The job beside the job.

Sometimes people try to con you, and sometimes they succeed. I got ripped off in India, in spite of taking the good advice of Lonely Planet, who told me only to book a train ticket at the New Delhi train station, on the first floor. But what do you do when those people tell you that all tickets are sold out? You believe them. At least that’s what I did. I decided to send an email to the Ministry of Tourism in Delhi to tell my story, and I have send an email to Rajan Tahim, the guy that set me up and who seems to be running a parallel business while working for an official Indian public service. This is what I had to say to him:

 

Dear mister Tahim,

 

I wanted to inform you that I have written an email to your superiors to complain about your way of working.
I was in Delhi a couple of weeks ago, and I needed to buy a trainticket to Agra. I came to the official booking office, on the first floor of the New Delhi trainstation, where I was told that all tickets for first and second class were sold out. That, of course, is information that I can not check. The ONLY other solution, so I was told, was to hire a private car. I was stupid enough to believe it all, and booked a car that was way too expensive. 9400 rupees (137 Euros) for a ride to Agra is a complete rip off!

Moreover: the first thing the driver told me, was that I could only go to see the Taj Mahal, and no other sites in Agra. This was not what you told me, so I insisted on at least visiting the Red Fort as well.
The car you arranged for me was clearly not an official service. It is very obvious that this car and this driver have no license to do the business or to provide the so called services that you sell. I could only hope that we would not be involved in an accident, because your insurance would never cover any costs for the passengers, since the driver is providing something he is not insured for.

The driver himself was a dirty, very impolite guy, who started asking for a tip five minutes after he picked me up. His English was not good enough to keep a conversation going, and he stopped at least 10 times to buy tobacco to chew on. He didn’t even have the courtesy to fill up the tank before he picked me up, so we had to stop to buy fuel. The toll that needs to be paid was included in the price, so you told me. Well, when we stopped at the toll booth, the driver asked me to pay the toll, which I refused of course. For the next payment he had no change, so he asked me for change. I was – once again – stupid enough to give him some money.
All the way to Agra and back, he never stopped spitting. He opened the door several times, while driving, to spit. This is not only dangerous, but simply disgusting!

It is very clear that you are risking peoples money and peoples lives by doing what you do. If you look into the mirror, and if you would be honest with yourself, you would stop this immediately.

I am travelling around the world, and publishing a blog while travelling. Well, mister Tahim, your name will be in it, and it will not be in a positive way. As a matter of fact, this entire email will be published on the web.

I thought it would only be fair of me to inform you of the fact that your superiors are getting this information too.

Kind regards,

 

David.

I am not naïve, and I assume that mister Tahim will just knod his head and continue his condemnable yet profitable side-job. At least my conscience is cleared now.

The basket.

Porters are machines. That is the only possible conclusion of the day. They get up at an ungodly hour, grab our bags and carry them, strapped around their forehead with a plastic ribbon, to our next destination. When we arrive, exhausted and with painful muscles, they are singing and dancing as if they just had a day off.

Today, though, was not an ordinary day. One of our group members is suffering and struggling to come downhill from Annapurna Base Camp and halfway through the day the inevitable happened. He was not going to be able to make it to the next destination, and thus the porters had to come to the rescue. While I was still stumbling towards our guesthouse, they took off in the opposite direction to pick up the unfortunate. They lifted him in a bamboo basket, strapped it around their forehead as if it were a piece of luggage and transported him downhill, taking turns every ten minutes, but not without jumping, laughing and cheering with 80 kilograms tied to their body. Porters are absolute machines!