The Charity Donation scam was one of the first I was ever warned about on my first trip to India. The warning on that occasion related to a particular version of this over-worked technique which was based on the use of small flag pins. The…Read More

The Charity Donation scam was one of the first I was ever warned about on my first trip to India. The warning on that occasion related to a particular version of this over-worked technique which was based on the use of small flag pins. The tour guide warned us to be wary of smartly dressed young people trying to pin small paper flags onto us as we walked from the hotel into central Delhi. He explained that they would come up with some nonsense about collecting for an Indian national student support scheme and that if you tried to remove the flag, they’d give you a guilt-trip about ‘disrespecting’ their country’s flag before trying to hook you into giving them money. I had been going to India for more than 15 years before I ever encountered a woman with a flag and she got the wrong people on the wrong day. As she bounded up to us with her flag ready to go, my husband held out his hand and shouted "No!" and she turned tail and ran off. Why was he so firm? Quite simply because the day before he nearly got caught by one of these scammers. I couldn’t be too mad as the same thing had happened to me years before and I knew how easy it was to get lured into a discussion and then fleeced for more than you intended.

We had been in Lodi Gardens, wandering around between the various rather unkempt old tombs. It was our first trip to the gardens and we’d been dropped off by a driver who considered them to be a must-visit location. Considering that Delhi is a bit weak on green space, we were happy to just stroll around, keep an eye on the courting couples, snigger at the heavily sweating joggers and just take some time out from the full on intensity of the city. In one of the tombs we were alone, not something that happens very often in Delhi. A gentleman of around 55 years old came up to us, politely asking where we were from, were we having a nice holiday and all the usual stuff. He then tried to pin an artificial flower onto my husband’s shirt. He told us he worked at an eye hospital for children in the city. He may have done, he may not have done, it’s not easy to say. He had an ‘official’ looking badge and a clipboard. He told us he was collecting for the hospital.

This particular scam relies on three things. Firstly that you will feel he’s given you something – the silly flower or the paper flag – and that you’ll feel you have to give something back. Secondly that the victim will want to get rid of the scammer but with be too polite to tell an older, well-spoken, official-looking gentleman to go away and leave them alone but may well be willing to give a small donation – maybe 50 to 100 rupees - to make him disappear. We fitted the bill on that one. Finally, it relies on people’s willingness to do what other people appear to have done and to not want to be seen to be mean. We failed on that one as we’re really rather bully-proof.

Once the victim has indicated that yes, of course, they’d be happy to give a donation, the clipboard comes into play. The scammer wants your name and address so he can show other people that foreigners like you are interested in his charity. He hands you the board and a pen and you are confronted with a set of handwritten details – people from UK, USA, Australia, Germany, France, wherever. The hand writing is all different – they look to be genuine. You have their names, their addresses (which may or may not be real) and in the final column, the amount they’ve given. You are planning on giving a pound or two – but these people appear to have given £20, £50, £100. If the scam works well, you’ll up your 50-100 rupees ($1-2) to 500 or a 1000 or even 5000 rupees in order to look like you’re just as generous as all those people.
I saw my husband looking at the list and panicking. I took the note Tony planned to give and gave to the man, told him we didn’t want to fill in anything, he could take this note or leave it but we wouldn’t be giving more than that to a person approaching us in the street, he shouldn’t waste any more time on us and would he please just leave us alone. "But look madam, people from California, Great Britain, all supporting my charity". I told him again that we didn’t give that sort of money to charities we didn’t know and he started to bluster and I gave him back his silly flower. I asked if he’d like me to call a policeman (as if) and then told him one last time to leave us alone and then walked off, not even leaving him the money we would have given him just to make him go away.

I cannot rule out that some of these people may be genuine, that they may really be collecting for charities, but I don’t believe for one minute that the names and the numbers on the clipboard are real. I have nothing to prove on charitable support to India, but I give through recognised charities and not to men with clipboards who sidle up to you when there’s nobody around.

The moral of the story is simple. Don’t be ‘embarrassed’ or guilt-tripped into giving money to people whose credentials you can’t check and who want to make you feel bad about not being more generous. The Indian flag version of this works well on British tourists who may well still be feeling a tad uneasy about the excesses of our Empire days and can lead to "My ancestors gave their lives for your country and now you disrespect the flag they fought so hard to win in getting their Independence!" Yeah! Whatever – your ancestors would be SO proud that you’re a scamming little bully.
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This scam is not one I’ve ever personally fallen for but I’ve been set up for it a few times and been able to avoid it because I’m a control freak of the first degree and I like to know exactly where I’m going to…Read More

This scam is not one I’ve ever personally fallen for but I’ve been set up for it a few times and been able to avoid it because I’m a control freak of the first degree and I like to know exactly where I’m going to be staying when I’m in India. This particular scam relies on people turning up in a city without a hotel booking and just hoping that the hotel they want having space. It doesn’t work if you’ve already pre-booked, got your confirmation, and had recent email or phone contact with the hotel owner or receptionist.


Here’s how it works.


The unwary traveller arrives at the airport or railway station, tired and possibly emotional (especially if they’ve been on the train for days and the toilets all backed up). He or she steps out of the station or airport and gets swamped by taxi drivers. Finding one who looks less insane than the others, the tourist asks the driver to take them to a specific hotel. For the sake of illustration, let’s call it the Hotel Xanadu. The Indian yes/no head wobble starts as the driver attempts to confuse the poor tourists. "No, no, sir, madam. Xanadu bad hotel. Xanadu fire, Xanadu closed, Xanadu renovations, Xanadu wiped off the face of the earth by a meteorite" I think you get the picture.


The worried tourist is confused but the helpful taxi man wants to help. "I take you somewhere nice, much better, you come with me, very fine hotel, very comfortable " and off you go, into the night (it always seems to be at night) trusting life, luggage and limb to your new best friend. He pulls up outside a generic, grubby little hotel where not surprisingly they just happen to still have a room for you. It’s late, you don’t have the slightest idea where you are, you don’t feel in a position to really ‘negotiate’ and the streets you passed through to get here had enough people sleeping on them already that you’re not keen to join them.


If the receptionist is really professional at this scam, he’s going to tell you that there’s a big event in town, all the hotels are full, he has a room for the next two nights but you need to pay for all the nights up front. You weigh up the options and give in because you can’t face going to find another hotel and you’re not planning on staying around too long. You pay way over the odds for a poor room and the driver gets a healthy ‘cut’ from the receptionist for bringing you there. Meanwhile in another part of town, the receptionist at the Xanadu is wondering what happened to those nice people who sent him an email to say they were coming but hadn’t actually paid for the room. He looks around the nice lobby of his hotel that’s not closed, not on fire and hasn’t been hit by a meteorite.


The tourists have a room in a hotel they wouldn’t have booked if it were the last on earth and for which they’ve paid well over the odds. The hotelier and the driver are happy – maybe if the tourists only stay the one night, the receptionist can even hide that they were there from his boss and pocket the overnight fees. It’s a dog eat dog world in the tourist trade.


So how can you avoid this particular scam? Well if you’re like me, you book ahead, carry the paperwork that shows you’ve already paid, and you mail the hotel a day or two beforehand to remind them that you’re coming and to let them know when to expect you. With online booking so easy these days, you can have a last minute reservation that means you really don’t have to change your way of travelling in order to have security of knowing you’ve got a bed for the night. When the driver says that your hotel has been shut down by the health inspectors, politely say that you think he must be mistaken because you spoke to the manager who is a close family friend just that morning and suggest that maybe he’s mixed it up with another place. This is the polite version. The short version is more direct "I don’t believe you. Do you want to take me to this hotel or shall I get another driver?"


If you are of the ‘I’m going to take my chances’ type, then be aware your driver will get a cut, take a good look at the hotel room before you part with any money, and if you don’t like the place, get back in the taxi and ask him to take you somewhere else. The driver isn’t going to give up on you as he’s holding on for his commission. If you have to, make him drive you round for hours until you find a place you like – after all you’re going to be indirectly paying him for his time.

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This next scam is not an exclusively Indian one but it’s one I first learned about in India. It’s particularly rife in the most touristic areas of the country – Delhi, the Golden Triangle, Rajastan are all places you can be sure to see this…Read More

This next scam is not an exclusively Indian one but it’s one I first learned about in India. It’s particularly rife in the most touristic areas of the country – Delhi, the Golden Triangle, Rajastan are all places you can be sure to see this in action.

As you walk along the street, just minding your own business and taking in your surroundings, young men (I’ve never seen women doing this) will approach you and try to offer unasked for help. They will offer to take you to ‘my uncle’s emporium’ or just guide you to any random shop that you were quite capable of finding on your own. They’ll ask you where you’re from, is it your first time in India (never say yes, even if it is), do you like their country, in fact just about anything to make a connection. Their aim is not to practice their English, nor to flirt with the ladies – they have one intent and that’s to get you into a shop where you will buy things. They will tell you "No charge for looking, madam, please come see" and if you don’t put up sufficient resistance, you’ll soon be stuck in the back-room of a shop being shown hundreds of rugs or shawls or nick-nacks that you probably don’t want to buy.

Shopping in India is one of my favourite things to do but I NEVER let myself be taken into a shop. Why? Because the oily little fellow who lured you in will be getting a massive commission on what you spend. And that means, no matter how good you are at bargaining, you’ll be paying his commission on top of whatever minimum amount the shop keeper might have been willing to take.

I knew there had to be something ‘in it’ for these men but the amount came as a shock. I was told how this works by a young man in Jaipur on my first visit to India. Four of us had ‘hired’ him for the evening to show us around and he gave us a few useful tips which more than paid for what we gave him for his time. He revealed that he’d made a lot of money (and scored with quite a few young European women) by using his good looks and charm to get them into shops that paid him for his work. He was getting up to one third of everything they paid in these shops, just for getting them through the door.

I was lucky to learn this on my first trip to India and that knowledge has saved me a fortune over the years. If I go into a shop, I push past the people trying to ‘adopt’ me for their commission. Once inside the store I tell the shop keeper that nobody bought me there and nobody will be getting commission so I expect their best prices. I’ve always done pretty well – although of course the definition of ‘pretty well’ will be different for each person.

Outside the big tourist hot spots you will still get people – typically taxi or tuk-tuk drivers – trying to divert you from your journey to go shopping. In Bangalore we struck a deal with a tuk-tuk driver who kept dragging us to shops. I told him that if he was looking for commission, he was not going to do well from us because we weren’t buying. He in turn explained that he didn’t care – the shops were paying him a basic ‘finders fee’ for delivering us to their store. If we bought, or if we didn’t, he still got a cup of tea and a couple of hundred rupees. By tackling him on the issue of commission, and by him explaining how it worked, we were able to help him out by wandering round a few shops. He in return drove us around all day for 100 rupees, happy with his tea and payments from the shops. I would assume that the restaurant he chose for us to have lunch, also gave him tea and a bowl of food for taking us there. Don’t ever feel guilty that your driver is hanging around whilst you do something – most likely he’s perfectly happy and being compensated for his time.

A Delhi variant on the ‘My Uncle’s Emporium’ scam was played on some people who were with us on my second trip to Delhi. I’d told them about the Central Cottage Industries Emporium, a giant multi-level fixed price store on Janpath, close to the Imperial Hotel. If you are not great at bargaining or you long to be left alone to look around without being followed and pestered, then this is a great place to go. No driver can get commission from taking you to this state-run store so two groups found they were taken somewhere completely different. When we asked if they’d been to the CCIE, they said they had and that they’d hated it. They were followed around and given the hard sell. Of course they were in a completely different place where the drivers were getting commission on all sales.

If someone wants you to do something, there’s usually going to be some incentive for them so try to find out what it is and whether it’s going to cost you anything. If you know what you’re getting into, you can work their systems to your advantage or at least to your amusement. Most will be surprised that you ask, might well respect you a lot more, and together you can all have some fun. There’s nothing more frustrating than being dragged round shops when you really want to be in a museum or a park, but if you understand the scams that are going on, you can balance the day nicely.
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The baby milk scam is one which we observed outside the Dalai Lama’s temple in Dharamsala and a little bit of googling established that this is one of the main places where tourists have seen this particular technique in operation. It’s not exclusively an Indian…Read More

The baby milk scam is one which we observed outside the Dalai Lama’s temple in Dharamsala and a little bit of googling established that this is one of the main places where tourists have seen this particular technique in operation. It’s not exclusively an Indian idea – others have reported it in other parts of the region or in the Far East, proving conclusively that there’s always a market for a really effective and professional scam. I can’t help but almost admire this one.


The area around the Dalai Lama’s temple has a lot of beggars and they have a particularly sneaky scam that they work on soft-hearted foreigners. They are unlikely to bother you on the way in, preferring instead to zoom in on people who are feeling ever so slightly holy and buzzing from their recent experience. These people are much more likely to be feeling generous and are more likely to feel bad about brushing away a beggar. Plagues of rat-like girls clutching dirty bundles of rags that may or may not contain small babies plea for baby milk. Most of these girls are clearly too young to be mothers. The babies – if indeed they are babies – are unlikely to be theirs.


"Not money, madam, milk for baby. Baby hungry, come shop, buy baby milk". They’ve practiced the lines time and time again, schooled in delivering the right degree of sadness to tug at the heartstrings. In me they picked the wrong mug – I have no sympathy for the girls and not one iota of maternal instincts. They are wasting their time trying to scam me on this one.


This is a particularly cunning and clever scam since it takes advantage of some basic aspects of human nature. Firstly there’s the feeling of "How can I be harsh outside a temple when I’m given an opportunity to do a small good?" Secondly there’s the tendency for many people to be more sympathetic to a dumb infant (or in my case a dog or cat) than to a grown adult. And thirdly it relies on the exploitation of embarrassment.

The reason it’s clever is that this scam is a sophisticated form of up-selling. Many of us would put our hands in our pockets for a small donation outside a temple but these girls don’t want money at least not in the direct sense. If you get hooked by this scam, you’ll get fleeced for tens of dollars or pounds. Take a look at the girls; they are not local. They don’t look like the local people, they don’t dress like them, their faces are a completely different shape, colour and structure than the local people. No mother gets on a bus and travels hundreds of miles into the Himalaya just to scrounge a few rupees. These girls are shipped in from the plains by their employers who train them, give them a baby to hold, or a bundle of rags that looks like a baby, and then drop them off to beg.

The unwary tourist thinks they’ll get away with spending maybe 100 rupees (about £1.20 at that time) after all, how much can milk cost? But they won’t got to the nearest or cheapest shop. The girl will lead you to a shop where the shopkeeper (who is in on the scam) pulls out a tub (or three) of very expensive powdered baby formula. This baby – the one whose mother is too poor to feed him – has expensive tastes. She might want you to believe she’s so malnourished that she has no milk to offer him, but baby is on the Rolls Royce of over-priced formula. The scam relies on the donor being too embarrassed to make a fuss. This is why it works well with Brits – we don’t do fuss and we hate to be embarrassed. People don’t want to lose ‘face’ – even if it is in front of a conman shop-keeper and a professional beggar. They don’t want to seem mean or rude and with the shopkeeper watching them, the unwary tourist parts with a couple of thousand rupees. The shopkeeper gets the money, the girl gets the milk and then returns later to give back the milk in return for a cut of the proceeds of the sale of the ridiculously over-priced product.

If you want to help poor people in India, don’t give to these girls. If they’re hanging around a temple, then please give your money to the temple or to local charities who can manage it properly. You may say "What harm does it do? It’s my money, if I want to give it to the babies, where’s the problem?" Just ask yourself if that’s a real baby, and if it is, ask yourself why it is that you never see the baby cry and why the babies rarely even open their eyes. Ask yourself if the girl is behaving in a ‘maternal’ way or just lugging the baby around like so much disposable luggage. Some of these babies are drugged up to stay asleep because that way the cause no trouble to their young ‘minders’. You think you’re helping the baby – the scam relies on that belief - but more likely you’ll just encourage people to continue this scam, to buy or steal babies from mothers who cannot afford to keep them, and to hook the babies on cheap drugs. You really don’t want to stop and think about ‘what next’ for a baby raised on opiates and discarded when it gets too big to be carried around.
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This particular scam is one I’ve often read about but hadn’t ever experienced until we were in Delhi in 2012. I knew the scam – unfortunately my gullible husband didn’t, and he’s the one on whom it was perpetrated. Luckily it didn’t cost him too…Read More

This particular scam is one I’ve often read about but hadn’t ever experienced until we were in Delhi in 2012. I knew the scam – unfortunately my gullible husband didn’t, and he’s the one on whom it was perpetrated. Luckily it didn’t cost him too much but he learned his lesson and he won’t get caught out again.


We were in a very touristy area, walking between Connaught Circle towards Janpath, passing above the underground Palika Bazaar. We’d been distracted by a mongoose in a bush – though I have no reason to suspect this cute little critter was in on the game. The grass was so dry that it almost crackled under foot, the soil was dry and cracked. As we reached the end of the grass bank, I jumped down and my husband followed. A passing shoe-shine man contrived to be in exactly the right place at the right time. His skills of timing and placement were worth the cost of the scam and I retain a certain degree of admiration for how he pulled it off. I jumped down and turned to give my husband my hand. He dislocated his knee a few years ago and is wary of steps, let alone a jump of a foot or more. He was looking at me and not at his feet.


As Tony landed, the shoe shine man pointed to his boot. "Sir, sir, dog shit, sir" (no word of a lie, these were his exact words). Weren’t we fortunate that he just happened to be there with his shoe shine kit to help us out. We explained that he couldn’t clean Tony’s boots because they were expensive ones (not that they looked it) that can only be cleaned with special products. Odd as it sounds, they are indeed Goretex breathable leather boots and this was entirely true. "No problem sir, I just clean it off". Out came a grubby looking cloth, a little brush and he set to work.


Tony was reaching for a note to give the guy – fortunately not a big one so I didn’t interfere. A good wife should not really give her hubby a dressing down in a public space over a matter of perhaps 50 rupees. I dragged him away laughing before he could get too attached to his new shoe shine buddy. "Did you ever see dog poo that came out like liquid diarrhoea?" I asked him. "Look how dry the ground is, there’s no way that came out of a dog and sat around waiting for you to tread in it, on the TOP of your boot, not the bottom". I’m no expert on dog poo but I knew the colour the consistency and even the smell were all wrong. The helpful shoe shine man most likely had a small squeezy bottle in his pocket filled with watered down cow dung of a perfect squirting consistency. He’d waited for Tony to be distracted, squirted his shoe and then presented himself as his guardian angel. No dog had been needed, just a quick bit of sleight of hand.


Luckily Tony’s fear of the guy ruining his Goretex prevented him being conned for more money and we took the whole thing in good spirits. I’d never seen the poo-scam before but I’d read about it fifteen years earlier and had actually been quite surprised to have escaped it for so many years. Tony doesn’t read guidebooks and forums and so was clueless about what was going on. He declared that if it happened again, he’d just poor water on his boot to clear the "Sir, Sir, dog shit" and wave the potential rescuer away.

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If you're reading my reviews about Dharamsala and thinking "Why on earth would anyone go there?" then the purpose of this is to explain where the attraction lies. The Indian state of Himachal Pradesh has a lot of cities and many of them get largely…Read More

If you're reading my reviews about Dharamsala and thinking "Why on earth would anyone go there?" then the purpose of this is to explain where the attraction lies. The Indian state of Himachal Pradesh has a lot of cities and many of them get largely ignored by the tourist trade but Dharamsala's a bit special and draws visitors from all around the world. Strictly speaking, it's not really Dharamsala itself which draws the crowds – is a little place just up the hill from the main city. Some refer to it as Upper Dharamsala or by the absurdly multi-racial name of McLeod Ganj which combines aspects of both its British colonial history and its Indian roots. All surprising when the main thing the place is known for is neither British nor Indian. The answer is simple and it's one man and a Tibetan at that - Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso – more commonly known as the Dalai Lama.


When China invaded and occupied Tibet in the early 1950s, there was a viscious crack-down on Buddhism. In 1959 the Tibetans rebelled with the Tibetan Uprising and fearing for his life, the Dalai Lama and some of his followers fled to India. The Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru allowed His Holiness and his followers to set up their ‘Government in Exile’ in Dharamsala. Interestingly, the region of India more commonly referred to as 'Little Tibet' is not the Dharamsala area, that's further north and higher in the Himalaya in Ladakh, but the area is very cut off from the rest of the world and perhaps a touch too close to the borders with Pakistan and China. No sense relocating and then risking getting invaded again.


It’s estimated that another 80,000 of His Holiness's followers also went into exile in order to follow their leader and escape the Chinese oppression. Since setting up in Dharamsala the Dalai Lama has worked tirelessly to promote the rights of his countrymen and women back home in Tibet whilst spreading his Buddhist teachings to people all over the world. I honestly don't know anyone who doesn't think the Dalai Lama one of the world's most widely recognised ‘cool dudes’.


It's not beyond possibility to actually see His Holiness if you plan ahead, apply in advance, can be flexible about your dates and fit around his travel programme but for most of us who roll up without any such preparation, it's unlikely that you'll just get lucky and run into him. That's no reason not to go though – think of the many people who go to Buckingham Palace every year without expecting to see the Queen. Whether His Holiness is there or not, it's still a fabulous place to visit, and offers a unique possibility to observe a community retaining their very specific culture whilst living in exile. Dharamsala isn't so much a place to 'do' as a place to soak up the atmosphere and to just enjoy hanging around in a town full of Tibetans, Buddhists from all over the world, a large number of hippies and a few random tourist like us.


The Dalai Lama's temple is the biggest show in town and the chief attraction for most visitors but there's a lot more to do. The hippy visitors are well served with people happy to realign their chakras, teach them meditation and mindfulness, sell them crafts or teach them yoghurt weaving or whatever's the big new-age trend at the time. It's a very un-Indian place, and it’s well worth a visit for the experience of something very different.


Dharamsala is also historically linked to the Ghurka regiments who have an important Hindu temple in the town, and also retains elements of the city's past as a British colonial outpost. Even if history means nothing to you, it's a lovely cool, high altitude retreat, surrounded by spectacular mountain views.   Close

We left our base at the Sun Park hotel in Manali to head off to Dharamsala but things started a little slowly. Our poor driver, Mr Singh, was late arriving because he’d been staying in a drivers’ hostel where there was no hot water in…Read More

We left our base at the Sun Park hotel in Manali to head off to Dharamsala but things started a little slowly. Our poor driver, Mr Singh, was late arriving because he’d been staying in a drivers’ hostel where there was no hot water in the morning because the cold night had frozen everything. We were due to leave at about 8.30 but finally hit the road closer to 9 o’clock. There’s no point stressing about such things when you’re surrounded by giant mountains and it’s the done thing to take your time.


The first couple of hours of the journey were simply retracing our route from a few days earlier, heading back along Route 21 towards Mandi. Although we’d been there before, the route felt fresh as we’d been half (or fully) asleep when going the other way. After about two hours we stopped at a roadside dhaba for lime sodas and some interesting local toilet facilities and for Mr Singh to get tea and something to eat and then got back in the car and carried on along the rough roads, heading to lower altitudes than those we’d left behind.


The lower altitude areas were characterised by quite different scenery. This is a big fruit growing area and we passed lots of orchards and juice processing plants. Mandi seemed to be the biggest city in the area, with a wide, rock-strewn river passing through the centre of the city. I’d have liked to stop and have a look but we still had a long way to go and had to press one.


In the early afternoon whilst driving through some orchards, the car got a puncture and we had to stop. Fortunately there was plenty of shade so we weren’t too exposed to the hot mid-day sun. Mr Singh must have had many punctures in his driving career but he clearly didn’t really know what he was doing. Tony, my husband was torn about what to do and held back until Mr Singh realised it wasn’t going to work before getting involved and helping him to put the jack in the right place. The spare tyre had even less tread than the now punctured one and we had to hope that it wouldn’t rain for the rest of the journey. When they finished fixing the tyre, Mr Singh declared "You sir, very good man sir".


We then drove on, back up the mountainsides and into the higher Himalaya. The scenery was as good as it can be but after a few hours it becomes hard to really take it all in any more.


Twice along the route the car was stopped and our bags were searched. Elections were due to take place soon after and police were checking cars for smuggled alcohol, although quite why they might think two very obviously foreign tourists would have decided to subsidise their holiday with illicit liquor activities was a mystery. My bag was opened and examined in the middle of the road whilst I sat in the car and glared as menacingly as I could manage.


Eventually we arrived at about 5 o’clock in the afternoon. Approaching Dharamsala we started to see a change in the people we passed. More were wearing the robes of Buddhist monks and the people were looking more Tibetan and less Indian. Increasing numbers of foreign tourists were wandering around, and as we passed through Dharamsala and up to McLeod Ganj, the home of the Dalai Lama and his followers it was clear that this was going to be a very different type of Himalayan town than we’d visited before.

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Till well into the 90s, Delhi wasn’t a very happening place when it came to non-Indian food. True, fancy five-star hotels did have good restaurants that served everything from French haute cuisine to the "best dimsums outside Hong Kong" (as a Chinese-born friend of mine…Read More

Till well into the 90s, Delhi wasn’t a very happening place when it came to non-Indian food. True, fancy five-star hotels did have good restaurants that served everything from French haute cuisine to the "best dimsums outside Hong Kong" (as a Chinese-born friend of mine once described them). But if you wanted to eat burgers or a pizza, you had no option but to go to the local Nirula’s. If you wanted ice cream, it was again Nirula’s (which still makes fantastic ice cream). If you craved doughnuts, you made them at home.

Then, sometime in the early 90s, economic reforms aimed at the globalization of the Indian economy slowly began to open the country up to food companies from abroad. Suddenly, imported foods—cheeses, meats, bottled and canned goods, wines and spirits, chocolates—began appearing in Indian markets. Equally importantly for those keen on dining out, multinational food service companies gradually started arriving in India. Delhi (and some of India’s other major cities, like Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata and Chennai) are now—or are soon going to be—home to everything from Yauatcha to Benihana, to Sakae Sushi.

While those are the bigger, less ubiquitous names to be seen in Indian cities, there are some which you’ll find all over the place: Domino’s, Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, Subway: these have a presence even in smaller towns, and are hugely popular. How do they stack up against their counterparts in the West?

While the rest of this journal reviews some of the newly-opened, less ‘everywhere’ chain eateries, in this note, I’ll discuss some of the very common ones—the places you’re likely to find in just about every major market in Delhi.

1. Pizza Hut : All you have to do is have a look at the Pizza Hut menu to realize that this is one chain that’s gone all out to appeal to the spice-loving Indian palate, which wants curry on its pizzas (I hasten to add: not all of us fall into that bracket). But, going by the popularity of Pizza Hut’s chicken kebab, green chilli, and chicken tikka-topped pizzas, they’re obviously a hit. There are vegetarian options too, both for pizzas as well as pasta. There are wings, potato wedges, and rolls. All of them (including the garlic bread, which you can order with a topping of chopped onions and green chillies mixed into the cheese!) are a rather predictable fusion of Western and Indian. Be warned: don’t opt for Pizza Hut if you’re a Westerner looking for familiar food.

(Do note, though, that the dine-in menu, as opposed to the home-delivery menu, is more extensive and offers more options for less spicy, less-Indianised dishes).

2. Domino’s: Unlike Pizza Hut (which has a substantial number of dine-in outlets), Domino’s remains primarily a pizza take-away or home-delivery place. Most of their stores do have a couple of tables where you can eat if you want, but it’s not as if the menu will be any different, or wider in scope, from what you’d get if you ordered in.

Like Pizza Hut, Domino’s too has ‘Indianised’ its menu—but not too the exclusion of all else, which is one reason I prefer Domino’s to Pizza Hut. For example, while there is a keema do pyaza pizza here (keema do pyaza is a classic North Indian dish of ground meat cooked with lots of onions), there is also a barbecue chicken pizza, and a pepperoni pizza. There are pastas, wraps, lots of vegetarian pizzas (not to mention wraps and rolls), and plenty of options that really pile on the heat, in the form of everything from jalapenos to paprika, to red chillies and green.

3. McDonald’s : McDonald’s was one of the first major chains to arrive in India, and became an instant hit among those who wanted a taste of the West without going too far out of their comfort zone, or having to pay too much for it. Keeping in mind the composition of much of the target audience, McDonald’s in India goes very heavy on the vegetarian: even all the mayo, and the sauces, are egg-free. There are plenty of vegetarian options, ranging from paneer burgers and wraps to the McAloo Tikki burger (with an aloo tikki, a spiced potato patty), Veg Pizza McPuffs, and even vegetarian breakfast items, like the Veg McMuffin.

Also, for those who don’t know: the non-vegetarian burger patties at McDonald’s in India are always either chicken, or (in the case of Filet-o-Fish), fish. There is no beef or pork in any dish here. Even the Sausage McMuffin consists of a chicken sausage, not pork.

The McDonald’s food is pretty much what one expects of food like this: assembly line, mass-produced stuff. To be fair, some of their burgers are not bad—the Chicken McGrill (with a mint chutney sauce) and the McSpicy Chicken are recommended, should you ever end up with no choice but to eat at the Golden Arches.

4. Subway : Like the rest, Subway too has a menu that’s been tailored to Indian tastes. For example, there are loads of vegetarian options, including a spicy potato filling and a spicy mixed vegetable patty. (Unlike McDonald’s, though, Subway do serve pork). However, to make life easier for customers, Subway arranges its menu in such a way that you can immediately spot the ‘Traditional’ dishes—the Italian BMT, Chicken and Bacon Ranch, Turkey, and other sandwiches are listed separately from the ‘Local’ dishes—the Chicken Tikka, Chicken Seekh, Chicken Tandoori, etc. Besides offering subs, they also do salads, a few breakfast dishes, soft drinks, and all of one dessert: a rich chocolate truffle, a Delhi favourite. In addition, jumping on to the ‘healthy’ bandwagon, Subway also have a ‘97% fatfree’ section.

Subway is, like Domino’s, a good place to go if you want familiar fast food: even though it has its fair share of Indianised menu items, there’s lots that will be familiar to palates that crave something non-spicy.

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Kochi (or Cochin) has its own special place in history, because this was one of the biggest, busiest and most prosperous cities on the early spice route. It acted as an entrepôt for the spices—cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, long pepper, turmeric, etc—which grew all along the…Read More

Kochi (or Cochin) has its own special place in history, because this was one of the biggest, busiest and most prosperous cities on the early spice route. It acted as an entrepôt for the spices—cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, long pepper, turmeric, etc—which grew all along the Malabar coast (of which Kochi is a part). It also acted as a port for ships coming in from Arabia and Africa from the West, China and the Malaccas from the east. This was where it was happening back in the days of Vasco da Gama and the hectic spice trade.

This is where it’s still happening. Kochi is one of India’s major ports. It is home to an international airport; home, also, to the only Indian shipyard that is part of a city; and it is home to the headquarters of the Indian Navy’s Southern Command. More importantly for insatiable travelers, it has loads to offer: a fascinating history (of which many remnants are still to be seen), a rich cultural heritage, lots of natural beauty, and an almost-addictive local cuisine, rich in seafood and spices.

Orientation and getting around: Kochi spreads across three main areas: two islands and the mainland. The easternmost part of the city, which lies on the mainland, consists of the twin cities of Ernakulam and Kochi. This is the modern, commercial part of Kochi—there are malls here, large markets, major hotels, government and private offices, and the massive Cochin Shipyard, which dominates the seafront.

To the west of Ernakulam and mainland Kochi lies a stretch of water known as Vembanadu (or Vembanad) Lake, one of India’s largest lakes. Kochi forms Vembanadu’s link to the Arabian Sea, so this stretch of water is really part-sea, part-freshwater. A bridge (and a ferry) here connects the mainland to the nearest island to the west, Willingdon Island. Willingdon is mostly given over to the navy, and there’s little here for the tourist. Further east—and connected to Willingdon, both by bridge and ferry—is the island on which Fort Cochin sits. This is the touristic centre of Kochi, and where you’re likely to be spending much of your time.

Between Fort Cochin, Willingdon, and Ernakulam, you can travel by ferry, bus, taxi or autorickshaw—all are easily available. While taxis charge up to about Rs 3,500 for a full day’s hire, autorickshaws are a cheaper way of travelling over longish distances—we spent only Rs 70 for an hour’s drive around Fort Cochin and the Jew Town area, including waiting time.

Within Fort Cochin, walking is the best option: there are sights to see every few metres, and it’s a usually pedestrian-friendly area of quiet tree-lined lanes.

Must-sees and must-dos: Most of Kochi’s best attractions are historic, and clustered in and around Fort Cochin. The Chinese Fishing Nets, huge cantilevered nets that were originally set up by traders from the court of Kublai Khan, are the most visible sights along the sea front. A few minutes’ walk from here will bring you to St Francis’s Church, the oldest European-built Church in India—and the place where Vasco da Gama was briefly interred before his remains were taken back to Europe by his son. Near the church is the Dutch Cemetery, and nearby, the Bishop’s House, within the grounds of which is the fascinating Indo-Portuguese Museum. Further east, and towards the north, lies Kochi’s other major cathedral, the Catholic Santa Cruz Basilica, originally dating back to the 16th century, though the present building is an upstart, barely a hundred years old.

All of these areas can be covered in a single walk, with perhaps a stop for refreshments at one of the many tea- and coffee-shops on the atmospheric

Princess Street, lined with lovely old colonial buildings. While you’re in the vicinity, do make it a point to visit the Cochin Cultural Centre, which hosts a daily hour-long Kathakali performance.

Further out (and it’s advisable to take an auto or taxi), but also on the same island, is Jew Town, home to Kochi’s Paradesi Synagogue, a beautifully restored old synagogue that is worth a visit. Nearby is a large Spice Market (and lots of smaller retail shops where you can buy a range of Keralan spices, including some, like the large glossy seeds known as ‘massaging seeds’) that aren’t really known outside of Kerala). Also within close range is the Mattancherry Dutch Palace, built by the Dutch for the king of Kochi and now converted into a museum.

Further out, on the mainland, are other attractions. The Kerala Folklore and Theatre Museum, in Ernakulam, is an amazing (even if very jumbled!) storehouse of artefacts from not just Kerala, but also other parts of South India. Also in Ernakulam is the Thripunithura Hill Palace Museum—this one, sadly, was closed on the one day we had some hours free to see it, so we missed it. It was highly recommended by some of the people we met, so we’ll make it a point to include it in our itinerary the next time we’re in Kerala.

Further out from Ernakulam, you should certainly go on a cruise along the green, beautiful, and serene backwaters of Kerala: cruises range from a half-day tour to tours of a couple of days, where you live on a traditional Kerala houseboat known as a kettuvallom. Beyond the backwaters, and on the mainland, are two lovely little places for getting a closer look at Kerala’s wildlife: the Thattekad Bird Sanctuary, which is one of India’s richest reserves of avifauna; and the Kodanadu Elephant Training Camp, where the Forest Department trains elephants for its work in the forests—this is an especially delightful place to see elephants (particularly the adorable calves!) at close quarters.

Eating out: If you like seafood (and more so if you like your seafood spicy!), Kochi is one of those cities that will warm the cockles of your heart. Fish, crabs, prawn, mussels and squid are among the popular items on local restaurant menus, and recipes run the gamut from the thoroughly traditional to the interestingly modern fusion meals that combine local Malabar food with Western influences. Also, since Kochi has long been a melting pot of different cultures and religions (including the Syrian Christian community, the Jews, and the Muslims), even the local cuisine isn’t completely homogenous.

For more details, read my journals on my favourite places to eat in Kochi, and some other restaurants that we dined at, but didn’t like as much.

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Many Indian cities have a street called ‘Mall Road’ and Manali is no exception. I cannot be sure, but my assumption is that it’s a generic term referring to a pedestrian street with only very limited vehicular access. The most famous of the Mall Roads…Read More

Many Indian cities have a street called ‘Mall Road’ and Manali is no exception. I cannot be sure, but my assumption is that it’s a generic term referring to a pedestrian street with only very limited vehicular access. The most famous of the Mall Roads is in Shimla and has long been a place for promenading back and forth, looking in the shop windows, looking at other people and wearing your best clothes because other people will equally be looking at you. In Manali there is also a Mall Road but it’s rather more down to earth than Shimla’s namesake. For a start it lacks the ‘Little England’ rows of shops and civic buildings which echo the builders’ memories of life back home in the Home Counties of genteel England. Manali was never the sophisticated and scandalous summer bolt hole of the British and their government in India so it picked up fewer pretensions and fewer ‘Englishisms’.


We walked the length of Mall Road Manali as part of our day’s sightseeing. More precisely, we walked it twice – once up, once back – in search of a place to eat and a bit of people watching. We found a bustling street filled with people of all colours and types of regional dress, strolling around. The locals in their traditional brightly coloured clothing, and Indian tourists from across the country all mingled with their different outfits. Nobody seemed to be in a hurry and most were wandering, drifting from shop to shop, stopping to look in the windows, buy a few souvenirs of find somewhere for a hot drink and something to eat.


Mall Road is not very long – my guess would be that the pedestrian area is no more than about a quarter of a mile long – and it’s actually just a small section of route 21, the Leh Manali highway. At the southern end of Mall Road, the highway (I use the term loosely, this is India, it’s not Route 66!) is diverted through a dog-leg that bypasses the pedestrian area and rejoins route 21 close to the bridge which crosses the Beas River.


The Taxi Stand (the place where, not surprisingly the taxis all gather to wait for business) is at the southern end of Mall Road. The Bus Stand, is across the road from the taxi stand. Heading up the road – by which I mean heading north or against the flow of the River Beas – you find a small wooden temple on the left hand side. This is one of those Indian temples that looks brand new but could – for all I know – have been there forever. We didn’t go in because it looked like they were still building it but of course they may have been doing repairs. The road is quite wide and nobody needs to jostle for space. We looked in the windows of the souvenir shops, tried to find a place to eat and then, once we’d eaten we wandered back down the road.


Our hotel had no wi-fi (despite claiming that it did) so we found an internet cafe where my husband deposited me for half an hour (about 10 rupees) and went shopping whilst I was tapping away. Freed from the constraints of me watching over him, he buzzed about Mall Road and the surrounding back streets and bought a glow in the dark Ganesh covered in small crystals which he swore he would put on the dashboard of his car and a pair of adhesive printed eyes to put on the bonnet of his car. We have the most ‘desi’ Peugeot in England and probably the only one driven by a white guy who isn’t a Hindu.


After I’d done my mail, we wandered a little more. I spotted one of the ‘Pimp my bunny’ ladies in traditional dress taking a rest with her angora rabbit friend. We popped down the side streets to look at the beautiful vegetable displays and to try to track down a book store which turned out to be closed for no apparent reason. We photographed the small vehicles lined up for delivering goods and then eventually, when we could take no more, we stopped for cold coffees in a cheap street-side cafe. Eventually we headed back to the car park to find Mr Singh, waiting for us and ready to take us to our next temple.

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