India Is Not for Beginners: My First Night in Delhi Nearly Defined the Whole Country

“India is not for beginners.”

Someone told me that later in Jaipur when I explained how my first few hours in the country had gone.

By then, it was funny.

It wasn't funny at three or four in the morning when I was standing in a basement somewhere in Delhi, surrounded by men trying to sell me things I didn't want while another man came down the stairs carrying a cricket bat.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I'd wanted to visit India for years.

Both of my parents had travelled there separately, and I grew up in a house filled with statues of Hindu deities and Buddhas. Later, I lived for two years with a British-born Indian friend. We'd spend hours talking about Hinduism, Indian food and the country itself.

India existed in my imagination long before I'd actually been there.

I wanted to experience it for myself.

And after nine hours from Heathrow and several glasses of red wine courtesy of the hospitality on the plane, I landed in Delhi at around midnight.

There was just one slight problem.

I'd brought my visa confirmation.

Not my actual visa.

Welcome to India.

The India I'd Imagined and the Delhi I Actually Met

The visa situation caused some confusion at immigration, but it was eventually sorted out,, and I walked out of Indira Gandhi International Airport sometime in the early hours of the morning.

Then Delhi hit me.

The heat. The number of people. The pollution.

Everything felt thick.

After hours on a plane and the stress of immigration, my immediate cultural priority was somewhat less spiritual than the journey I'd imagined over all those years.

I needed nicotine.

I found somewhere outside where I could smoke and was almost immediately surrounded by people begging. Dogs sniffed around nearby.

Then a man appeared carrying a stick.

He chased everyone away.

“Don't worry, my friend. I will help you.”

“I didn't ask for any fucking help.”

That probably should have been the end of our relationship.

Instead, we started talking.

Where was I staying?

Was this my first time in India?

What were my plans?

Where was I travelling after Delhi?

At the time, it felt like conversation. Looking back, I think he was working something out:

Was I scamable?

Apparently, the answer was yes.

“Why Aren't I Going With You?”

I'd already checked Uber, so when he offered me a taxi for only slightly more, I thought: fine.

I wouldn't have to stand around waiting.

After the flight, wine, immigration and heat, convenience won.

Then he handed me over to another man.

I remember thinking:

Why aren't I going with you?

I'd spent all that time talking to him. Did this other bloke even know where we were going?

But I got into the car.

The driver asked me to phone my hostel and confirm the address because, he explained, Google Maps didn't always work properly in India.

Annoyingly, that sounded believable.

I'd experienced problems with Google Maps while travelling in Mongolia, so instead of thinking it was an obvious scam, I thought, yeah, actually, fair enough.

I gave him the hostel's number.

He tried calling.

Nobody answered.

We continued driving, and he tried again later.

This time, someone answered.

I spoke to them.

The hostel was closed, they told me. Flooding.

Except I'd already spoken to my hostel.

They knew I was arriving late.

They hadn't mentioned being closed.

The solution, apparently, was to visit a travel agent.

At three or four in the morning.

Yeah.

Sounds legit, mate.

I emailed my hostel.

The response came back quickly.

“GET OUT, IT'S A SCAM!!”

My heart sank.

Fuck.

The 3 am Travel Agent

By now, it must have been somewhere around three or four in the morning.

The driver pulled up outside a travel agency.

Inside, a man started asking about my plans for India.

Where was I going?

What had I booked?

What could he arrange for me?

Hotels. Transport. Tours.

I stopped him.

“Look, mate, I don't know why he's brought me here. I'm not booking anything. I want him to take me to my hostel. If it's flooded, I'll walk through the water.”

“Okay.”

Back into the car we went.

I thought we'd finally settled it.

We hadn't.

The next place was rougher.

I took my bags with me this time.

We went downstairs into another basement.

More travel agents.

More offers.

More things they wanted me to pay for.

I was raising my voice now.

I wasn't buying anything. I wasn't booking anything. I wanted to go to my hostel.

Then more men started coming downstairs.

One was carrying a cricket bat.

The driver looked at me.

“My friend, I can't drive around all night.”

Then:

“Welcome to India.”

It felt like a film.

And I remember thinking:

Fuck. This guy's a gangster, not a cab driver.

£30 Was My Limit

I told them I didn't have any cash.

If they wanted paying, I'd need an ATM.

That got me out of the basement.

I made sure everything came with me.

Now it was just the driver and me again.

We found an ATM.

He stayed away from it.

I noticed that.

There were cameras.

I withdrew about £30 and made a decision:

I was prepared to lose this money. I wasn't prepared to lose anything else.

I walked back outside and offered him the fare we'd agreed.

He wanted more.

“No. This is what we agreed for the trip. That's all I'm giving you.”

More importantly, I wasn't getting back into his car.

I'd already been taken to two places I hadn't asked to go, and I wasn't giving him another opportunity to decide where I went next.

Then, almost perfectly timed, a tuktuk came past.

I waved it down.

I grabbed my stuff.

And I got in.

For the first time that night, I thought I'd escaped.

Scam Number Two

“Take me to a hotel.”

Simple.

We drove until we reached an area that looked like it had hotels.

Then a man waved the tuktuk down.

We couldn't go that way, apparently.

Rioting.

Of course, there fucking was.

I told the driver to go anyway.

He wouldn't.

But don't worry.

He knew somewhere.

And as we started driving again, I had the horrible realisation that I might have escaped one scam only to climb directly into another.

I opened Google Maps.

I watched the blue dot.

We were going the wrong way.

Then it looked as though we were leaving Delhi altogether.

I started looking for anything that resembled a proper hotel.

One appeared ahead.

That'll do.

“Stop.”

He didn't.

“STOP.”

Still moving.

Fine.

I threw my bag out of the tuktuk.

Then I jumped out after it.

“My Friend, You Can't Afford to Stay Here”

By the time I threw my bag out of the tuktuk and ran towards the hotel gates, it was approaching five in the morning.

I'd landed around midnight.

In those five hours, I'd had problems getting through immigration, been befriended outside the airport, passed between drivers, told my hostel was flooded, taken to two fake travel agencies, confronted by men in a basement, escaped at an ATM, climbed into a tuktuk and then realised I might be getting scammed all over again.

I grabbed my bag and ran towards the hotel.

I threw it over the gate.

I was ready to climb after it.

Then a security guard appeared.

I tried to explain what had happened.

Please let me in.

These people are trying to scam me.

I'm scared.

Eventually I was through the gates.

Safe.

Then came what was possibly the most personally offensive part of the entire ordeal.

Behind me, the tuktuk driver called out:

“My friend, you can't afford to stay here.”

I turned around.

Gave him the V-sign.

And continued walking into a hotel that I very much could not afford to stay in.

For once that night, somebody wasn't lying to me.

“This Is Not the Real India, Sir”

I explained everything at reception.

The man helping me was fantastic.

Halfway through sorting the room, he suggested we go outside for a cigarette.

I ran out.

He gave me his.

We stood outside smoking while I tried to process the fact that I'd been in India for only five hours.

He arranged breakfast for me.

He sorted out a late checkout.

And then he said something that stuck with me:

“This is not the real India, sir. I'm sorry this happened to you.”

He didn't have anything to apologise for.

But he was right.

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The Man Who Lost €400

The next day I finally reached the hostel I'd apparently been unable to reach because of the catastrophic flooding that didn't exist.

Then I went on a tour of Delhi.

That's where I met Marco, an Italian teacher.

We got talking.

He'd been scammed too.

Almost the same story.

Except Marco had lost around €400.

Suddenly my night didn't seem quite so expensive.

This wasn't some elaborate situation I'd uniquely stumbled into. The “your hotel is closed” routine is a known Delhi tourist scam: redirect the newly arrived traveller, undermine their existing booking, then present another hotel, journey, or tour as the solution.

Marco and I had both arrived tired and unfamiliar with the city.

We'd both been told something had gone wrong.

And someone conveniently happened to know how to fix it.

The difference was I'd managed to get out before paying for the solution.

Above the Spice Market

Later, the tour took us through Old Delhi and the spice market around Khari Baoli.

Khari Baoli has been a centre of trade for centuries, with the surrounding lanes packed with sacks of spices, nuts, dried fruit and tea.

But it wasn't the scale of the market that stayed with me.

Our guide offered to take us upstairs to see another side of the neighbourhood.

We climbed.

Up there, away from the market below, things were rough.

I remember rats.

Monkeys.

And on a landing, a man sitting on a mat cooking over a small camping stove.

I asked our guide what he was making.

The guide spoke to him in Hindi.

“It's like a samosa,” was roughly the explanation I got.

Then the man offered me one.

I said no.

Looking around at where he lived and what he appeared to have, he found that taking his food felt wrong.

“I don't want to take what little he has.”

The guide looked at me.

“If a man who has nothing offers you everything he has, how can you say no to that generosity?”

So I sat down.

A Guest in His Home

Everyone else carried on exploring.

I stayed with him.

He couldn't speak English.

I couldn't speak Hindi.

So we did what people do when language fails: smiled, pointed, made noises and gestured our way through it.

And I ate.

Eventually the rest of the tour came back to collect me.

Before leaving, I tried to give the man some money.

He refused.

I tried again.

Still no.

He spoke to our guide.

The guide translated.

I was his guest.

This might not look like much to me, he said, but it was his home.

And I wasn't only a guest in his home.

I was a guest in his country.

I thought immediately about the previous night.

Those men would have taken everything I had if I'd given them the opportunity.

This man seemed to have almost nothing and was willing to give me what he did have.

And now he wouldn't even take my money.

So I dropped it on the floor.

“If he won't take it, I'm leaving it there.”

His hospitality broke my heart a little.

Not because I wanted to turn him into some romantic story about poverty and happiness. I knew almost nothing about him.

I didn't even know his name.

But I knew what he'd done.

Less than a day after I'd arrived in India and become frightened of strangers approaching me, a stranger had invited me to sit in his home and share his food.

The Same Country

The rest of India kept dismantling the judgement I could easily have made that first night.

The man at the hotel had already started it with a packet of cigarettes, breakfast and an apology he didn't owe me.

Then there was the man above the spice market.

And then there was Mentu.

I originally knew Mentu because I needed a driver.

That could easily have been the extent of our relationship.

Customer.

Driver.

Money changes hands.

Goodbye.

Instead, we spent eight days travelling together.

He drove me through the Golden Triangle — Delhi, Agra and Jaipur — and somewhere during those hours on the road he stopped feeling like the man I'd hired to drive me around India.

He became part of the trip.

Marco reappeared in Jaipur.

Maria, a Spanish traveller I'd met, joined me in the car too.

And when we found ourselves with some spare time, I asked Mentu something that probably wasn't on the itinerary.

Take us to your village.

I wanted him to see his family, as he works away from home for long periods.

Mentu's Village

Mentu took us home.

I met his wife.

His daughter.

Her husband.

And their infant child — Mentu's grandchild.

He was so proud.

Proud of his family.

Proud of his home.

Proud to introduce us.

And it was a privilege to have that part of his life shared with us.

He didn't have to do it.

We could have spent eight days with the professional version of Mentu: drive tourists to Agra, wait while they photograph the Taj Mahal, drive them to Jaipur, repeat.

Instead, Mentu became part of my journey.

Part of my story about India.

And I became, briefly, a guest in his home too.

India Is Not for Beginners

Somewhere in Jaipur, after hearing the story of my arrival, someone told me:

“India is not for beginners.”

Maybe they're right.

Within five hours of landing I'd brought the wrong visa document, been targeted outside the airport, taken to two fake travel agencies, confronted men in a basement, seen a cricket bat appear, argued over a taxi fare beside an ATM, escaped into a tuktuk, apparently encountered a riot, realised I might be getting scammed again, thrown my luggage out of a moving vehicle and jumped after it.

Then I'd given the V-sign to a man for correctly pointing out that I couldn't afford my hotel.

It wasn't exactly the spiritual introduction to India I'd imagined while looking at those statues in my childhood home.

But if I'd allowed that night to define India, I would have been spectacularly wrong.

Because the following day, a man sitting on a mat above a spice market shared his food with me and refused my money because I was his guest.

A hotel employee gave me his cigarettes and looked after me because he was embarrassed by something other people had done.

And a driver I'd hired eventually took me home to meet his wife, daughter and new grandchild.

The scam is one of my favourite stories to tell now.

But I always tell the other story with it.

Because they're really one story.

The night I arrived, I met people who, given the opportunity, would have left me with nothing.

The next day, I met a man who appeared to have very little, yet he offered to share it with me anyway.

You need both stories to understand why I adore India.

If You're Arriving in Delhi for the First Time

My behaviour that night should not be interpreted as a recommended scam-avoidance strategy. Jumping from tuktuks isn't going into the Lonely Planet safety handbook.

What I'd actually recommend is considerably less cinematic:

• Arrange an airport transfer through your accommodation or use an official prepaid taxi, Uber or Ola.

• Don't accept unsolicited “help” from somebody who then wants to redirect your journey.

• Contact your accommodation yourself if somebody claims it's closed, flooded, full or inaccessible.

• Don't allow a driver to take you to a travel agency to “solve” a problem you haven't independently confirmed.

• Keep your route open on your own phone.

• Share your journey with somebody you trust where possible.

• If something feels wrong, get somewhere public, staffed, and well-lit as quickly as you safely can.

• 
  

And perhaps most importantly:

Never let the worst person you meet become your definition of everybody who lives there.

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Have You Ever Got a Country Completely Wrong?

Maybe you were scammed.

Maybe somebody frightened you.

Maybe you arrived somewhere and immediately wondered why you'd come.

And then somebody changed your mind.

I'd love to hear the story in the comments.