Firstly, a disclaimer. This is much longer and more detailed than I would really prefer to write but this is a) to satisfy my mother and b) to prevent being asked about this 300 times and writing it over and over again. I hope to avoid too many more of the situations described below and have less dramatic things to write about!
1.4.14
Flights are long and not interesting, suffice to say that we are grateful that the Brisbane to Singapore and Singapore to Delhi flights were safe and that a different hostess served Daniel every time he asked for another cognac. (Such generous servings!) In hindsight, the Singapore Sling cocktail (delicious) and dry Martini would have been more enjoyable without the contradictory effects of the copious instant coffee I was drinking. Lesson learned - depressants or stimulants, not both. You'd think I would have learned after my aeropress + gin order at John Mills Himself on Monday. (That gin was seriously good though, thanks Joel).
Daniel did manage to get some sleep on the flights but I was determined to stay awake and only sleep at night per India time. Philomena, Ender's Game, Frozen, The Butler and Saving Mr Banks got me through the flights without needing to be present to the reality of flying or the many crying babies. I don't know if it was the distraction of the movies or the sudden stillness of not having any more rushing around to do after months of stress and busy planning leading up to the trip, or the gin.... But I was so calm and at peace during both flights. Sitting, waiting at Changi airport I realised I was feeling this strange, new, pleasant but unfamiliar sensation... I didn't have work to do, no one was expecting anything of me, I had no pressure on me at all.... Could this be what if feels like to be free? If so, freedom tastes delicious!
Or it did for a while.
When we finally landed in Delhi, it was about 8.30pm local time and 12am for us (so I had already been up for 19 hours. Keep this in mind, read on). On the advice of friends in Brisbane we booked a prepaid taxi to our pre-booked and paid for hotel. The gentleman at the desk told us to walk down to gate 6 outside and we would find the black and yellow prepaid taxi area and leave from there. We would be in our beds and asleep within the hour, ready to start our adventure and explore Delhi the next day!
Our naivety caught up with us at warp speed. Everything after that conversation with the taxi booking desk for the following 12 hours was...interesting.
This is what seemed to happen: Within 1 minute of walking outside, a random man stopped Daniel and said "prepaid black and yellow taxi? I take you there". Daniel handed over the receipt for our paid taxi and started following the man. I was immediately sus on the guy and said no thanks, we knew where we had to go. Random man said 'it okay, I am driver for prepaid, I take you'. He then started showing us towards another row of cabs, further away and in the opposite direction of where I was pretty sure we had been told to go.
The man who took our ticket took us to an unmarked car with what seemed like taped on stripes on the side and said that this would be our cab. I asked if it was rally a black and yellow prepaid taxi. The guy just pointed at the number plate and said 'see, black and yellow'. We put our big bags in the back and kept our back packs and valuables with us and got in the back seat. I was preparing to commando roll the hell out of that taxi if needed. Clothes could be replaced, but at least we had our passports. In the taxi, exhausted, confused Daniel and I expressed to each other with our eyes the expletives we were not saying out loud. We were both unsure as to exactly what to do in the flurry that had been the last 2 minutes. I was trying to think clearly. Licences! I asked the drivers to show us their taxi licences or anything proving they were legit. They showed us something - who knows what really - but it had a police symbol thing on it, and then we were off!
Driving through heavy traffic, unsure of everything that was going on and who we were with, feeling more than slightly uncomfortable and a little fearful I remembered that we are only really ever afraid of things we don't know so if I was going to be in a car with these guys I had better get to know them. They might be driving us to our deaths, I thought, but why not try to be at least a little more comfortable on the way? I asked questions about India and driving and Delhi and their lives and we were even having a bit of a laugh together. They pointed out the fancy hotels to us and the embassies. Only a little further downs the street were tiny brick huts with families cooking over open fires outside. The driving was insane. So much beeping and flashing lights and driving fast and weaving. I gathered that there was pretty much one road rule in India - beep. Coming through? Beep. Someone is in your way? Beep. Going straight? Beep. Turning? Beep.
On the other side of the road we saw motor bikes crashing into policemen, everyone crashing onto he ground, rolling away from the crash and picking up the pieces of their bikes. Our drivers wanted to have a closer look so.. You guessed it, beep! Everyone was fine and we laughed at the situation - his different that would be in Australia! We were feeling a bit more relaxed by then.
It really seemed as though everything was picking up and our initial fears were unwarranted and everything would be okay. I asked if they would take us straight to our hotel, they said they didn't know where it was and that the address on our booking confirmation was incomplete. Well that didn't exactly inspire confidence.
We went to turn onto a particular street and there was a police road block. One of the drivers got out to ask what was going on. We felt suspicious - was this the way we should be going? We had no way to be sure. No maps, no WiFi to load a map, no sim card to make a call...
The guy got back to the car and said that there was a police block around certain streets due to the election which would be next week. He said the police were worried about rallies in the streets so they had blocked the road. He said they wanted us to be safe and that we were not far from the Tourist Office and that they would take us there white we could find a safe way to travel through. How kind, we thought. Surely the official Tourist Office would be able to help? We certainly didn't want to get sick in some kind of political protest in a foreign country! The drivers pulled up outside what looked like an old shop front with a tourist sign and we were ushered in. Our luggage was still in the boot and I made the drivers show me that the car was locked before we went inside.
We were taken down some stairs to a small reception area with three small offices coming out of it. We were ushered into the second office where a well dressed man (let's call him Jamal) asked us to take a seat. We explained what was going on. That we were trying to get to our hotel but the road was blocked due to the protests. Jamal seemed almost concerned for us. We showed Jamal the piece of paper with the address for the hotel on it. He promised he would do what he could to help us find a safe way to our hotel. Jamal called the our hotel and spoke to them for a second before putting me on the phone. The man on the phone said that the roads all around were blocked but he would send someone out to see if there was any way of driving close to the hotel. I asked if we could get dropped off a couple of streets away and walk over but he said that that would not be safe. Jamal called the hotel back a few minutes later and after a brief chat handed the phone to me - whoever was on the other end said that there was no way of getting in tonight. I asked if we would be able to get in the next day. He said probably not for the next few days. He said he would refund our payment for the 3 nights into our account within 7 days and said he was very sorry.
Shit.
That was when we knew we needed to find somewhere to stay. It was about 10pm at this stage. We had paid for the driver to take us to our hotel and now we were not sure where that was going to be. I spoke to the driver and he said that he would wait, it would be okay. He also gave me the car keys to hold onto and said it was my car while our things were in it. That felt bit better.
Jamal started by calling a number of hotels for us and speaking to someone before putting us on the phone. Each place said that they either had no rooms available or that they only had rooms for $150 to $300 to stay. We said we could not afford that. Jamal said if we wanted to stay in Delhi tonight we basically had to pay a lot of money. He said our other option was to leave Delhi and stay somewhere else.
To summarise the next 3 hours, basically this guy tried as hard as he could to get us to give him $1500 to leave his office with accommodation, trains, a driver, and various other things we didn't want for the following 3 days. There was a lot of going back and forth negotiating, agreeing on a plan only for him to call the train booking office and find out that we couldn't get a certain ticket, only a waiting list spot, renegotiating etc. At some point when it became clear that we would not be staying in Delhi we got our bags and let our driver go. Dan and I tag teamed talking with Jamal. The few times he left the room briefly we commented on how much of a pitch this guy was making and not listening to us at all. We were both getting so tired. Our priority was saving money and finding somewhere to sleep as soon as possible but Jamal wanted us to stay in Jaipur, 4 hours away, or Agra, 2 hours away, both in the opposite directions of where we wanted to be heading and we would only get there at 3 or 5am and it would cost $700 - $900 as well!
We felt pretty powerless in that office. It was all such nonsense but I think we handled the whole situation pretty darn well individually and as a team. We had some tea and I got some more energy and I dealt with Jamal as powerfully as I could. We left there at almost 2am I think with a driver headed for Rishikesh, 6 hours away, but only having spent $340. At that stage that was the best we could do. We knew we were being screwed but at least we finally got out of there and we were heading in the right direction and spending the money we might have had to spend on a night in Delhi on nice accommodation but getting a trip out of it as well.
We both slept on and off in the car ride. I never felt truly comfortable about the whole situation. Just 4 hours earlier we had landed and thought we were headed for a hotel we had booked a month earlier. Now, here we were in what may or may not have been a taxi, maybe or maybe not on our way to Rishikesh, with a guy who may or may not have been a legitimate driver. I don't know if our driver was Buddhist or not but he was almost certainly a camel in his last life and in the transition between lives into his human incarnation he had managed to retain his spitting skills quite successfully. It was truly amazing how much of that drive he spent with his head out the window.
The drive was cold and our bags were packing in the boot so we couldn't get any extra layers to wear but I snuggled up to Daniel and slept as much as I could. Sometimes I would wake up to see we were driving down a dirt road with people walking along either side, or a big factory with a fire burning inside, or we would be going through gates (which I immediately decided meant that we were going to some kind of compound to be sold into slavery or something. I know it sounds paranoid but imagine driving through back streets of slums in the middle of the night through some scary gates with guards when you haven't slept in far too long - it seemed reasonable).
We finally arrived in Rishikesh at about 7am. Our driver took us to a hotel recommended by Lonely Planet called Green Hills and it was lovely. We slept half the day to recover and enjoyed the view of the Himalayas from our balcony.
Now, what really happened in Delhi (as explained to us by a guy we call Happy who used to work for Jamal but got out of that work 5 years ago to set up an honest business.). On our way to our prepaid taxi we were intercepted by members of the Delhi tourism underworld who pose as drivers and have fake licences and permits, who took us to specifically to a street with a permanent road block but told us that was the way we needed to go, then took us to their secret HQ and fooled us into thinking that that was a government agency who could help. Once in their lair, the big boss in the crummy corner office with the "no photos please - official government building" signs printed in Calibri on sheets sticky taped to glass insisted that there was no way out of that office other than to pay him and him alone large sums of money. The phone calls he made were to the men upstairs smoking cigars and watching strippers who posed as various Delhi hotels, including ours, and told us their hotels were full or too expensive. We were hardly going to leave, alone, at night, in a city of 24 million, with all our bags, lost in an unknown part of town with no phone... We tried to keep our wits about us and took shifts. I would tire the big boss out by running circles of alternate possibilities around him and crossing out the plans he was making and writing my own while Daniel rested, and vice versa. In the end, the boss guy was visibly defeated and exhausted and our little trip to Rishikesh only cost us 4 times the amount it should have been, not 20 times the amount! Happy told us a lot of people get screwed into paying $5000 or more and this 'Mafia' style busies as he called it is everywhere in the big cities.
So that is how we came to be in Rishikesh.
In the end, though it cost us a bit, we are grateful for the lesson, especially so early in our trip. We are much more vigilant now, and maybe you will be too on your first trip to India!
1.4.14
Flights are long and not interesting, suffice to say that we are grateful that the Brisbane to Singapore and Singapore to Delhi flights were safe and that a different hostess served Daniel every time he asked for another cognac. (Such generous servings!) In hindsight, the Singapore Sling cocktail (delicious) and dry Martini would have been more enjoyable without the contradictory effects of the copious instant coffee I was drinking. Lesson learned - depressants or stimulants, not both. You'd think I would have learned after my aeropress + gin order at John Mills Himself on Monday. (That gin was seriously good though, thanks Joel).
Daniel did manage to get some sleep on the flights but I was determined to stay awake and only sleep at night per India time. Philomena, Ender's Game, Frozen, The Butler and Saving Mr Banks got me through the flights without needing to be present to the reality of flying or the many crying babies. I don't know if it was the distraction of the movies or the sudden stillness of not having any more rushing around to do after months of stress and busy planning leading up to the trip, or the gin.... But I was so calm and at peace during both flights. Sitting, waiting at Changi airport I realised I was feeling this strange, new, pleasant but unfamiliar sensation... I didn't have work to do, no one was expecting anything of me, I had no pressure on me at all.... Could this be what if feels like to be free? If so, freedom tastes delicious!
Or it did for a while.
When we finally landed in Delhi, it was about 8.30pm local time and 12am for us (so I had already been up for 19 hours. Keep this in mind, read on). On the advice of friends in Brisbane we booked a prepaid taxi to our pre-booked and paid for hotel. The gentleman at the desk told us to walk down to gate 6 outside and we would find the black and yellow prepaid taxi area and leave from there. We would be in our beds and asleep within the hour, ready to start our adventure and explore Delhi the next day!
Our naivety caught up with us at warp speed. Everything after that conversation with the taxi booking desk for the following 12 hours was...interesting.
This is what seemed to happen: Within 1 minute of walking outside, a random man stopped Daniel and said "prepaid black and yellow taxi? I take you there". Daniel handed over the receipt for our paid taxi and started following the man. I was immediately sus on the guy and said no thanks, we knew where we had to go. Random man said 'it okay, I am driver for prepaid, I take you'. He then started showing us towards another row of cabs, further away and in the opposite direction of where I was pretty sure we had been told to go.
The man who took our ticket took us to an unmarked car with what seemed like taped on stripes on the side and said that this would be our cab. I asked if it was rally a black and yellow prepaid taxi. The guy just pointed at the number plate and said 'see, black and yellow'. We put our big bags in the back and kept our back packs and valuables with us and got in the back seat. I was preparing to commando roll the hell out of that taxi if needed. Clothes could be replaced, but at least we had our passports. In the taxi, exhausted, confused Daniel and I expressed to each other with our eyes the expletives we were not saying out loud. We were both unsure as to exactly what to do in the flurry that had been the last 2 minutes. I was trying to think clearly. Licences! I asked the drivers to show us their taxi licences or anything proving they were legit. They showed us something - who knows what really - but it had a police symbol thing on it, and then we were off!
Driving through heavy traffic, unsure of everything that was going on and who we were with, feeling more than slightly uncomfortable and a little fearful I remembered that we are only really ever afraid of things we don't know so if I was going to be in a car with these guys I had better get to know them. They might be driving us to our deaths, I thought, but why not try to be at least a little more comfortable on the way? I asked questions about India and driving and Delhi and their lives and we were even having a bit of a laugh together. They pointed out the fancy hotels to us and the embassies. Only a little further downs the street were tiny brick huts with families cooking over open fires outside. The driving was insane. So much beeping and flashing lights and driving fast and weaving. I gathered that there was pretty much one road rule in India - beep. Coming through? Beep. Someone is in your way? Beep. Going straight? Beep. Turning? Beep.
On the other side of the road we saw motor bikes crashing into policemen, everyone crashing onto he ground, rolling away from the crash and picking up the pieces of their bikes. Our drivers wanted to have a closer look so.. You guessed it, beep! Everyone was fine and we laughed at the situation - his different that would be in Australia! We were feeling a bit more relaxed by then.
It really seemed as though everything was picking up and our initial fears were unwarranted and everything would be okay. I asked if they would take us straight to our hotel, they said they didn't know where it was and that the address on our booking confirmation was incomplete. Well that didn't exactly inspire confidence.
We went to turn onto a particular street and there was a police road block. One of the drivers got out to ask what was going on. We felt suspicious - was this the way we should be going? We had no way to be sure. No maps, no WiFi to load a map, no sim card to make a call...
The guy got back to the car and said that there was a police block around certain streets due to the election which would be next week. He said the police were worried about rallies in the streets so they had blocked the road. He said they wanted us to be safe and that we were not far from the Tourist Office and that they would take us there white we could find a safe way to travel through. How kind, we thought. Surely the official Tourist Office would be able to help? We certainly didn't want to get sick in some kind of political protest in a foreign country! The drivers pulled up outside what looked like an old shop front with a tourist sign and we were ushered in. Our luggage was still in the boot and I made the drivers show me that the car was locked before we went inside.
We were taken down some stairs to a small reception area with three small offices coming out of it. We were ushered into the second office where a well dressed man (let's call him Jamal) asked us to take a seat. We explained what was going on. That we were trying to get to our hotel but the road was blocked due to the protests. Jamal seemed almost concerned for us. We showed Jamal the piece of paper with the address for the hotel on it. He promised he would do what he could to help us find a safe way to our hotel. Jamal called the our hotel and spoke to them for a second before putting me on the phone. The man on the phone said that the roads all around were blocked but he would send someone out to see if there was any way of driving close to the hotel. I asked if we could get dropped off a couple of streets away and walk over but he said that that would not be safe. Jamal called the hotel back a few minutes later and after a brief chat handed the phone to me - whoever was on the other end said that there was no way of getting in tonight. I asked if we would be able to get in the next day. He said probably not for the next few days. He said he would refund our payment for the 3 nights into our account within 7 days and said he was very sorry.
Shit.
That was when we knew we needed to find somewhere to stay. It was about 10pm at this stage. We had paid for the driver to take us to our hotel and now we were not sure where that was going to be. I spoke to the driver and he said that he would wait, it would be okay. He also gave me the car keys to hold onto and said it was my car while our things were in it. That felt bit better.
Jamal started by calling a number of hotels for us and speaking to someone before putting us on the phone. Each place said that they either had no rooms available or that they only had rooms for $150 to $300 to stay. We said we could not afford that. Jamal said if we wanted to stay in Delhi tonight we basically had to pay a lot of money. He said our other option was to leave Delhi and stay somewhere else.
To summarise the next 3 hours, basically this guy tried as hard as he could to get us to give him $1500 to leave his office with accommodation, trains, a driver, and various other things we didn't want for the following 3 days. There was a lot of going back and forth negotiating, agreeing on a plan only for him to call the train booking office and find out that we couldn't get a certain ticket, only a waiting list spot, renegotiating etc. At some point when it became clear that we would not be staying in Delhi we got our bags and let our driver go. Dan and I tag teamed talking with Jamal. The few times he left the room briefly we commented on how much of a pitch this guy was making and not listening to us at all. We were both getting so tired. Our priority was saving money and finding somewhere to sleep as soon as possible but Jamal wanted us to stay in Jaipur, 4 hours away, or Agra, 2 hours away, both in the opposite directions of where we wanted to be heading and we would only get there at 3 or 5am and it would cost $700 - $900 as well!
We felt pretty powerless in that office. It was all such nonsense but I think we handled the whole situation pretty darn well individually and as a team. We had some tea and I got some more energy and I dealt with Jamal as powerfully as I could. We left there at almost 2am I think with a driver headed for Rishikesh, 6 hours away, but only having spent $340. At that stage that was the best we could do. We knew we were being screwed but at least we finally got out of there and we were heading in the right direction and spending the money we might have had to spend on a night in Delhi on nice accommodation but getting a trip out of it as well.
We both slept on and off in the car ride. I never felt truly comfortable about the whole situation. Just 4 hours earlier we had landed and thought we were headed for a hotel we had booked a month earlier. Now, here we were in what may or may not have been a taxi, maybe or maybe not on our way to Rishikesh, with a guy who may or may not have been a legitimate driver. I don't know if our driver was Buddhist or not but he was almost certainly a camel in his last life and in the transition between lives into his human incarnation he had managed to retain his spitting skills quite successfully. It was truly amazing how much of that drive he spent with his head out the window.
The drive was cold and our bags were packing in the boot so we couldn't get any extra layers to wear but I snuggled up to Daniel and slept as much as I could. Sometimes I would wake up to see we were driving down a dirt road with people walking along either side, or a big factory with a fire burning inside, or we would be going through gates (which I immediately decided meant that we were going to some kind of compound to be sold into slavery or something. I know it sounds paranoid but imagine driving through back streets of slums in the middle of the night through some scary gates with guards when you haven't slept in far too long - it seemed reasonable).
We finally arrived in Rishikesh at about 7am. Our driver took us to a hotel recommended by Lonely Planet called Green Hills and it was lovely. We slept half the day to recover and enjoyed the view of the Himalayas from our balcony.
Now, what really happened in Delhi (as explained to us by a guy we call Happy who used to work for Jamal but got out of that work 5 years ago to set up an honest business.). On our way to our prepaid taxi we were intercepted by members of the Delhi tourism underworld who pose as drivers and have fake licences and permits, who took us to specifically to a street with a permanent road block but told us that was the way we needed to go, then took us to their secret HQ and fooled us into thinking that that was a government agency who could help. Once in their lair, the big boss in the crummy corner office with the "no photos please - official government building" signs printed in Calibri on sheets sticky taped to glass insisted that there was no way out of that office other than to pay him and him alone large sums of money. The phone calls he made were to the men upstairs smoking cigars and watching strippers who posed as various Delhi hotels, including ours, and told us their hotels were full or too expensive. We were hardly going to leave, alone, at night, in a city of 24 million, with all our bags, lost in an unknown part of town with no phone... We tried to keep our wits about us and took shifts. I would tire the big boss out by running circles of alternate possibilities around him and crossing out the plans he was making and writing my own while Daniel rested, and vice versa. In the end, the boss guy was visibly defeated and exhausted and our little trip to Rishikesh only cost us 4 times the amount it should have been, not 20 times the amount! Happy told us a lot of people get screwed into paying $5000 or more and this 'Mafia' style busies as he called it is everywhere in the big cities.
So that is how we came to be in Rishikesh.
In the end, though it cost us a bit, we are grateful for the lesson, especially so early in our trip. We are much more vigilant now, and maybe you will be too on your first trip to India!
I'm glad you're safe and well. I know how you felt to a degree - I was locked in a shipping container in China and wasn't let out until I paid a rediculous amount of money.
ReplyDeleteNow that it's over, you can appreciate how fantastic a story you'll have to tell when you're old :D
Emily that is insane haha!! Glad you made it out of there!
ReplyDeleteLauren, every morning I walk in the park look at the mountains and thank God for the day - from now on I will also ask God to wrap you and Dan in his arms each day you are away.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to more interesting posts, is this the start of your book?
love you
Haha maybe Patty. Thank you!
DeleteHi Lauren, I am an Indian and am proud about it as well!!! After reading all that you both have gone through am so disappointed how some Indian people portrait India in front of the world. We ourselves inspite of being brought up in India face such similar situations every time we visit there. I should say you are very lucky to have escaped without any losses other than $340....there are many other dreadful crimes happening around in Delhi and many other states in India . Not that all the people are such , but yes many of them are in run of making easy money. My only advice to you would be .... Be VIGILANT and ALERT all time and DO NOT trust anyone !!!
ReplyDelete