Arrival

You can get to Kerala by train if you want to. You can get anywhere in India by train – but it will take a long time. It is scheduled as 3 days from New Delhi which I thought was a long time to spend on a train. So I decided to fly. I flew with IndiGo

6E

As airline codes go IndiGo has got a good one. I am not sure if they are allocated or requested but they use it as a play on words. If you speak “6 – E” then it sounds like “sexy” and they make use of this all over their literature. All their signs say “Hello 6E…”. I think their advertising is quite good and their onboard service was really good for a discount airline. You get water for free, however you do have to pay for food and coffee. The prices are very reasonable though.

Fort Kochi

Fort Kochi is a good hour from the airport if you take a car and a driver. Although it is quite far, all the things that you will want to see are here so I decided to stay in the Fort. I find this location to be quite relaxing with most people here having a laid back and relaxed lifestyle. Compared to New Delhi it could almost be a different country. There is little pollution and not very much traffic. People are friendly and prices are cheaper.

Chinese Fishing Nets

Some people in Kochi still do an old style of fishing where they dip huge nets into the water and then withdraw them later on. Apparently this is the only instance of this Chinese fishing technique used outside of China.

You can buy the fish directly from the fisherman here and you can take it to a little cafe on the beach and they will cook it for you.

Christmas

Since Kerala has a Christian population you certainly see more signs of Christmas around here than you do in the north. Some of the churches go to great lengths here to put up huge stars and Christmas lights.

How to get there

Amer Fort is located North of Jaipur and is quite large in size. By the time I got to Jaipur I was thinking that maybe I had seen one too many forts, but I had a free afternoon after arriving so I went up to take a look. It’s nice to see the old city wall that stretches out from the fort. It almost reminds you of the Great Wall Of China.

It’s about 40 minutes North of city centre. Although you will go a lot of auto drivers that want to take you in their tuk-tuks, form a comfort point of view I would suggest that you take a car. I rented an Ola and they waited for me as I visited.

It’s very slow getting out of Jaipur city centre since there is a lot of traffic so I would suggest you budget extra time for this. The fort is open till sunset and I got some pretty good views close to sunset time.

Audio Guide

You can rent an audio guide for Rp./200 and it worked out quite well. You can then just follow along with the numbers and wonder around the fort. In my opinion this beats a real guide because the audio guide will not get commission to take you to a shop to buy jewelry.

Safety

You can climb up quite high and it gives you some good views of the surrounding countryside. However, please be careful as some of the railings are hanging on my a thread and I would not use them for support.

Sound and Light show

Apparently in the evening they have a sound and light show, but I did not stay that late. It is viewed from a parking lot close by and it does get good reviews.

Introduction

Most people in India are quite honest and helpful to foreigners (if they are not selling you a service). But in big cities there are lots and lots of scams, touts, and people that are generally a big pain in the arse to the average tourist.

Commission is huge in India (at least in major cities like Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, etc) so these people are generally just trying to make money. But to make money a lot of these people will lie right to your face if they think they can extract money from you. Tuk tuk (auto) drivers seems to be among the worst for this.

Common Scams

You get into a taxi and you are told that the hotel that you made a reservation at has closed. Or has burned down. Or the fog is so bad that the city is closed (I’m not kidding). Of course they have a great deal on a run down, rat infested, flee trap of a hotel that their friend owns.

Or somebody approaches you on a train platform and tell you that the train has been cancelled. Then he tell you that he works for Indian Railways. Then he shows you an official ID (a fake of course). This person is trying to get you to go to a travel agent that will charge you a very large fee to take a car instead of the train.

Or somebody with a police uniform on (and a fake badge) tells you that the road to a fort is closed to traffic (even though many other cars are driving on it) but he can take you (he has special permission ) for Rp./2000. At least this one gets marks for creativity.

Making money

These people are obviously trying to make a living. The problem with this is that this kind of day to day annoyance starts to wear on you. You tend not to approach people anymore and you tend to ignore everybody that is talking to you. It’s not really a fun way to travel though a city.

Countryside

When I was out in the countryside around Ranthambore this did not happen. People were much more laid back and honest. I’m really hoping as I get down to Kerala things will be like that again. Jaipur in particular has been really bad. For every 100m I attempt to walk down the road, 2 or 3 people approach me with the “best” price on priceless jewelry. I have been told that sights are closed when you can actually see people inside of them.

Is there a solution?

There is no simple solution to this. Part of it seems to be a cultural thing. Lying and cheating has become the norm for some parts of India. It sounds depressing but it is true. There also seems no enforcement from the police to help with this. I’m not sure what the police do in this country, but it is not very effective.

One option that I have tried is hiring a taxi (or an Ola / Uber) for the day. At the very least that gives you a car to get back into once you have seen the sights. But this will most likely not stop the driver from “suggesting” that you go shopping for jewelry. This is because he gets paid commission if you buy at that shop.

I think maybe another solution is to get out of large Indian cities and into the countryside. I’m going to try that tomorrow by flying down to Kerala. Fingers crossed that the situation improves.