India: Day 1

So after spending 22 hours flying, eating, sleeping, and having champagne literally shoved down my throat I've finally reached Chennai in the middle of the night.

Apparently they lost one of my suit cases. Someone from Lufthansa was helping me out and said it never got onto my transfer plane on time. Then they handed me 8000 ruppees...I was like what the heck is this for I don't want to sell my luggage. But I guess it turns out since I was in business class they automatically compensate you for your troubles :-). Score!...that's like 150 bucks!.

Next I walked out to be greeted with someone holding my name up. I'm thinking...what are the odds of an Indian named Ricardo Gomez? It turned out to be my own personal driver (score x 2). My Driver tells me he's gonna be my driver for the next month :-). Next he hands me a brand new cell phone to use all around India (score x 3).

I finally arrive to my hotel and it just hit me. How do I tip out here? I usually give taxi drivers a couple of bucks in the US. So I guess taking into account people make a fifth much and gas is still just as expensive AND makes a standard salary....100 ruppees cool? that's like 2 bucks. But damn what are the standards of tipping in India....sooo I found this online:

1) Guy that tries to grab your bag and take it to the car at the airport.
2) Airport pickup/dropoff driver
3) Bellhops taking/placing your bag from/into car
4) Bellhop bringing/takig bag to/from the room
5) Room service delivery person
6) Local run car driver
7) Hotel restaurant/bar waiters
8) Waiters outside hotels

So do y'all tip all of them while in India? How much do you tip them each?

Here's how I do it generally:

With regards to Person:

1 above. Only gets tipped if I ask for the help and he's not pushy. (For those that try to milk me, I have a bunch of old Turkish lira that look good -- a million old Turkish Lira, you know, a big amount :D -- which I give them. They can't even get it converted into two INR. :D ) Never more than 40-50 rupees.
2 above. Never more than 50 rupees.
3 and 4 above. Never more than 50 rupees and only to the person who did the last or biggest delivery step.
5 above. 50 rupees regardless of bill
6 above. 70-100 rupee tip per day for local run driver if he negotiates down things on my behalf but never more than 300-500 rupees per month in total.
7 above. Never more than 100 rupees regardless of tab.
8 above. Restaurant waiters never more than 10% with a cap of 150-200 rupees.
Not tipping has not yielded me any trouble either. There have been some trips where I have not even tipped more than 200 rupees in total on the entire trip and my service the follow-up time was not impacted negatively as far as I could tell.

Damn I did good!