“they could *take* the reservation, they just couldn’t *keep* the reservation”

Sander, Travel in India is indeed complicated – wrought with delays, cancellations and other international mysteries. Fortunately, often the outcome compensates for the frustration.

Greg, I have to confess to having at least once bribed my way into having a room at a completely full hotel. I found myself in Prague without a reservation and not a single hotel had a vacant room. (This was back when it was still Czechoslovakia. I imagine there are far more hotels today.) When the last possible hotel, the nicest (and most expensive) one in Prague, also didn’t have a room, I did the only thing I could do. I gave the woman at the counter a crisp $10 bill (quite a lot there at at that time). Presto; I had a room. (She also became my black-marketer for exchanging money. Everybody in Central Europe in those days wanted to exchange money on the black-market.)

I’ve never been to India, but I have spent quite a bit of time in Southern, Eastern and Central Africa. My favorite “shit hits the fan” story is from a trip to Rwanda in 2005. I had found a great guest house that came very highly recommended, and through several int’l long distance phone calls and faxes, I managed to make a “reservation” for the four weeks we’d be in country.

We land in Kigali after about 36 hours of transit. We get a taxi to the guest house. We haul all of our bags out of the trunk of the taxi, and head in to the office.

And then the very polite gentleman behind the desk informs us that we have no rooms. Apparently a huge American religious crusade descended on the city and offered twice the rate we had been promised for all the rooms in the place. It was very Seinfeldian- they could *take* the reservation, they just couldn’t *keep* the reservation.

So, they gave us a room for that night, partly because they felt sorry for us and partly because I think I had a murderous look on my face after not sleeping for 36 hours. But, the rest of our trip was grand experiment in “shifting” from place to place every day or two, as rooms became available or unavailable. I think we would up with 8 different stays at 5 different places.

The next time I went back to Kigali, I just begged a spare room from friends, and managed to stay in one place the whole time!

But, as they say, looking back on it after a few years, you can’t help but laugh!