WATCH YOUR BACK AROUND THE WORLD
the do-anything-to-make-it-work mentality that combines craftiness and creativity to perpetrate elaborate ruses or straightout petty fraud. Often, the losses are so small that these crimes are not reported. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) started providing separate data on crimes against foreigners in 2014. Data from 2015 shows that crimes against foreign tourists form 74% of crimes against foreigners. Close to half of these were registered in Delhi, followed by Maharashtra, UP, Goa and Rajasthan – essentially areas most frequented by foreign tourists. More than half of all crimes were theft.
These are sobering numbers for Indians who leave offended comments on the videos and posts. Travel writer Rachel Jones’s blog featuring travel tips to India, Hippie in Heels, gets over 1 million visitors a month.“when someone comes up to you on the street offering to ‘help’ it can often be a trick. This makes tourists put their guard up and then they cannot experience India in the best way,” she says.
‘IT HAPPENED TO ME’
Jones says that when she was travelling through Delhi six years ago, construction work was on at the bustling New Delhi railway station. “When four men in uniform told me the foreign ticket office had moved, I believed them,” she says. The office sells last-minute tickets under a tourist quota.
“They took me to an office where a man in what looked like a police uniform waited outside. They told me all trains were full and I needed to take a bus, quoting a price I knew was 10 times higher . Knowing the office was fake too, I got angry and told them so. The man stood up like he was going to hit me. I left the office and didn’t get scammed in the end. It was upsetting, though!”
Rock recalls one trip to Pushkar with two friends where the ruse methodically involved several priests at a temple. One priest offered them flowers to take to the river below. “I thought ‘A puja, how nice’,” Rock says. At the river, three priests singled out the tourists holding the flowers, and performed ceremonies asking the men personal questions. “We told them if we were married, if our parents were deceased, what we wanted most,” Rock says. “No money was ever discussed but we were later told we had to ‘donate’ Rs 1,000 for each parent’s long life. It preyed on our insecurities.”
On Youtube, UK resident Harald Baldr aka Bald and Bankrupt, posts videos about getting a haircut, taking a road trip and chilling with locals in India. When he flew here in November to celebrate 50,000 subscribers, he filmed straight out of the airport. The video is damning – men inflate taxi prices, lie about standard rates, tell him the official booth is closed. He captions the video thus: “I was soon reminded that in Delhi you can never relax with rickshaw drivers! Fortunately I was experienced enough to know what was happening.”
AND STILL THEY COME
Rock believes that the disparity between the tourism department and on-ground idea of India needs to be bridged. “Government tourism offices are not located in convenient places, but the people there are incredibly helpful,” he says. “They know all about the scams and will get the police involved too. They are not well promoted.”
Jones lived in India for five years before she moved to Mexico. Rock, at home in Delhi, is planning to visit the few states he hasn’t. Both exuberantly profess a love for the country. “The 100 or 200 scammers in Delhi and other tourist areas are not representative of India,” Rock says. Jones says that when she was once lost in Mumbai, some young girls helped out. “They showed me the way home on a local bus an only after did I realise they then had to take the bus back to where we started and then go a different way,” she says. “As a whole my experience in India is positive.”
It explains why, in Baldr’s video of 10 things he hates about India, scammers come in at a lowly 8. Things that irk him more: poor cellphone coverage, spitters, and fellow tourists. The video has had 6.5 lakh views since December. What’s number 1? India is “so damn addictive! You meet more interesting people in an hour here than in a lifetime in England.”
IN THE US IN LONDON
You’ve Tired, just-landed first-time visitors at the airport or train station are perfect marks. Taxi and rickshaw drivers will typically tell them that the hotel they’re staying at has moved, changed names or shut, and offer an alternative hotel, from which the driver makes a commission. It happens most often at busy, long-distance train stations. A tourist will be met by a man in uniform informing them that their train has been cancelled. The uniformed man then offers to take them to the booking counter for a new journey at a much higher price. The uniform is fake, and the booking counter is a private company that makes a quick buck. Tourists at the Delhi Airport Metro have been stopped by uniformed men telling them that the route they’re trying to take is closed to tourists for the day owing to a religious ceremony. A uniformed man will walk up to confirm it, and offer to take them to the tourist office – often a private operator. They’ll pretend to call the tourist’s hotel and have some man on the line tell them that their booking has been cancelled because they didn’t arrive on time. The men will then offer alternative hotel packages. While mobile phone connections are easy for tourists to buy, neighbourhood stores, particularly in small towns, often pass on used SIM cards, pocketing the money to register a new number. Tourists then end up dealing with calls from unknown people, or having their connections cut off in a few days. At religious sites, it’s not uncommon for holy men to agree to perform a ceremony for a fixed fee, say Rs 100. But during the rites, he’ll ask how many members arein the tourist’s family and will perform rituals for each one, later telling the visitor that they meant Rs 100 per person in the family. A common scam in touristy Las Vegas is the driver who will offer to remove your luggage from the boot of the car. It’s only later that you realise one bag is missing. But most tourists agree that the larger scams are those perpetrated by the hotel industry, which is notorious for advertising low hotel, travel, buffets and park entry rates, but charging your credit card for undisclosed taxes, fees and convenience charges. A common scam rolls out in the late hours, when you’ve checked into your hotel room at the end of a long day. The hotel phone rings with someone from reception sheepishly apologising that the card you used to book the room has been declined, and would you please give them the details once more? You’ll do it over the phone, preferring not to head downstairs. It’s only later that you’ll find the call was not from the hotel but from a scamster who had been given your name and room number by a hotel staff member.
IN ITALY
Pickpocketing is well organised.
Locals will warn you that there are thieves in the area and watch as you check your wallet and pat your handbag, noting the locations to target later.
IN SPAIN
Restaurants that get a lot of tourists tend to sneakily add items a patron didn’t order – often additional bottles of mineral water, more cocktails than were consumed, and a similar-sounding but more expensive item on the menu. Tourists will be approached by a jewellery exporter looking to send gemstones out of the country via your duty-free allowance. They won’t ask for money, but promise a commission after you land in your home country and someone picks them up. The trouble begins when the tourist gets a call from the Customs Department, as intimated by the exporter. The officer asks to see a bill, and since there’s none, he’ll accuse the tourist of theft – asking them to pay a fine or face arrest. The jeweller will suggest the tourist pay the fine and be reimbursed later. The twist: the call was never from Customs, but an accomplice of the person who isn’t even a jeweller. Since most tourists won’t give money to beggars, kids ask them to buy fruits or pens, or women will ask for milk or biscuits for their children, from the local shop. Both groups return the products to the store later, sharing the cash with the storekeeper. For a foreign visitor, the sight of an elephant on the street is exotic enough to stop and engage. Mahouts know this and will guide the animal towards touristy areas. They’ll expect money if you take photos with it, pet it, or stand around admiring it. It’s not unusual for foreigners to get noticed on Indian streets. But if someone gets friendly and mentions his uncle’s sheep farm in Kashmir and his cousin’s cheap Pashmina shop, watch out, it’s just expensive viscose.
IN NEPAL
Beware the man who sells you weed. He’ll rat you out to his friends, who’ll accost you dressed as the police and demand money to let you go and not turn you over to the actual police. The scammers try everything from pickpocketing and street crime to hidden taxes and taximen who inflate fares. Some scammers will go so far as to hide in a large luggage bag to get into the hold of an overnight bus so they can rip open bags and steal cameras and other valuables.
IN CHINA
English-speaking Chinese will pretend they are tousists as well, and ask you to join them for a traditional tea ceremony they’ve booked. This will be in a rundown place, with low-quality tea at high prices. And you’ll only find out once you’ve paid up.
IN CAMBODIA
Prostitutes, or women pretending to proposition men, will lurk outside touristy bars, waiting for the lone drunk male. They’ll then hustle him, running their hands over his body asking for a date or to be taken home. The man will refuse and escape, but later find that the women had stolen the wallet, phone or cash from his pockets.
IN INDONESIA
Watch out for fake ticket booths in front of big tourist attractions or festivals – they sell expensive entry passes to something that is either free or cheaply priced. Tourists realise the scam only once they pass through the gates. Exits are often all the way on the other side, so no one bothers to come back for a refund.