Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong on the mad Indian holiday

The tourist economy in North India is a web of interlinked financial interests. (Illustration by Suneesh K.)

Why is so much of our tourism ecosystem so inefficient, crooked and user-unfriendly, at every level, from tour guides to airlines? A recent trip to Jaisalmer in Rajasthan was an eye-opener.

The holiday was a reunion for four of us collegemates, two based in the US, and one in Kerala. The plan was to fly to Jodhpur and take a rented car to Jaisalmer and back.

I booked a car to meet us at Jodhpur airport and stay with us for the next four days, through an aggregator called Clear Car Rental (CCR), which claimed to provide services in about 50 Indian cities and seemed to have been rated highly by users.

Three days before the trip, I received a mail from CCR that they had been trying to call me but could not get through, so I should provide an alternative phone number ASAP. This was mysterious, since every junk caller in the country seems to get through to my number quite easily. I confirmed my phone number and asked them to call.

No one called, no one mailed. I tried calling the number (8888855220) mentioned on the company’s website. You can try it too. All you will get is an automated female American voice telling you to dial the extension number of the person you wish to speak to, or 0 for the operator. But every time you dial 0, you will be told by the robot lady that 0 is busy.

Worried now (I had already paid an advance), I Googled “Clear Car Rental” and found a few media profiles of the company’s CEO. From the IDs on the mail I had received—it had been cc-ed to several people in the firm, I could guess what the CEO’s mail ID would be. I mailed him, asking what the hell was going on.

Within an hour, I received a call from the company and soon after, a mail arrived with details of car, driver and the tour operator in Rajasthan who owned the car. But my troubles had only begun.

We arrived in Jaisalmer. The tourist economy in North India is a web of interlinked financial interests. Your driver quite possibly has a deal going with the highway restaurants where he will stop the car when you want breakfast or lunch. A staffer in your hotel will put you in touch with a guide who will take you around Jaisalmer fort, and the guide will give him a percentage of the tour fee.

The guide’s principal income, however, is not from what you pay him, but from the handicraft shops where he will lead you as the last stage of the tour. After all, you do want to take some mementos of Jaisalmer back home, so you will buy.

The shopkeeper makes a quick guesstimate of your net worth, and whether you are an NRI or a resident Indian. The price he quotes for an item is adjusted accordingly, and the 30 percent commission he has to pay the guide on any sale is factored in.

Let me be clear: I am not condemning these symbiotic business networks at all. The professions of all these people are connected, and their income opportunities are mostly limited to the four-month-long tourist season. But why should the tourist be forced to stay extra-alert at every step to make sure that she is not being gypped and is getting her money’s worth? Why do so many of us return from our holidays with nagging doubts that we had been suckered at some point or the other by a local? This is a deep problem with no discernible solutions, but it hurts tourism in India and impacts the country’s image among foreign tourists.

While we were going around in Jaisalmer, staying super-alert, I was getting calls from the tour operator whose car we were using. He was demanding large cash advances; apparently, CCR had not been paying any of his dues. We were now caught in the middle of a battle between vendor and platform, and of course, calling up CCR was impossible, because their phone number is a firewall.

Meanwhile, SpiceJet was all over me like a swarm of locusts. Ever since I had booked my Jodhpur-Delhi flight, my mailbox had been flooded with mails and messages from the airline—“Happy Diwali”, “New and exclusive flights from Hyderabad and Mumbai”, “Click to get 20% off on top brands”, “Craving for a monsoon vacation?” (In October!), “Book a private charter for destination wedding and keep your joyful moments private”, and the icing on the cake—“Book an extra seat or two and enjoy a whole lot of space for yourself”.

But when I tried to do my web check-in, the website refused to mail me my boarding pass or download it on my laptop. The SpiceJet mobile app denied that I even had a booking. And the car fleet owner was getting aggressive. But he did share three numbers of CCR that he said should work.

Two of the numbers put me on an infinite loop of hold music, but the third one came through. The person I spoke to admitted that payments to vendors had been delayed “due to an accounting error”, but he was helpless and I should pay the sum the car owner was demanding. I told him that the amount the man was quoting seemed very high. I was assured that CCR would refund me any excess payment within seven working days.

By this time, it was looking like I might miss my flight back to Delhi. I paid up when I released the car at Jodhpur airport.

As I was entering the security lounge, I received a helpful text message from SpiceJet that my baggage had been successfully checked in, and “if you have not checked in baggage for this flight, please contact airline staff immediately”.

An hour and a half later, when I switched on my phone again, there were 16 mails from CCR. They were all de-personalized boilerplate texts, apologizing for inconveniences caused, promising that this would never happen again, asking for my bank account details for NEFT of the refund amount, expressing regret that my vehicle had not been confirmed yet (in spite of the fact that I had just used it for five full days), requesting my assent to transfer the money to CCR’s virtual e-cash wallet, and links on Google and Facebook where I could give a feedback of my experience with CCR. It was utter and random chaos.

Some days later, I received a mail with the details of a physical cheque for my refund amount that had been deposited in my bank. This is the first physical cheque that I have encountered in several years, and CCR is supposed to be a digital platform. I am now waiting eagerly for news of this start-up joining the Indian unicorn club.

As I was writing that last line, I got a WhatsApp message from one of my Jaisalmer companions. He was flying from Mumbai to Kochi. The message read: “In spite of Indigo sending me 22 txt msgs about 5 minute changes in expected time of departure, they never mentioned that the terminal had changed. I discovered it just in time.”

As the great Kurt Vonnegut wrote in Slaughterhouse Five: “So it goes.” I suppose we have to just accept our lot and move on.