ones you want to take, and without asking us, he talked to the driver, the tuk-tuk came over, he got in the front with the driver and told us to get in the back “this tuk-tuk will take you to the ticket office, it will be 20 rupees which is the correct price” (this is about 25p). We were happy to walk, but getting escorted by a government official, for the sake of 25p seemed reasonable enough and got us off the hustle and bustle on the streets.

The tuk-tuk ride was a little longer than we expected, not exactly next door to the station, more like around the corner, over the roundabout, and then down a side street but still, less than five minutes ride which took us to a building which said Government of India Tourist Office. So alls well that ends well, our government friend says he is paid by the government so doesn’t need a tip, he said the tourist office will help us, we paid our 20 rupees, and actually gave our friend 20 rupees, as he needed to get a tuk-tuk back to the station. He didn’t ask for it, but we wanted to say thank you for the help (otherwise what would have come of us if we had just walked into the train station by ourselves…)

Something, in the pit of my stomach, was telling me this wasn’t quite right. The location of the office didn’t seem logical for buying train tickets, whilst it said Government of India, it didn’t seem like a government building, and the staff didn’t seem like government officials. The walls were covered with reviews from other tourists who had been helped by the Government Tourist office, which again, just didn’t seem right. But despite this, we somehow found ourselves sitting on the other side of the desk to a government official, drinking bottled water and soft drinks which they had insisted we have whilst they help us.

We had turned up prepared with a list of trains we wished to take, the train number, the times, the station names, etc. so felt like it should be a pretty straightforward transaction. He looked at our paper, looked at his computer, and asked us various questions about how long we were in India, what our jobs back home were, etc. He explained that in December and January, in Northern India in particular, there is very thick fog/smog which means trains are horrendously delayed for twenty hours or canceled. He said: we were welcome to Google this ourselves, to confirm what he was saying is true. Again alarm bells rang, why would a government official be suggesting we’d need to use Google to confirm he wasn’t lying to us. But still, jetlagged and shell-shocked, we sat there and continued to talk to him.

From the places we were getting trains to and from, he asked what we wanted to do. We had a few tourist ideas in mind, but he started listing lots of different monuments, temples, activities etc that tourists typically do when visiting. He asked whether they were of interest to us, we said they were, but we were really just looking for train tickets right now, we didn’t want to commit to anything else. But he explained that all of these different things we want to see are a long way from each other, the train network won’t help us get to them. We’d be dealing with huge train delays, and then attempting to navigate huge, busy cities and ultimately will see next to nothing. He said the best way to get around would be in a car registered by the Government of India, which can take us to all of these places, see all the attractions each city has to offer and take us between the various cities. We asked how much that would cost (it sounded expensive) but rather than giving a price, he continued to go through details about what we could do, how for a once in a lifetime trip to India we should make sure it counts and so on.

Writing this, it seems insane that we didn’t just leave, but at the time, we were too new to India, too polite and naive so we just let him continue. Finally, he said there are three different prices, the economy, the comfortable and the luxurious: which did we want. The economy, we practically screamed. He used a calculator to do various calculations (or gave the impression that is what he was doing), made various strange faces, wrote down various numbers (without us being able to see them) and then turned over the pad (so we still couldn’t see). Before revealing the costs he again gave us more explanation about how we should be spending our trip – our frustrations must have become clear as he finally revealed the numbers: £250 per person for an eight-day tour, which would take us around and between New Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur (and that was the economy option).

We had gone in with the intention of spending less than £100 between us on train tickets and were now faced a potential bill of £500. But then again, we had come in with not much of an idea what we were doing, how we were going to get anywhere, what exactly we were going to see and now had been given this vision of what we should be doing and how it basically was the only sensible option. We may have been fresh off the plane and tired, but we had the tiniest amount of wits between us and started haggling. After lots of too and fro and managed to get it down to £325 between us, or £162.50 each. It was quite a surreal experience, at that moment in time, we could sort of see that our situation wasn’t right, we knew this wasn’t the right place to buy train tickets, and before we had even paid for the 8 day tour, had realised that the government official who had taken us to the government tourist office was, in fact, all part of the scam. But still, as crazy as it sounds, we decided to go along with it.

We were planning to be roughing it on trains, backpacking around India, exploring, making our own way, discovering, adventuring – and yet here we were with an 8-day tour, by taxi, around the Golden Triangle!

So did this scam end in disaster? Well, after a shaky start (the taxi not turning up the next day when it was due to, some panicked calls to the manager of the government tourist office and a change of driver) the tour was actually overall very good. We spoke with many other backpackers/ travelers who echoed that they had massive delays on the trains, which often meant losing a day to travel and then another day to recover. Once they had reached cities, they had managed to see one or two of the attractions (which indeed were spread far and wide across the city). In comparison, we had expert guides take us directly to each of the main attractions, giving us tours of the city, telling us what scams are run at each location so we could avoid them (hard to believe I know!) and taking us, delay-free, between cities. In fact, our driver told us that 3-nights in Agra would be far too long, he said a day is all you need (to see the Taj Mahal and Baby Taj), we didn’t believe him, but once we got there, we realised he was right, so we arranged, via the tour company, to just stay for a single night, and instead to go to Pushkar for a night (which was a nice little town) and then onto Jaipur a day early (at no extra cost).

Our Tour Driver, KP, with Gemma	Our Tour Driver, KP, with Steve

So overall, the tour was actually very good, with the only gripe that the tour did insist on constantly taking us to see how this town has an age-old tradition of making rugs or creating masonry work or creating clothes which ultimately just ended up being a shop (they no doubt got a commission for). However, after falling victim on day-1, we were wiser, and didn’t spend a penny, and towards the end of the tour insisted we simply did not stop at these places (initially they were able to convince us the places were worth visiting, but after a few days, you can easily spot one of these shops a mile off)! The scam was really convincing us to buy the tour, against our wishes. But after realizing what had happened, rather than let it fester and ruin our adventures, we instead just embraced it, a learning lesson, and an opportunity to be driven around to all these amazing places. It also included various admissions to monuments, including the Taj Mahal, complete with tour guide and queue jump so we didn’t have to queue for hours. As a comparison point, a similar tour organised by a tour operator in the UK would have cost over £1,000 – so it wasn’t like it was bad value in that sense – it was just more that we had been coerced to sign up for something we hadn’t really wanted (at least didn’t think we wanted at the time).

We have spoken to many fellow travelers about what happened to us, and nearly everyone has a story about a scam they fell victim to, typically early on in their travels. We initially felt stupid for spending so much, especially when we have a tight budget for the entire year, but when we heard someone else say they once spent several thousand pounds on a 21-day tour when they first came to India, we didn’t feel so bad on the whole! We have heard so many scam stories, that we’ll dedicate a post to list a bunch of them soon, an Around India in 80 Scams perhaps…

Let me finish this post with some pictures from Agra, Pushkar, and Jaipur, which are the places we visited on our tour.

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