95wendyj
★1.0Wrote on 8 Dec 2023
CONNAUGHT PLACE NEW DELHI IS NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE, GIVE IT A MISS
DO NOT GO ANYWHERE NEAR THIS PLACE!! Connaught Place has changed since we were here last, we are leaving the area today, we have been the victims of conn men for the whole of our stay, we no longer feel safe in this area, it is time the police cracked down on these men, I will give you examples, my husband and I were walking towards the bazaar, whilst we were walking along two men came alongside us and started to ask us where we were from etc.,. we were distracted, one of the men tipped dog poo onto the top of my husbands open sandal, exclaimed oh you have stepped in dog poo!! There 'happened' to be a shoe shine man just in front of us, this man ushered my husband over to the shoe shine man and said can you clean his foot, he did so and then demanded 1500 rupees from him, the man who had originally tipped the dog poo onto my husband's foot then became aggressive, my husband eventually gave him 500 rupees. We also had a bad experience in the airport, if you must come here, take a tip, take a picture of the numberplate of the taxi you get into, at least you can go to the police with the number then, we picked up a taxi to go to our hotel, on the way to our hotel the taxi driver told us there were riots in Connaught Place and that he would have to stop at an information centre to find out the best way to our hotel as there were barricades all around the square. We stopped, it was obvious there was something not right for the word go, this was now the middle of the night, why were they open at that time? The man in the office tried to tell us that there was no way we could get to our hotel, he rang a fake number, passed me the phone, told me I was speaking to my hotel, the 'manager' told me it was their fault we couldn't get to his hotel and that he would give us a full refund. They then tried to sell us another hotel, We ended up after feeling threatened again saying we wanted to go back to the airport, the taxi driver refused to take us back, he told us that security would not let us go back to the airport unless we had a ticket, we took our bags out of his car and looked for another taxi, whilst all this is going on a tuk tuk driver arrived, the taxi driver flagged him down, I decided that I did not trust this tuk tuk, it was too convenient that he came along when he did. I flagged down the next tuk tuk driver, he was chased off by the conmen, we got into the original tuk tuk as we had no option, we were driven around Delhi for over an hour and a half by this tuk tuk driver who told us there was no way we could get to our hotel because of the barricades, there are barricades up but this is for the new metro system going through Delhi, nothing to do with riots, eventually after a lot of arguments we managed to get in touch directly with our hotel who told us that it was a scam, we got out of the tuk tuk and flagged another tuk tuk down, the original tuk tuk driver tried to talk to the tuk tuk I had flagged down so I told him to shut up, we got to our hotel at 5 am in the morning after arriving at the airport at 11.30pm. We visited the Railway museum yesterday, we were approached by a man with a camera in his hand, he started asking about my camera, we chatted a bit about camera's, he said let me take your picture, it was then I realised he wanted to take our picture to sell back to us. We got into a tuk tuk at the museum, we told him we wanted to go to Connaught Place, we agreed a price and set off, he then tells us that we need to make another stop on the way to Connaught Place and it was going to cost us double, he had already turned away from Connaught Place, I told him to stop the tuk tuk, we got out and flagged another one down, on the way to Connaught Place this tuk tuk driver told us he didn't have time to take us to Connaught Place and his 'friend' would pick us up from where he was going to drop us off, I told him that we didn't want to be picked up by his 'friend' I also told him that we had had an experience like this a few days ago and had called the police, he then decided that he could take us to Connaught Place after all!! The reason I am telling you this is because you need to be aware of what is happening to tourists in this area, we have only been here since Monday!! If the police don't do something about these people less and less tourists will come to this area, eventually this area will be a tourist blackspot, unfortunatly after our experiences this time we will not come back here again and will warn anyone who asks us not to visit, I am hoping that by telling you of our experiences the police will start putting into place some sort of tourist police that will protect people from these conn men and bring Connaught Place back to somewhere where we can feel safe again, like it used to be on our last 3 visits. We are seasoned travellers, we are always careful about where and what we do in foreign countries, they have beaten us, not financially but mentally, we can't be bothered to put up with these conmen anymore, we were supposed to stay here for another 6 days, we are leaving, this place is very depressing, give it a miss, its not worth the hassle.
