Watch Out For Crazy Insane Taxi Fares

If there was one thing that put us off when traveling in the Andaman Islands, it was the exaggerated cost of the hiring taxis. They overcharge you and then overcharge you some more. Never ever in any place has hiring taxis been so expensive.  So keep that in mind when traveling and account for it beforehand in your expense budget. 

I am all for supporting tourism everywhere, especially where it is a primary way of making a living. But things turn sour when you get the distinct feeling that someone is fleecing you. Let me narrate the experience I had with the taxis in Andaman.

There doesn’t seem to be anyway around paying an exorbitant cost because all the taxis stand united and no one will agree to a lower fare and you don’t have that much time to really explore what’s going on. All the taxi drivers have come to some sort of a consensus. It may even be possible that some helpful employees of the hotel we were staying in were in cohorts with them and taking a commission off them. Because this is what happened. 

We were staying at Seashell in Havelock. It’s very close to the docks. The ride from there is literally 5 minutes not more. But no taxi will take less than 300 INR. This is the minimum fare that any taxi will charge, regardless of the distance.

Anyway, we wanted to step out for dinner one night rather than eat in the hotel restaurant. One of the staff on duty said he would call a cab. Cabs are not feeely available at night. You have to get them through a travel agent or if you have the number of a cab driver. 

Anyway this person made the call and said the cab will take us to the restaurant and bring us back... for 2000 INR! He said no one will charge any less. And the place we want to go to is far away. Well the place turned out to be 3 km away. It took us  10 minutes to reach there.

There is virtually no phone internet so no Google maps and no way of checking where you have to go. So no way of telling how far away the place is and you end up taking the word of the staff at the hotel. Some of them behave like they are unsure of the distance of places from the hotel, like they haven’t been working there for years and like the island is a huge place where it takes more than a couple of days to know where everything is.

Anyway, everyone really wanted to dine out and we had no option so  we took the taxi. The taxi driver took about 10 minutes to reach our destination, pushed off after dropping us and asked us to call him once we were done so he could come back and picks up.

By the way, this behaviour is typical of hiring a cap in Havelock. Even if you book a cab for the entire day, they do not stay with you. They drop you off to your destination, ask you how long you are going to be there and push off to cater to more tourists. The same or a different cab comes back to pick you up after the stipulated time. At least, this was the experience we had when we used the services of a local tour operator.

Anyway, back to the dinner experience. So we went 3 kms away. Dined for about 1.5 hours and came back. That set us back for a neat 2k for the cab fare alone. Left a bad taste in the mouth which had nothing to do with the nice dinner we had. 

To add to this. We spoke to the person on the front desk the next morning. This was the person we were familiar with as he was the one who had checked us in and had been talking to us since then. We mentioned the outrageous taxi fare of the previous night and even he along with the rest of the staff was taken aback by how much we paid. But when we told him that one of the hotel staff had only arranged for the cab, they were strangely quiet about it.

No one in the hotel staff at any point of time help us get reasonable prices with the taxis. Maybe it is because they do not want to interfere with the local tourist activities, Fair enough. But i’m fairly certain the hotel staff who called for the cab at night took his cut out of it. He had the number of the cab driver, quoted the exorbitant amount, made no effort of trying to bring down the rate and lied to us about how far away the place was (according to him, it was very far. When we came back and told him it was close, he acted surprised like he didn’t really know).

The helpful tip we received from the morning hotel staff was that a cheaper options to travel was to rent a scooter. for various reasons, this wasn’t possible for us. You can take auto rickshaws as well as they are cheaper than taxis. However, taxis are more comfortable than autos, something you might want to keep in mind. The roads leading to some beaches are really bad and the ride can get really bumpy with bad jerks in an auto rickshaw. 

Suzuki Ertiga is a common taxi in Andaman and offers a comfortable ride. I was quiet impressed with the vehicle. 

One issue with renting a scooter is that since there is no mobile Internet, you will have to rely on finding your way around the old-fashioned way that is by stopping and asking people for the directions. You cannot rely on Google maps to show you the way. Even then, finding your way to the popular beaches and other places is not too difficult as there are not too many roads and the place is not too big. The local can always point you in the right direction or you can leave with a hand drawn map made by someone at your hotel.