 Welcome to Blue Ocean Studios  Around the World
Our flight last night was tough. After actually going through 3 different security xray screenings (I guess quantity = quality :)), we finally were allowed to wait for our plane. After 3 months of travelling, there are many things that we miss, like being kept informed about why the plane is delayed etc. It was midnight, so we were very tired, and the flight ended up about 45 minutes delayed. On top of that, the flight was only 2.5 hours - so with the odd 1.5 hour time change, we were arriving in Delhi at 5 am. For some reason, the entire flight preferred to not sleep - and dinner was served at 2 am. All lights stayed on very bright on our Air India flight - and people were excited about the endlessly flowing free drinks and food. It was a bit frustrating, wanting to take advantage of the 2 hours of sleep that we could sneak in, but smells of alcohol, and people gushing by wide awake kept us up all night.
After a 20 minute ride, we ended up at our hotel, Hotel Rahul Palace ($37 Expedia), and were happy to find that the hotel kept their word, and was able to check us in at 6 am. We crashed right away, and caught up on some sleep. Around 11:30am, we woke up and were ready to brave our first day in India. We asked the hotel for a taxi to Connaught Place, the center of New Delhi. We were looking forward to our first tastes of India for lunch. The hotel called a "taxi" for us, and said it would be about $1. The person showed up 3 minutes later - in a normal looking car. As we started off, we asked the price, and he said $3. This was ok, we're used to negotiating. After negotiating it back to $1, he offered his services for the day for $7. We did need to cab around a bit to see some sights, as we only planned on being in the city for the day. So we agreed, and we were off on our Delhi tour. He told us that this wasn't a cab, he wasn't a driver, and if the police stop us, he's our "friend" showing us around. Ok - this didn't sound that good - but we really didn't care about the cab thing - so we just continued on. He said he should take us back to "his office", so we can get a driver, but we just wanted to get going (and I felt like going back to his office was just going to be a scam).
Oh yeah, before I go further, let's discuss the roads in India. Imagine a carnival, then imagine taking all of those people and putting them on a street. Mix that with 50 motorized rick-shaws (auto rickshahs), 50 bicycle rick-shaws, and normal auto traffic. People walking in the streets, 4 lanes all going one way for a few seconds, and going the complete opposite direction down the same street in all 4 lanes a few seconds later (obviously the road is divided, but no one seems to care). I laughed hard when I saw a sign, "Dreams and driving rules, follow them both." It's hard to believe there's not an accident on every corner. Ok, back to lunch. So a few seconds later, we pulled over to a back street. Like all the other streets in Delhi, there were hundreds of people either sitting by the side of the road or walking, or selling something. We shot into a local restaurant - almost all the tables were occupied (always a good sign). After a few minutes, even another pair of tourists showed up :). Our driver, Mubarrik, basically did the ordering, although I requested my favorite Chicken Karahi (and he ordered a few veg dishes). Lunch was incredible - spices, sauces, naan, chutneys were all over the place! This was a great step towards growing our friendship and trust in our driver. It was exactly what we were expecting in Indian food (except for the Chicken Karahi - too much dark meat for me - oops :)). Our driver paid, and when we got back in the car, I gave him the $6 it cost (for all 3 of us). I figured we'd buy him lunch (and anyways, my chicken dish cost half of the lunch). He gave me 1/3 back, and said he was paying his share (overpaid actually). Ok, another step in the right direction to trusting our driver.
We headed out to the India Gate after lunch. The gate is dedicated to the Indian soldiers who have died for the cause of protecting the country during WWI (90,000 names are on the gate). It was an interesting sight and we enjoyed it. More interesting was that it was on the "Rajpath" (Kingsway), and at the other end of the path (street), was the parliment building and president's residence (palace), that we could see in the distance. We headed off in that direction and enjoyed a few minutes here as well. After enjoying these parts of New Delhi, we were off to Old Delhi to see Jama Masjid, the largest mosque in India, and the Red Fort, a sandstone walled fort protecting the royal palaces of Old Delhi.
Of course, no one likes to be under another country's control, and after an uprising in the mid 19th century, India slow began its journey to independance. Mohandas Ghandi lead the nonviolent resistance of British control, which resulted in India's independance in 1947. India was majority Hindu, which did not bode well for the minority Muslims. After much bloodshed and mass migrations, Pakistan was born, mostly Muslims, and India, mostly Hindus. The clash between Pakistan and India resulted in Ghandi's murder by a Hindu extremist who was not excited about sharing India with Muslims.
Now the interesting part (yes, it has all lead up to this). We headed back to Mubarrik's office. I was getting nervous, as it was 5pm, and he mentioned that we could only book tickets until 6pm - and we really wanted to get that squared away. When we got back to his office, we walked in past a few books on a shelf. I asked him for the Lonely Planet guide, and he pointed to the shelf. There was nothing in English, and no signs of a Lonely Planet in site. His response = "Oh, they are just in a different language, they are like the lonely planet." Bad sign. I only trusted this guy to help me. This didn't sound like help. Mubarrik began to suggest a route for us, based on where we were going. We had come up with a route already, just one city reversed from his plan. His made more sense based on the train routes. Good so far. He slowly put this together, and said, it would be easier for us to take a car to Agra, than a train. The car could stop many places along the way - much better than train. He had tried to sell us on the car to Agra idea for the better part of the day, and we had told him if it was cheaper than the train, then we could consider it. He threw some numbers at us (~$800 US) - which would basically cover our hotels and train tickets for the week. After we did some math, we said that this wouldn't work - it's about twice what we planned to pay. He said the hotels he had were better (of course without listing any of them or showing us any details), etc. I had had it about now, we had waisted about 20 minutes with him, and he had caused us not to get our Lonely Planet guide (one of our main objectives of the day). I just wanted to settle for our other objective - train tickets. We said we would just like to book the train tickets. He said, ok - no problem. He made a phone call, gave the person the routes we were taking, and handed the phone to me. The person asked for my name, Jaimie's name, and where we wanted to go (even though he was just told all of this!). Next, he asked when we would like to go to Agra. I said tomorrow morning. He paused, and said, "The trains from New Delhi to Agra are completely booked for tomorrow. Sorry." I laughed inside at this - we were done here. I immediately handed the phone back to the sales person - all trust lost. I couldn't believe they were trying to scam us! I told Jaimie it was time to go. They weren't going to give up this easy. They (Mubarrik and partner), began trying to sell us, even saying - don't worry, he said the 6am train was full, let's try the 7 am (We had done some research earlier, there is no 7 am train. Also, I never said what the person on the phone said - he said all trains to Agra were booked). As our hotel had recommended this crazy scam artist, I actually was nervous about our belongings while we were going to eat dinner, so I decided the easiest and quickest way out of this was to not insult them, and just fake that I was feeling claustophobic and needed some air. This wasn't working so good, so I said my heart was beating fast, and I was in pain and had to leave. I hadn't yet fully explained to Jaimie what the person on the phone said (thus why I knew we were 100% being scammed), so she actually was a bit concerned looking at me. The travel agents finally gave up and we were out of there. I was annoyed about the lonely planet, and I asked them to go buy the book for me and bring it to us. They assigned another person to walk us to some book stores in the neighborhood on our way back to our hotel. Wasting 30 minutes, all the local stores were selling mainly computer programming books (go figure!). Anyways, on our walk, I explained to Jaimie exactly what had happened.
Anyways, we had only lost about 45 minutes, but we had lost getting what we needed. We decided to go to the train station now. Our taxi driver dropped us off at the wrong area (reservation center for the locals, not the foreigners). It was dark out, and we had no clue where to go. Before we started attracting attention from the touts, I was able to stop a person looking like he was going about his normal business (with no interest in us - ie sending us to the wrong place). We asked him where the foreigner desk was. He didn't know, and actually stood in line for a few minutes to ask the desk person where we needed to go. Nice guy. Then - he said follow me - don't worry, I will take you for free. He walked us the 5 minutes to the main New Delhi train station and showed us where to go. Wow - what a nice guy! I felt bad that we took up 10 of his minutes, when he was just a normal guy just buying a train ticket. I offered to give him 30 Rupees (about 70 cents - it's not much, but a reasonable amount here). I asked if he had 20 rupees, so I could give him my 50. He started looking in his wallet, and the only small bill he could find was a 10. I said, ok - no problem, and he gave me the 10, and I gave him the 50. He had no idea what the 50 I gave him was for, and looked very confused. I said I wanted to give it to him in appreciation of helping us, and not asking us for anything. He said - no, and despite my insistent offers of the tip - he kept declining saying he was just helping out. Finally I gave up, and accepted the 50 back. When I tried to give him his 10 back, he wouldn't accept. I tried to explain that this was the 10 he gave us, but he wouldn't take it!! I couldn't believe it, he was paying us to let us follow him! Finally, he hesistantly accepted it. We were laughing, trying to give him his money back. This is the India I came to see - I kept this guy in my mind for the rest of the night - as I was so happy to find a good person after all of the tourist hounds! We arrived at 7:50 pm, and found the tourist office. Unfortunately, it closes at 8pm. We hadn't brought our passports, so they couldn't help us, other than telling us we could book it in the morning (which would cause us to get to the train station at 4:45 am, instead of 5:45 am, to ensure we got a ticket). Frustrated, we set off to remedy our other situation - the guide book. We circled Connaught place about 6 times in a rickshaw, insisting he find the name of a bookstore we randomly found on the internet. It was nowhere in site, and the 4 bookstores we passed were closed. We finally found a bookstore that had people in it, but it had just closed. We told them we knew exactly what we wanted. They kindly let us in, but had the wrong book. It was time to give up. We settled in for dinner at Hotel Saravana Bhavan, Jaimie had found this name randomly on the internet so we gave it a shot. After our many dinners/lunches at Indian restaurants in the US, we thought we knew what we were doing. The menu was completely foreign to us (this was vegetarian South Indian cuisine) - and I don't mean another language (it was in the Roman alphabet). But we didn't know what anything was (except for Naan and rice of course:). So we looked around at the other tables (there were many locals here - again, always a good sign). We ended up with $3 for some great Southern Indian favorites (Butter roasted Dosai, Onion Masala Dosai, rice and some great chutneys). Perfect way to end the up and down day. By now, it was late - about 10:30 pm, and we had such a long day ahead of us! We came back to our hotel, happy to find all of our belonging intact :), and went to sleep. View Delhi and Agra Photo Gallery Day 88 - Dubai < | Index | Photo Galleries | > Day 90 - Agra © 2007 Blue Ocean Studios, LTD. All rights Reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Services | About | Contact Prints | Return Policy | View Cart World Travel Galleries | World Travel Blog | Links |
Note: There are a lot of details on this posting, as I want to convey the small things that happened leading up to a good lesson. 
We finally arrived in Delhi, and looked forwarded to taking back our stolen night. We had 5 goals at the airport - ATM, prepaid taxi (as they have tough touts that we hear never take you to your hotel - as they're looking for a commission), a Delhi map, buy a guide book, and book our train tickets. 3 out of 5 wasn't so bad I guess - the train desk was closed until 6 am, and they didn't have a guidebook for sale. 
We had read about lots of scams in India, where drivers don't take you where you want, but rather where they want, as they get a commission. I kept the map out to make sure we were going in the right direction. He told me we should put the map away, as it makes you a tourist target. This bothered me, as who's targeting me in the car - so I said I'll keep the map out until we get out of the car - just want to see where we're going. I could tell he was frustrated about the map. We were approaching our destination for lunch, when we passed a huge Hindu temple, Laxmi Narayan Birla Mandir. So we stopped, and Jaimie and I took a stroll inside for 20 minutes. It was a beautifully constructed modern temple - photography was not allowed inside, but the outside was beautiful. After enjoying the temple, our driver was waiting for us outside - and we continued on. We passed the center of Connaught Place, and I started getting worried. He kept saying he's going to take us to a restaurant we'll like, and intermixing that the best food is in Old Delhi. I kept insisting that we eat in Connaught Place, and he blew me off each time, saying "yes, yes - we eat in Connaught Place, don't worry", shortly followed by, "I know some great places to eat - the best food is in Old Delhi.". Another 30 seconds went by, and we got further from the center of Connaught Place. It was difficult to tell by the map, where Connaught Place began and ended, so I wasn't sure where we were going to end up eating. After mentioning Connaught Place again, he started to get very upset, saying "trust me, trust me - I am your friend. I am not like those people you read about. If you can not trust people in India, you will not have good travels - you are on vacation - enjoy." Of course, this doesn't make me feel any better, but after another round of lets eat in Connaught Place, he drew the line and said, "if you can't trust me, then I will pull over - and not drive you. I want to help you, to be your friend, but if you won't trust me, it's not worth it to me to be insulted all day.". Of course, I tried to calm him down, citing friends who have been scammed, and things we have read. He shrugged these off, etc. And I told him I'll give him a little trust. (Again, sorry for the details - but of course this will go somewhere).
After lunch, we needed to go to the train station to book our tickets for the rest of our stay. Our driver said he could take us, but he said it would be easier to take us back to his office to book the tickets - he could book them until 6pm. I had read that the line in the Delhi train station could get long, so this sounded like an easy option. Plus, we wanted to see the rest of Delhi. Our last necessary errand of the day was to get a guide book. We mentioned we needed one, and he said, "Don't worry, I have that Rajasthan Lonely Planet, many travellers come with us, and some leave the book behind when we are done." Fantastic!! We don't have to buy a guide book (which we would have to leave behind anyways.). Our two tasks of the day were set! Mubarrik turned out to be a great help!
The Jama Masjid was beautiful - about 400 years old. We took a walk up one of the minarets, which had beautiful views of the mosque itself, and of the Red Fort. India is currently about 15% muslim and 84% Hindu. In the 7th century, Mohammed, the muslim prophet, began to spread Islam to Arabia. By 12th century, India was ruled by Islamic, starting the first of the sultans of Delhi. Conquered by Mughals (from Mongolia), Mughal emeperors ruled and shaped India for the next 5 centuries, creating the Taj Mahal, the Red Fort in Delhi, and others such as the fort in Agra. And, finally, the British took over in the 17th century for 250 years. 
After the short history reminder, back to our day :). We rounded out visiting Old Delhi with a visit to the Chadni Chowk bazaar, right next to the Red Fort. It was crowded beyond comprehension, I mean you really had to fight to go 2 feet in any direction. It was hard to keep all 3 of us together, as Mubarrik decided to help guide us through this. We lasted about 10 minutes, and he offered to return as it was just crazy (which we accepted). 
We had heard from my friend Jake - who has been travelling in India for the last 3 months, about a scam issue he had with a driver not taking him the right place. We had read about it online, from Delhi police websites, to online recommendations to beware. However, despite all of our travelling, and warning, it's hard to spot these guys very far away, and its amazing how you can end up in this situation. It's all based on how much you trust someone - and our seasoned travelling has made us a bit hard to give our trust to a stranger (especially one in the tourist industry, or at a tourist site). Of course, this driver had paid his way, actually paid for parking, and some extra change I needed to pay for a water once, took us everywhere we needed, found us a great lunch spot, and was going to book our train and provide a guidebook. He had started to earn some trust. Of course, I let a few things slip by, ie, him trying hard to sell us on the car to Agra, as I had figured it might just make sense. There are other slip ups if you read above again, but it all came down to somewhere I could prove he was lying, and that was when the person on the phone told me the trains were all booked. Frustrating, as the whole bit about what he had sold us earlier on, that you have to trust someone so you can better enjoy your travels. He was right, but not about trusting him :). 