How Do You Avoid Tourist Scams in India?

It is uncomfortable for me to write a page like this, because I am a driver in India telling you that drivers in India will try to take your money. But the discomfort is exactly why it needs writing. When nobody in the industry says it plainly, travellers arrive believing either that nothing happens here or that everything does — and neither of those is useful when you are standing outside Delhi railway station at nine in the morning with a suitcase.

Start with the economics, because the scams make sense once you see them. A driver working for a large agency may earn a modest daily wage. A carpet emporium in Jaipur will pay that same driver a commission of anywhere between ten and forty percent on whatever their passengers spend. One afternoon and one persuadable couple can be worth more than a fortnight of driving. Nobody involved thinks of themselves as a criminal. The emporium is a real shop selling real carpets. The driver is providing real transport. The only thing that has quietly gone missing is your afternoon and your ability to compare prices.

Why tourists are the target, specifically

Three things make a foreign visitor an easy mark, and none of them are about intelligence. You do not know the fair price of anything yet, so a quote of two thousand rupees for a two-hundred-rupee ride sounds merely expensive rather than absurd. You are usually tired, often jet-lagged, and carrying luggage, which makes standing your ground physically harder. And most importantly, Western politeness works against you here: the instinct to engage courteously with everyone who speaks to you is read, quite reasonably, as interest. In India a firm, friendly, non-stopping no thank you is completely normal and nobody is offended by it. Learning that is worth more than any list of scams.

The scam is never the shop, the taxi or the ticket. The scam is the moment you were separated from the plan you already had. Everything after that is just the mechanism.

The structural fix

Individual counters for individual scams are useful, and the table above gives you twelve of them. But the structural fix is simpler: remove the unplanned moments. Almost everything on this page requires you to be making a decision on a pavement, under time pressure, with an information gap. Take those conditions away and there is nothing for the script to attach to.

In practice that means your airport pickup is booked before you land, with a named person and a price already agreed. It means one driver for the whole journey rather than a new negotiation in each city. It means monument tickets bought from the Archaeological Survey of India's official ticketing portal rather than from a man near the gate, train tickets from IRCTC rather than a “special counter”, and your e-visa from the single official government portal rather than one of the many lookalike sites that charge a large fee to fill in the same form on your behalf. It also means checking your own government's current travel advice for India before you book, which takes three minutes and is more current than any blog.

What to ask an operator before you pay anyone

If you take one practical thing from this page, make it these four questions. Send them by message so you have the answers in writing. One: will there be any shopping stops, and will you confirm in writing that there will be none unless I ask? Two: who exactly is my driver, and can I see his name and photograph before I arrive? Three: is the price all-inclusive of fuel, tolls, interstate taxes, parking and the driver's own food and accommodation? Four: what is the payment schedule, and why are you asking for that amount up front? Any operator who answers all four clearly and in writing is very unlikely to be the problem. Ours are answered on the cost page, the drivers page and the safety and vetting page, which is deliberate.

One last thing, and I mean it sincerely. Do not let this page make you suspicious of India. The overwhelming majority of people you meet here will be kind to you for no reason at all, will go far out of their way to help you find an address, and will refuse payment for it. Read the honest answer on whether India is safe alongside this one, because the two belong together. Learn the twelve scripts above, arrange your transport in advance, and then relax and enjoy one of the most rewarding countries in the world to travel through. If you want to see how most first trips are structured, start with the Golden Triangle timing guide or just ask us directly.