10 Scams We Encountered in India/Nepal

Ryan and I were duly warned by the Lonely Planet and other sources about possible scams one might encounter in India or Nepal, but it wasn't until we re-read the Lonely Planet that we realized we had encountered every single scam 'in the book', so to speak. Despite having met with all number of scam artists, however, we have managed not to be taken by them at all, except maybe one or two heh heh. So here is a summary of the scams we dealt with here.

1. The Police
This may or may not have been a scam where two mean looking men approach innocent travelers at night and demand to search their bags for drugs, or harass you for some other useless reason like why Ryan and I are traveling with a "native" or why we could possibly want to swim at night, ridiculous. They wear ordinary clothes and sport an ID that looks like it came from a cereal box. The ones Ryan encountered last night tried to actually physically take him to the 'station'...yeesh!

2. Milk Women/Children
There are plenty of poor people in India, so it is very hard to say no to a shoeless beggar when all they want is Rs.10. In Toronto, we often offer food or clothes instead of money, so this seems like quite a logical scam to direct at foreigners. Starving women and their babies, or just a child, will come and ask you to buy them milk "no money, just milk". When you buy them milk they take it and bring it back to the store and they get a piece of the profit as a commission for bringing in customers. Luckily, Ryan and I have become just jaded enough here to say no to everyone and everything that requires any kind of money or donation.

3. Jewelry Smugglers
This is the one where a shop owner will befriend someone (my experience was a little different) and invite the foreigner over to his family's home and whatnot. I just met the man in his actual shop. Once trust is established they ask you to do them a favour by bringing back jewelry or carpets to your home country to avoid paying customs fees. The man approached me this way by saying (and this was very odd because we were talking about something completely unrelated) that I would make a great sales person. He kept asking me whether sales interested me and telling me how successful his friend in Canada had been at selling his jewelry. I didn't realize at first thought that this was a scam moment, but I just kept saying how much I hated working in retail and customer service haha. Good thing!

4. Taxi Drivers
Aside from ritually scamming tourists by severely overcharging for rides, the drivers have a few other tricks up their sleeves to boot. They tried to take us to the wrong hotels so that they get a commission from the hotel that actually books us. They do this by telling us that our hotel is full. We prevent this by always saying that indeed we do have a booking even if we don't.

Our driver in Jaipur overheard us mentioning that we wanted to go to a specific place to look at carpets. Of course he takes us to another place first, where we "can just look and if you don't like I take you to your shop". ARGH! This carpet "factory" is supposed to show you how carpets are made and all this cool stuff. The driver and owner claim it isn't a shop, it is where retailers purchase their carpets for resale. FALSE! This place was basically a showroom with 3 looms outside to show us how the carpets are made "to avoid going in to the actual factory". They also said that the place where they wash the carpets happened to be under construction right now, so we couldn't see it either. We did end up getting a great deal on beautiful carpets, but we were quite frustrated with our driver after this.

5. Drug Dealers
On a multiple-times-daily basis in Anjuna, and occasionally in Mumbai, Ryan (mainly, but myself as well sometimes) gets asked if he wants to buy any number of drugs by men on the roadside. The scam here is that many of these men work with police. It is a good thing Ryan and I aren't drug users because the police scam would have gotten us in deep doo-doo.

6. Ear Cleaners
Men often try to walk up to people and pierce their ears with a rusty piece of metal, without asking first, but they also try to "clean your ears" by magically removing a stone from inside your head. It is a little like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. The ear cleaners are sometimes legit though.

7. Maoists
Call it a scam, or politics, or both, Ryan and I (along with thousands of other tourists and locals that go from city to city in Nepal) were forced to pay a fee of rs. 500 to young boys that sometimes carry large guns. We were given a receipt but we still have no idea why they do this. Now the maoists and the government of Nepal have made 'peace', so this practice has stopped for now.

8. Drum Sellers
These guys are by far one of the most harmless but ruthless scam artists of all, because they make it so obvious. These guys sell those bongo drum things that everybody thinks are cool and would love to play (at least all the tree huggers in India anyway) and they are everywhere. In Mumbai, they will follow you for blocks, even if you say no a thousand times. First they start at about Rs.450 and as you keep walking away saying "no, I wouldn't take the drum if you gave it to me for free" they keep dropping the price. Without even haggling we managed to get the price down to something absurdly cheap like Rs. 20 or something. Too bad we really didn't want one.

9. Train Thief
On a two-day overnight train from Delhi to Goa, I was peacefully sleeping, happy to finally be on something more comfortable than the back of a bus or jeep in Nepal. At 3am I felt my sheets gently rub against my foot, and awoke to some guy trying to get into our bags. He ran away, but later, when I was watching out for him, he came back! The nerve! But this guy was obviously stupid because the whole night some girl in our bunk left the lights on, so I could see him plain as day...he should have chosen a bunk with the lights off...

10. Tight Rope Walkers and Others
Well, I can't really think of a decent tenth scam that we met with, so I'll include the general kind of ripoffs you meet on a daily basis. On the beach, for instance, two children will set up a makeshift tight rope and do tricks and walk the rope. When they are done, whether you watched or not, they expect money. The same goes for porters with our baggage. People take your bags even if you say 'no' three times, and then demand "baksheesh" which is a tip of sorts, except they wont take small bills so you often have to argue with them that you didn't even want their help and leave angrily. Small children walking up and talking to you while casually directing you right into their mothers' shops...so frustrating. And finally, there are all number or religious men or "traditionally dressed" women, who put things on you, or try to get you to take pictures of them and then demand lots of rupees.

Well from all the things we have learned in India, these scams have given us a thicker skin, and have made me far more assertive. Good thing we didn't really get ripped off though...