Ellen Besso Coaching

He greeted me with a pleasant ‘Namaste’, and he had such a beautiful smile, so I didn’t realize at first that he was a tout. I guess I should have known & not replied. That’s my basic technique – don’t look, don’t speak, don’t engage in any way & they usually leave quickly.

Touts are men who ‘befriend’ you on the street & try to get you to buy products or services. They work for stores, including government gift shops & tour agencies. Even shopkeepers, while not official touts, may be trying to sell tours for a commission.

Which are more troublesome, the beggars or the touts? I guess that depends on where you are, & on how you feel at that particular moment.

Oddly, there haven’t been that many beggars around Paharganj during this week. I don’t usually have trouble with them; I give to women, especially with young children or if they’re old. But when I’m tired, or when too many hit me up in a row, I tend to get on a role & lose my powers of discrimination.

Now up north in H.H. the Dalai Lama’s town, there are many more beggars, of Indian descent. When we visited the monastery guesthouse we’ll soon be moving into it was very much like running a gauntlet walking up the very narrow roadway running from the main street to the monastery. I made the mistake of stopping to get money out for a young woman (think it was a woman) with a glowing face & a bandaged hand. I couldn’t get my hands on the money as it had become trapped in the lining of my bag, & within a moment I was almost surrounded by beggars. I joked with Don that I wanted to wear a bag on my head when I went up & down the laneway, but I wasn’t really kidding. Then I said blinders would be better (like horses wear). Don replied that I needed internal blinders; so true! So what I plan to do is keep my head down, & to research & give money to the association for Indian street people. (I believe the Tibetan refugees are better looked after by the Tibetan government in exhile).

Once you’ve been caught in the milk scam though, you’ll never be caught again. Women carrying babies work for grocery stores. They ask you for money to buy milk ‘not for me, for my baby’. The dried milk costs much more than you’d likely donate. They then sell it back to the store & get a cut. This happened to me 2 years ago in Dharamsala & it’s annoying to say the least!

Tipping is something I don’t do all that well. I always want to give too much, but I’m somewhat better this trip. My philosophy has been ‘I have so much & they so little, why not give them a great tip’. But Don, with more travel experience than me, says that’s not necessarily the way to go, that hugely overtipping sets up a situation for other tourists & may not be the best use of our funds. Giving to local charities may be better.