Lying

It is a little worrying how much the lying is making us lie. I really like India but the tourist industry is horrible. I thought it would just be hassley, but it beyond that. Everyone lies. So many people are involved in commission that you can't trust anyone's opinion about any hotel, shop or mode of transport. If they tell you your hotel has burnt down, it probably hasn't. If they tell you it's a dodgy hotel, it probably isn't. If you ask directions for one hotel, you'll probably be given directions to somewhere else. If you try and find the Government Tourist office, you probably never will. Apparently they all are. If they tell you that you can't sit and watch the funerals at the burning ghats from the stairs of the ghats, but you will have to climb a small tower to be away from the family, it's just a ploy to charge you for walking up the tower. If they tell you that the only way to get somewhere is by taxi, it's definitely not. If they tell you that there are no government buses, just private ones, it's a lie. And it's never usually a 'good price'. I can't even remember the lies that we've been told. Fortunately, the only one we have fallen for was in Delhi. I don't think I've mentioned it before, because I had some serious sense of humour failure about it. This lie involved four different people, all seemingly unrelated, but now we realise connected, telling us the same things until you believe them. One of them was dressed up and pretended to work in the station, the second pretended to bump into us then mentioned he worked at the station (he had a fake name badge and everything), the third was the rickshaw driver, and the fourth was at the official 'Government Tourist Office'. The events were thus:

We headed to the station to find a train ticket out of Delhi. We were asked for our tickets, and then told that foreigners could not buy tickets from the train station and had to get them from the Government tourist office. Have you a lonely planet? This is the office on the map (the correct one) - I'll get you a rickshaw. No thanks. I swear there is something dodgy with that-let's go find somewhere to sit and eat and read the Lonely Planet. So we walked to find somewhere. Another man - about 5 mins from the station - struck up a conversation with us and casually mentioned he worked at the train station. So we ask him how we buy tickets. He reiterates what the man at the train station said. Both lyin and both doing it brilliantly. The technique is such that they start to point out the way to go, then say 'oh hang on I'll show you', then make a big show of helping you out but they really have to be somewhere else, then a big show of bargaining the rickshaw price (who will have later received a commission) and use the Lonely Planet to show you the right Tourist Office and the drivers the wrong one. They also rush you away from you sitting down and figuring it all out because every single one of them independently say that it is Holy Day tomorrow and no tickets will be on sale. Armed with the prior, and true, knowledge that you do need to book ahead, we then get convinced that there are no spaces on trains out of Delhi to the North for 6 days, because we are being shown the real train-booking website but it is failing to mention the held back tickets for the Tourist Quota. Three hours later, deprived of food, in a hot stuffy room we are convinced that we can't get out of Delhi by train for a week. The pressure heightens when we remember that we've already lost a week to the snow at Heathrow, and the belief that it's Holy Day the next day, meaning the Train Station and that Office would be shut. Defeated and exhausted, we get a six day tour of Rajhastan. I wanted and did cry. Paying money for something that you don't even want, but only buy because you are backed up into a corner. The Holy Day con. Four separate, apparently unconnected, people telling us that it was Holy Day made us believe it, and made us part with money. Needless to say, it wasn't Holy Day. Seven months of ridiculous saving, only to have some lied and whisked away from you because you are naive and they really know what they are doing. We had been in so many 'Government Tourist Offices' before then and left successfully, saying we'd think about it and so later find out it was a con. But the pressure of the Holy Day got us.

So, now we lie too:

This is our second trip to India (as we did go to Nepal briefly this is technically true). We are sisters. I oscillate between having a boyfriend and being married. Both of our careers are as waitresses. Every place we turn up to we claim to 'have a reservation' to dodge hotel touts. We always know where we are going, even when holding a map. We lie about our destinations when we get into autorickshaws, asking for a monument nearby rather than a tourist office or a hotel so that we don't get carted off to the wrong place. We claim that we've seen it for half that price elsewhere. We have been meeting imaginary friends for dinner, at hotels, at monuments literally all over India. In Jaisalmer we said we were only there for the one night to visit some friends we hadn't seen in ages so we wouldn't be interested in a Camel Safari. This enabled us to be carted off to a hotel at a discount price so that they could spend the next morning trying to sell us their Camel Safari, and then give us a perfectly good reason to rebuff their advances, check out the next day before they put their prices up and move on to the next discount hotel. And then there is the biggie. The lie so engrained that I've almost started to believe it. The lie that we began in Delhi, completelty simultaenously, without any need to confer, when we realised the true extent of the lying-money-grabbing tourist industry. We are in India for 6 weeks and then we go straight home. The lie that we had to adopt to stop touts eyeing us up for our entire 8 month fortune.

I don't like the lying. The Delhi incident was horrible and caused Amy and I to have our only and first argument. It also makes it more difficult to enjoy India. We spend so long ploughing and swiping away the lies that we don't get to see what it is really like. We go to the South in a few days and maybe stay with a couple we met at a train station. I'm hoping the lies might stay at bay long enough for us to catch a glimpse of the actual Indian culture.