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I'll be in New Delhi Dec 14th through 17th, then in Mumbai until the 21st or 22nd. I'm looking for things to do. I see that the football Super Cup league ends just as I arrive there. Unfortunate. In general, I like to hike, bike, admire photography, admire film, run, go see live sports, see punk/rock shows, see huge old buildings, see weird stuff, and at night I like to party like anyone else. My list for Delhi is: Mosque Red Fort Akahardham mandir Rajghat Bangla sahib gurudwara Taj Mahal, Agra fort (hiring a car, not staying there) My list for Mumbai is: Babulnath temple Jain temple Hanging gardens Nehru garden Chowpatty beach Malabar Hill Gateway of India Victoria Station Washing clothes (public washing area) Dabbawallas (lunch delivery service) Prince of Wales Museum Modern Art Museum Elephanta Island Edit: Changed Chennai to Mumbai at the strong request of a friend who spends a ton of time in India. She really, really hates Chennai. So, looks like it's Delhi / Mumbai.  If a mod would be real cool, could you please change the title to reflect that? Much appreciated.
Blinkman987 fucked around with this message at 07:11 on Aug 17, 2015 |
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Aug 16, 2015 09:03
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Become a Bollywood superstar. If you start practicing the dance moves now you should be ready for your trip to stardom in December.
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Aug 21, 2015 06:48
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Take the train to Agra and then hire a car when you get there. You can do it in a day unless you are really into the whole thing.
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Aug 26, 2015 20:13
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Poolparty posted:Become a Bollywood superstar. If you start practicing the dance moves now you should be ready for your trip to stardom in December. You actually can get onto a film in Mumbai as an extra fairly easily if you're a presentable Westerner. I did it last year. They paid me 1000 rupees (about $16) with access to a buffet for a looooong day. OP, you did well to choose Mumbai over Chennai. Bandra is a fun area to stay, north of the center.
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Aug 28, 2015 01:40
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TheImmigrant posted:OP, you did well to choose Mumbai over Chennai. This. I spend a decent amount of time in Chennai for work, couldn't imagine going there on my own dime.
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Sep 10, 2015 19:33
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TheImmigrant posted:You actually can get onto a film in Mumbai as an extra fairly easily if you're a presentable Westerner. I did it last year. They paid me 1000 rupees (about $16) with access to a buffet for a looooong day. Thanks. This must happen. I will do it.
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Sep 16, 2015 05:12
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I have a semi-off topic question about mumbai: is it physically possible to walk from the airport to a train station? In real life I will surely take a taxi but I have some deep paranoid fear of getting stranded when I travel and airports seem really random on if they are physically things you can walk to or if they have some terrible street layout with only non pedestrian roads. Usually I'd look on google street view to give myself peace of mind that even if I lose all my money as long as I have my plane ticket I can get home at the end but no street view for that area. I don't even strictly care if it's safe since whatever dumb mental hypothetical I'm coming up with won't happen and I won't need to do it, but I'd want to know if one can walk to it or if it's like heathrow where there simply isn't a way for pedestrians to enter.
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Sep 17, 2015 20:06
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Fun fact-- if you apply for your eVisa on the earliest day possible, that'll set your last possible date of entry to the day after you're scheduled to arrive. Sure hope your airline isn't experiencing labor strikes!
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Nov 12, 2015 19:54
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Blinkman987 posted:Fun fact-- if you apply for your eVisa on the earliest day possible, that'll set your last possible date of entry to the day after you're scheduled to arrive. Sure hope your airline isn't experiencing labor strikes! Welcomings to India! Indian bureaucracy is a mess of a clusterfuck of a shambolic gathering of fuckfacery. I thought Indians were remarkably friendly, with the exception of Indian bureaucrats. They could make Gandhi believe in killing.
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Nov 12, 2015 20:56
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TheImmigrant posted:Welcomings to India! I emailed them upon receiving the visa asking if they could move my days to account for the potential strikes and they told me I could reapply for the $60 again. First, I'm surprised that a visa would allow for this situation. Hell, I wish they were more bureaucratic. If they were and took the full 72 hours to process my application, then I'd have my cushion. I guess their general visa fuckery makes sense considering the hell that people went through when they switched to Cox and Kings this past spring. India don't give a gently caress.
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Nov 13, 2015 01:51
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Out of curiosity why do you want to go there? Indian cities are generally crowded, polluted, smelly and an unpleasant experience for most tourists. I strongly suggest going to Goa instead, or take a tourist package for countryside destinations in Simla, Kerala, Ooty, Kodaikanal, Darjeeling or national parks like Kaziranga. edit: for emphasis. Go to Goa. It's pretty close to Mumbai, clean, has loads of beaches, great nightlife and without exagerration the best seafood in the world. mila kunis fucked around with this message at 09:51 on Nov 29, 2015 |
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Nov 29, 2015 09:17
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tekz posted:Out of curiosity why do you want to go there? Indian cities are generally crowded, polluted, smelly and an unpleasant experience for most tourists. The reason I'm in Mumbai is that it works with my itinerary on getting to Cambodia. Neither Goa nor Chennai offered flights that hit the right time/cost combo. I also found a reasonable number of activities in Mumbai. I won't really mind the nuisance. I've lived in enough cities to have at least an idea of what to expect. Goa will probably be the next city I visit in India. Is the city super touristy? That's the vibe I got from it.
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Nov 30, 2015 06:04
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Blinkman987 posted:The reason I'm in Mumbai is that it works with my itinerary on getting to Cambodia. Neither Goa nor Chennai offered flights that hit the right time/cost combo. I also found a reasonable number of activities in Mumbai. I won't really mind the nuisance. I've lived in enough cities to have at least an idea of what to expect. Goa will probably be the next city I visit in India. Is the city super touristy? That's the vibe I got from it. Goa isn't a city, it's a (small) region. As for Mumbai, Delhi and most of the major cities...nuisance is a really underwhelming way to describe it. They're indescribably bad and do poorly on basically every metric you can use to judge a place.
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Nov 30, 2015 10:01
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Blinkman987 posted:The reason I'm in Mumbai is that it works with my itinerary on getting to Cambodia. Neither Goa nor Chennai offered flights that hit the right time/cost combo. I also found a reasonable number of activities in Mumbai. I won't really mind the nuisance. I've lived in enough cities to have at least an idea of what to expect. Goa will probably be the next city I visit in India. Is the city super touristy? That's the vibe I got from it. Mumbai is cool - my favorite place in India. Goa isn't a city, but a small state. It was Portuguese until recently, and a lot more liberal than the rest of India. It's touristy, yes. They have booze and beef and beaches there. TheImmigrant fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Nov 30, 2015 |
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Nov 30, 2015 21:00
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I have a semi-off topic question about mumbai: is it physically possible to walk from the airport to a train station? In real life I will surely take a taxi but I have some deep paranoid fear of getting stranded when I travel and airports seem really random on if they are physically things you can walk to or if they have some terrible street layout with only non pedestrian roads. Usually I'd look on google street view to give myself peace of mind that even if I lose all my money as long as I have my plane ticket I can get home at the end but no street view for that area. I don't even strictly care if it's safe since whatever dumb mental hypothetical I'm coming up with won't happen and I won't need to do it, but I'd want to know if one can walk to it or if it's like heathrow where there simply isn't a way for pedestrians to enter. Domestic or international terminal? It's like 1km for the domestic terminal to Vile Parle station which can get you to either Victoria or CST (forget which one exactly). Full of touts etc. and you can't trust any of these guys to give you accurate directions. Rickshaw should be really cheap though, especially outside the airport (but as always in India, haggle it down, the real price is less than $1). I took the rickshaw from Vile Parle to the airport because it was raining like hell when I was there last. Roads were not massive highways, rather quite small roads. You can walk on the side (good luck crossing the road though), as long as it's not raining.
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Nov 30, 2015 22:43
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tekz posted:Goa isn't a city, it's a (small) region. Thanks. I got it all mixed up because I'd type in GOA and the flights would say Goa - (City). Yeah, I'm prepared for that and willing to accept whatever experience the cities provide. Even if it's the worst place on Earth, then I'd have the knowledge of it and hey, I'm not there that long anyway. TheImmigrant posted:Mumbai is cool - my favorite place in India. Goa isn't a city, but a small state. It was Portuguese until recently, and a lot more liberal than the rest of India. It's touristy, yes. They have booze and beef and beaches there. Thanks. I live in LA and before that San Diego, so I got all 3 of those things here too so maybe that's why I'm not super high on the beach/coast experience. Is there anything I missed on my list that's must-do? How is the air there and traffic for pedestrians? I like to usually run in a city to get to know it, but some have such awful air that it's not reasonable and others have such ridic traffic where I must stick to parks.
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Nov 30, 2015 23:45
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Geriatric Pirate posted:Domestic or international terminal? It's like 1km for the domestic terminal to Vile Parle station which can get you to either Victoria or CST (forget which one exactly). Full of touts etc. and you can't trust any of these guys to give you accurate directions. Rickshaw should be really cheap though, especially outside the airport (but as always in India, haggle it down, the real price is less than $1). I took the rickshaw from Vile Parle to the airport because it was raining like hell when I was there last. Roads were not massive highways, rather quite small roads. You can walk on the side (good luck crossing the road though), as long as it's not raining. I would recommend getting a registered cab from the airport. The prices are fixed and there's less of a chance of getting robbed/ripped off by the driver because their names, addresses and the date and time they picked you up are on file. While actually in the city, you don't need to haggle with taxis/rickshaws, at least in Mumbai as they run on a meter. If they tell you they don't and attempt to get a fixed price from you, insist on a meter and tell them to gently caress off and find another cab if they refuse. In any case, you might be better off hiring a driver from a tourist agency to ferry you around while in the city instead of relying on local cabs.
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Dec 1, 2015 05:00
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tekz posted:I would recommend getting a registered cab from the airport. The prices are fixed and there's less of a chance of getting robbed/ripped off by the driver because their names, addresses and the date and time they picked you up are on file. I had trouble getting them to run the meter. Usually meant 3-4 cabs would refuse until once accepted. It's fine, I walked and took trains everywhere, even in the rainy season. Anyway, the guy was asking about the train even though he said he probably would take a taxi.
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Dec 2, 2015 12:52
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Has anybody used Uber there? I plan on buying a sim-- I've read that it's a bit of a pain to set up-- and running that for my visit.
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Dec 2, 2015 16:43
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Blinkman987 posted:Has anybody used Uber there? I plan on buying a sim-- I've read that it's a bit of a pain to set up-- and running that for my visit. Yeah, I used Uber all the time last year in Hyderabad. Most annoying part is that drivers usually call you for directions (addresses are inexact in India), and Hinglish takes getting used to. And yes, SIM cards are a huge pain in the rear end to get. You'll need local help for that.
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Dec 2, 2015 20:56
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tekz posted:I would recommend getting a registered cab from the airport. The prices are fixed and there's less of a chance of getting robbed/ripped off by the driver because their names, addresses and the date and time they picked you up are on file. Ending: I got a cab from the airport, the guy cheated me but only for like 7 dollars and then I took uber cabs the entire rest of the time and that worked like magic.
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Dec 11, 2015 17:27
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tekz posted:I would recommend getting a registered cab from the airport. The prices are fixed and there's less of a chance of getting robbed/ripped off by the driver because their names, addresses and the date and time they picked you up are on file. Auto rickshaws are banned from Old Mumbai though. They are great for Bandra and Juhu - they actually use the meters there. In Hyderabad, I could never get them to turn it on.
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Dec 18, 2015 03:32
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I'll post a trip report later, but the funniest thing was the fixed price taxi guy at the airport swindled me out of 50 rupees. Was too tired after my flight and forgot to check my receipt for the actual price.
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Dec 18, 2015 15:50
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Trip report title: "A Dreadful, Dreadful Place." I landed in Delhi and visibility was like 500 feet. It could've been quite easily less. I was told it was "fog" and nobody, I mean nobody deviated from that narrative across the 10 days I was in India. It's cool that the "saving face" cultural forces of Japan/Korea extend so far south. I buy my SIM card. It's not so much a purchase as it is "give me 650 rupees." This was Airtel. The people I met who got Vodaphone had a better experience. I'm told my phone will work in 4 hours. I get my prepaid taxi after two people try to cut in line in front of me because I'm not dick-deep into the rear end of the person in front of me. Ah, yes, I forgot what this part of the world is like. A quick reminder. I get thrown into a taxi with another guy because we're going to the same area and whatever, I'm not about to argue an hour into landing here. I'm asked if this is our first time in India. He says "yes" and I answer "no." I shoot my fellow passenger a look and a head shake. He understands. I get to my hostel, Stops New Delhi. It's an EU-style hostel atmosphere that they're trying to create, and it's reasonable enough. It clearly used to be a hotel because it has blow dryers in the bathrooms. Shower sucks as usual. I walk to the center circle of town and ward off all the touts and other scams. I get back for a food tour of old Delhi, which was good. Best samosa I've ever had lifetime, and the butter chicken was superb. It was funny in that we were charged a fee for this tour, but then we also paid for our tour guide's meals with no mention of that before and certainly no acknowledgement during the tour. Whatever, It's like $2. Traveling in general, I try not to sweat the small scams/grifts/edges that people squeeze out of me. I do Radjgat and it's huge, nice. Clean. Basically the opposite of the city. In my second day, I decide to learn the metro system and bouce around the southern part of the city. After confusing some train systems for others, I get my pass and I'm on my way. I do Lotus Temple, Humayun's Tomb, and Hauz Kauz. All are fine experiences. I thought about hitting up Hauz Kauz later for socializing and for the live music there, but I'm not feeling it and I have Agra in the morning. I return to the hostel to learn that the 19-year-old Aussie in my room was pickpocketed within a day of landing in Delhi. Dude rode the metro with his wallet in his back pocket like it was no thing. Come on, man. I've spent all day trying to get my phone to work. Yesterday it was "system is down, try tomorrow." Today it's just "keep waiting." Google helps me figure out how to get my 3G going and the data package pricing. 36 hours after landing, my phone data finally hooks up. Apparently that's not bad for India standards. A win! "Agra is a shithole" my most India-experienced friend warned. We wake up at 6 AM for our tour and head out. The driver is reasonable. He only made us stop at one lovely shop before getting into the city. We meet our tour guide who's average. We head to the Taj and it's mind-blowing. The size fucks with my brain. It's incomprehensibly large. After 2 hours there ,we head to lunch which is fine and then to a marble shop for bullshit tourist kickback purchase time. Then Agra fort. It's whatever. I've seen plenty of these types of places in my lifetime. After that, our tour guide insists on going to Agra market even though most of us don't want to go. "15 minutes." Yeah, we spend an hour there, well past sundown. One of the girls in my group starts laughing hysterically at the situation because she's so stressed out. It sucks. I think it's at this point where I'm like "Yeah, it's like everyone warned-- India sucks." Eventually our driver shows up and we get out of there. I've ridden in cabs/tuk tuks all around the world. This is legitimately the only time I've ever felt uncomfortable with someone's driving. Dude played chicken with at least two busses while passing people out of Agra. Yeah, that was an exhasuting day. Next day, I arrive to meet two new people in my room. Both those dudes thought they could just book a hostel via wifi upon arrival in Delhi. Ha. So, they ended up taking a train to delhi station and getting the "tourist information center" scam and the "that part of the city is shut down" scam. I believe the hotel they arrived at even had a fake lonely planet book that gave fake phone numbers. Who doesn't look up local scams before traveling somewhere? Anyway, I spend some time at a NGO working with runaway kids, eating, and do Red Fort. I fly to Mumbai the following day and get my prepaid taxi. So far, I've only been scammed out a few dollars here and there. The ticket person at Red Fort tried to charge me 750r for my ticket there. Yeah, the guy in the ticket booth. I pay the man and hop in my taxi. I then look at the receipt and realize he overcharged me by 100r. Add a few more cents to the pile. The one thing I don't think I ever got used to was people ignoring you when you wanted your change. Sitting there looking past you or away as you stare at them waiting for change. Even better is when they'd short me something like 100r, play dumb, sigh, then hand me 50r. I'm staying in Colaba and have to spend 2 hours on the phone with the Indian office of Hotels.com, which is garbage. Eventually I get my booking straightened out through sheer force of will and wander around. Colaba's cool. Inconvenient and convenient at the same time. I eat at Morimoto's Wasabi for like $50, which is awesome. Needed a little taste of home/luxury. The best food by far was the famous street-vendor kebab place down there. The $1.50 lamb boti roll was absurd, easily best thing I ate all week. I wake up and get the first boat to Elephanta Island, which was awesome. I head back around 2 PM when it becomes too absurdly hot and see people just arriving. Fools. I cool off in my room and wander around Colaba some more. I eventually go to bed and wake up for a run alongside Chowpatty Beach. The "fog" gets to me and I can only go about 3 km before I want to quit. I head on over to Malabar Hill for the temples and parks there. I get back to Colaba and go to Social, a bar/restaruant with reasonable reviews. I go to the hostess and communicate that it's just me. What looks like a manager interjects and tells me I can eat at the bar. It's loving packed. I communicate that to him. He takes me over and shows me this corner I can wedge myself into between two groups drinking, or I can eat at the service station on top of those gross rubber liquor mats. I tell him that i'll pass and walk out. He calls after me that I could wait 15 minutes for a table. It's at that very point where I want to scream "you and this country are loving bullshit, everything's a goddam game" but instead just keep my back turned and leave. I wake up in the morning and get a massage, breakfast, and decide that I want to get out of Mumbai early. It's super hard to find all the flights leaving the area to Bangkok, so I head to the airport early. From my research, if all else fails I can just get one of those by-the-hour rooms at the hotel and nap. I get to the airport and security doesn't want to let me in. I explain that I'm going to try to get an earlier flight, and if not that I'll just go sleep. He lets me in and reminds me that I cannot leave once I've entered. India is basically a worse version of the thunderdome, so that makes sense. All earlier flights would cost me ~$300 more, which is more than I'd care to spend to buy myself 5 hours. I then ask information about the hotel/by-the-hour rooms. There's no hotel. There are no by-the-hour rooms. There are lounges, but I need my ticket to get on the other side of security and I can't get my ticket until 2 hours before my flight. I'm stuck. Literally stuck in a lovely coffee shop eating awful bootleg nachos because all the good stuff (relatively speaking) is on the other side of security. I think about buying an Emirates business class ticket just to have a couch to sit on and cancel it once I'm ready to go, but I figure at this point I'm running so bad on luck that I'd probably gently caress that up too. Time to just accept the poo poo sandwich I've been given. Overall, I realize it's easy to focus on the negative things. Holy poo poo, there are a ton of negative things. Laughably dirty. I took beater shoes there with that in mind, and they were destroyed in less than a week. I've left out so many lovely experiences with locals and touts. I tried to keep in mind that extreme poverty will do that to people and much of this is likely born out of desperation. And luckily I knew the scams and was able to sniff out most of the grifts, so I didn't actually lose much money. There were lots of positive things. All the food was amazing and pretty cheap, especially vegetarian stuff. All of it. It was relatively easy to get around both cities between public transportation, cabs, tuk tuks, and Uber so long as a person kept their wits about them (and is male). I met some awesome locals who invited me to play soccer with them after hanging out. The Taj, Elephanta Island, Lotus temple, and Jain temple were all amazing. That said, I think India is in a way an exaggerated version of America. The wealth gap, extreme capitalism, neo-liberal strip mining of resources, growing religious fanaticism-- it's all the unflattering things about America blown up. As I said, I enjoyed my time there and I feel like I took in a ton, but I will not return. Not worth a second trip. No thank you. =)
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Dec 30, 2015 19:53
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Blinkman987 posted:I'll post a trip report later, but the funniest thing was the fixed price taxi guy at the airport swindled me out of 50 rupees. Was too tired after my flight and forgot to check my receipt for the actual price. I feel like my india experience was largely getting swindled for amounts of money that was literally a few cents in a way that made me angry but was almost no actual financial loss.
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Jan 4, 2016 19:01
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I feel like my india experience was largely getting swindled for amounts of money that was literally a few cents in a way that made me angry but was almost no actual financial loss. In my memory, my India experience can be reduced to being searched by redundant security guards at the entrances to banks, my office, shopping malls, grocery stores, government offices, airports, again at airports, train stations, and my apartment complex. And getting malaria.
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Jan 4, 2016 19:42
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TheImmigrant posted:In my memory, my India experience can be reduced to being searched by redundant security guards at the entrances to banks, my office, shopping malls, grocery stores, government offices, airports, again at airports, train stations, and my apartment complex. And getting malaria. I got a pre-paid taxi then the guy kept saying I owed him 3 dollars for a dip and I kept asking if he meant a tip and he kept saying dip and then he kicked me out of the car for not paying his dip and I still don't know what exactly that was all about and who scammed who.
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Jan 5, 2016 17:23
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Life is short and there's a lot of places to see in the world that aren't as horrific and infuriating as India. Im glad everyone learnt their lesson, goodnight and god bless.
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Jan 6, 2016 14:06
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tekz posted:Life is short and there's a lot of places to see in the world that aren't as horrific and infuriating as India. Im glad everyone learnt their lesson, goodnight and god bless. Nah, india was super cool and I'm glad I went and a bunch of people being annoying and scamming 15 cents out of me a bunch of ways isn't so bad.
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Jan 6, 2016 18:54
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Blinkman987 posted:Trip report title: "A Dreadful, Dreadful Place." A lot of this sounds pretty typical for the mainstream tourist drags. I'm not trying to be critical of your planning- it's super hard to get off them. I've had all those same experiences! I will say for the benefit of this thread that India can be a little different outside the places where all the tourists go. I've had amazing all you can eat thali meals for INR 5, had people welcome me to their family dinner, stayed in former palaces, cruised rivers in Kerala, attended Pro Kabaddi matches in VIP seats, and had a variety of experiences that couldn't have happened any place but India. Off the tourist drags people don't scam you really at all- I had a mechanic refuse a 20 rupee tip right after he, without prompting, tasted my fuel to tell me my oil mix was off, then cleaned and rebuilt my carburetor. Another person in the crowd around me told me I should pay him 30 rupees, and he wouldn't keep the change from a 50 rupee note. There's some wonder in India- it can just be hard to get it out.
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Jan 17, 2016 03:20
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thethirdman posted:
I don't want to be too mean about this but a guy did a totally unscientific nonsense test of your car then told you he needed to do work that you didn't know you needed? You may have been more scammed than you think. But again, 30 rupees is ~40 cents and I think that is a lot of india, the money scales are so absurdly different it sort of doesn't even matter. Maybe you needed your carburetor changed and maybe you didn't buy for 40 cents who even cares. If you were somewhere else and he was charging 500 bucks for it it'd feel like it mattered more.
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Jan 20, 2016 17:56
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I don't want to be too mean about this but a guy did a totally unscientific nonsense test of your car then told you he needed to do work that you didn't know you needed? You may have been more scammed than you think. It was an autorickshaw and it didn't run at all when I stopped. After he did work it ran. I'd say I got an okay deal. Also I knew it was dirty because I had been buying bootlegged fuel in Nepal the day before. thethirdman fucked around with this message at 01:21 on Jan 23, 2016 |
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Jan 23, 2016 01:18
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I don't want to be too mean about this but a guy did a totally unscientific nonsense test of your car then told you he needed to do work that you didn't know you needed? You may have been more scammed than you think. Maybe not completely relevant for this case but the reason these guys are annoy the hell out of everyone is because "it's only $2" and "$2 is half a day's pay for 20 minutes work" are a dangerous combo.
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Jan 24, 2016 17:55
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