We woke up Sunday morning, a little before our 9:00am checkout time, quickly got dressed and ready to go and headed downstairs. On our way down, a guy who worked at the hotel asked us for the key so we left it with him and as we were making our way out the gates, one of the guys at the office called us in. Yan and I looked at each other and figured he just wanted to ask us something or offer us a tour of some sort so we go into the office…where he announces that we have to pay taxes!!
Here’s a little background of our first day there. He was charging us Rs 350 if we stayed there 2 nights instead of Rs 500. Not a bad deal!! We had agreed to stay there two nights, and had made sure that the price he was charging us was going to be the only thing he was going to charge us. After having paid, he even gave us a receipt (a handwritten receipt on a notepad, very professional looking!).
Naturally, I argued that we were never told that we would need to pay taxes or anything extra. Yan and I both tried to argue with him to no avail when he announces that he’s going to call someone from the government tax department to explain it to us…DOES HE THINK I’M STUPID?!?! It’s Sunday and clearly, it’s not open!! So he calls some random dude and tells us to wait that he’ll be here in about 10 minutes. I’m getting impatient at this point and ask the guy how much taxes are. He tells me it’s 10%!!! Having looked up taxes in our Lonely Planet, Yan had told me that at the time of printing, the tax was 4% so I proceed to argue with him that there’s no way it could be higher than 6% but he continues to say otherwise. Yan and I look at each other and discuss (in French) what to do and decide that we will not pay this and we’ll just go grab our bus. We tell this to the guy who then tells us that we have to sign a piece of paper that indicates we refused to pay the tax. Yan decides to explain clearly what happened and the reason we didn’t pay and leaves our phone number in Pune and his e-mail in case some government official really does care about his 75 rupees.
The guy had threatened that they would be able to put something on our records and we would then have issues with our passport and getting out the country.
We get out of there and on the way to the bus stop we stop at another hotel to ask how much the tax is and what they do if somebody doesn’t pay it. We are assured that they cannot really do anything and that they were just trying to scare us that it was also poor taste not to tell us about the tax until the end. So we walk over to the bus station just in time to get on the bus back home!!!
The bus ride back went pretty smoothly and we got back to Pune in one piece.
We decided to take a government bus for the trip back instead of a private bus. There’s about a 270 rupee difference between the two for each ticket so we thought we’d give it a try. Turns out those buses are just as comfortable, at least the ones they use for the longer journeys, and the only real difference is no AC. That was actually fine with us since we wouldn’t freeze and I could open the window for better photos. Plus it’s pretty entertaining when the bus stops in different towns because then a whole series of salesmen will walk alongside the bus and even enter it to offer you food, drink, newspapers, and various gadgets. They’ve got their trays of items and it actually reminds me of a hockey or baseball game.
We hop on a rickshaw to head back to our hotel. Once we get to our drop off point, the guys tries to scam us by saying that we have to pay him not only the fee indicated by the meter but another half of that as well because he has to drive back to the bus station with no passengers!!! Since when is it our responsibility to pay for a cab to go back to its starting point?!?! Yan isn’t quite sure why he wants us to pay more and at this point, I’m really really ticked off!!! I tell the guy that his logic just doesn’t make sense and that it’s not our responsibility to pay for him to get back to the bus station and that we will not pay anymore than what the meter indicates. I tell Yan to pay and we walk off (me being really really pissed off and Yan still trying to figure out why he wanted more money).
This was another one of those occasions where I had no idea what the guy was saying… I thought he’d said something about a sign at the station indicating we needed to pay 20 rupees more in fees. Emilie actually understood the guy to be talking about the lack of customers for the way back as his reason and had I known that, I would’ve laughed in his face… but anywho, thankfully Emilie is there to translate! And this is just one of many cases of rickshaw drivers trying to get more money out of us. It seems there’s some days where they just all pile on. They’re also particularly bad when taking you to or from certain tourist locations or bus/train stations because they think you’ll be an easier to exploit traveler.
We were happy to go back to our hotel where nobody ever tries to scam us!! We asked the hotel manager about taxes at hotels and he said that some cities charge taxes and the amount charged depends on the price paid for the room but that for rooms under Rs 700, the tax rate is 4% while high end hotels can charge up to 10% for extra amenities…clearly, our hotel was NOT a high end hotel and did not provide us with ANY extra amenities (not even drinking water!). Yan and I were both more at ease with our decision but still pissed off at always having to be on guard for people ripping us off.
We were definitely happy that there wouldn’t be trouble for us related to our passports and getting out of the country!
We go to bed a bit sad that we have to wake up extra early tomorrow to get to school since it’s supposed to start again today (after the swine flu scare) and set our alarm for 6:40am…ugh!!
We wake up, still really tired and grab a rickshaw to go to school. As we get there, the school seems a bit empty so we head to the main building to see if there are any notes about school not starting. At the main building, where all the doors are locked, we find a nice sign stating that school will be closed until August 24 :). Happy to hear this news but a bit peeved that we had to wake up this early, we head back to the hotel to chill out, sleep and plan our next trip!
On Tuesday morning, Yan wakes up feeling a bit under the weather. I assure him that it’s probably just a little cold from the fan at the hotel in Aurangabad (since it was set to a high speed with no way to control it, it got a bit cold at night there) but he insists that he not only has malaria from all the mosquito bites he got in Aurangabad but that it must also be the swine flu on top of this cold…such a DRAMA QUEEN!!! So I babied him and nursed him back to health…yes he did only have a cold!! But nevertheless he spent the day in bed watching movies and sleeping it off insisting that he in fact had malaria/swine flu/cold!
Fact
We had decided that we would leave on Wednesday for Mahabaleshwar around noon, and on Wednesday, after having packed and all, we got a call from Vaishali letting us know that the other girls from Canada were going to her friend’s place to buy material and asked us if we wanted to join. We agreed to delay our trip for a day and she told us she could pick us up to show me where the tailor was. We went to the tailors where the woman took my measurements for the sari I was getting done, we took a quick look at materials and then headed back home. Around 3:30pm, we headed out again to go meet Vaishali’s friend as well as the other Canadians. We all met up at the India Bulls Megastore, a mall that is actually closing and we all made our way to her friend’s apartment where she not only gave us mango juice, but also cookies and snacks!!! She even ended up giving the rest of the pack of cookies to Yan cause he said he liked them so much and when we asked her for the direction to the bakery where she buys them (they really were good!), she offered to buy some for us!! We kindly declined and told her we would try to find it but that if we didn’t we would definitely call her! She was so sweet to us! I didn’t end up buying any material because I couldn’t find anything I liked but some of the other girls bought some.
We quickly stopped by the Megastore to see if we could find any deals since it was closing and Yan ended up trying a couple of shirts and some traditional outfits on and actually bought a really nice shirt for $4! We rickshawed back home and enjoyed the downtime, ready for an early morning departure the next day to Mahabaleshwar.
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