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We fell out of the travel mode during our stay in London and had gotten rather comfortable having a warm, clean bed, a guaranteed warm shower and wine and beer flowing with a great meal and family to chat to every night. Arriving in Delhi was like a slap in the face. We had been warned about India being one of the craziest, busiest places we would ever travel. It was one of the reasons we wanted to come here. We had also been warned of the numerous, sneaky and convincing scams that we would be target to.

Driving in a taxi from the airport the traffic was like nothing we had ever seen,  pollution so thick you could not see the sky, rubbish scattered everywhere and smells of god knows what all rolling into one, strong enough to make your eyes water.

We arrived to what we thought was our hotel. A number of ‘friendly and helpful’ people greeting us at our taxi to show us the way to our hotel, which was apparently down a small street the taxi could not reach. So we walked, following the ‘kind’ stranger to our hotel. After 20 minutes of not arriving at our hotel we realised we were victims to one of the scams we were so prepared for. When we told the man we were following we did not believe him, he left us and we continued on our own. We asked a local shop the directions and out of no where another ‘friendly’ man said he would show us. Wary but with no other option we decided to trust him. And so it started all over agiain. We attempted to jump into a rickshaw but the same man tried to convince us the rickshaw driver didn’t know the area, continued to yell at the driver and so cycled off.

We were pointed to a travel agent around the corner and told the man we didn’t want him helping us anymore. So he left! We walked past the travel agent and a man walked past us, and fed us the line “are you guys ok, I saw some men hassling you so if you need directions I can help”. He seemed trustworthy enough, then he led us into his travel shop, told us our hotel was in the slums. We had heard this scam before. (They convince you your hotel is closed or in the slums and get you to ring it, only the phone always rings the same number, so their mate is sitting in another room answering it, eventually you believe them and stay in a suggested hotel by them).

As soon as I heard it, we walked out. We Finally asked some local men getting onto their motorbikes and they showed us the way. Meanwhile we spotted the man from the very start watching us the whole time and realised all the men who had led us in circles, and travel agent were all working together.

We arrived at our hotel exhausted thinking what hVe we gotten ourselves into.

And so the craziness of India began!