Getting Scammed in Delhi

We had been travelling to India, from Manchester, for a total of 36 hours, so we were pretty knackered by the time we arrived in Delhi Airport.  The plan when we landed was to get the Metro and then a Tuk Tuk to our hotel, which seemed pretty straight forward. However, we hadn’t factored into account the locals themselves. The metro was absolutely fine, luxury almost, with comfy seats, air con and a lot of room! But once we’d arrived into Central Delhi, pale as ghosts, with 4 rather large rucksacks, we screamed ‘tourists’ far and wide and that’s when they see a possibility to scam you.

All we wanted was a Tuk Tuk to take us to our hotel, simple. But apparently our hotel was at ‘high malaria risk’ and we were told we had to go and get checked at some tourist office before being taken to our hotel. If you’re ever in Delhi and are asked to go to a tourist office before your destination, just say no! I immediately knew this was a scam and after going to and from Tuk Tuk drivers, we reluctantly said we’d go to the tourist office. It was about a 20 minute drive along India’s crazy roads. The driver had broken ever rule in the highway code within 30 seconds of setting off! After going round the wrong way of one to many roundabouts, dodging cows and other livestock and using up at least 5 of our 9 lives we arrived at some back alley ‘tourist office’. We straight up refused to even leave the Tuk Tuk and in seeing that we were not budging, the driver finally realised that he hadn’t picked up the suckers he had hoped for and agreed to take us to our hotel. Another 20 minutes and some wasted petrol later, we paid the agreed 100 Rupees (£1.10) for a trip that should have only been 3km but ended up being at least double, so fool the driver for taking us on a wild goose chase and getting nothing extra in return (1-0 Caz and Tom)!

But they do this, knowing that a lot of tourists do fall for it and end up going into the ‘tourist office’ and paying ridiculous amounts for trips and excursions which aren’t even real!

TC