Surviving Your Guide

India is full of helpful people; there are guides and there are psuedo-guides. The challenging part is telling who's who or the professionals from the scammers and opportunists. Everyone has to make a living so I don't begrudge them that, it's just that here people do the job first. If you fail to negotiate a price or you don't realize that they are actually performing this service for you, then you may have problems. Many people showed me around for free or for meals, but that is not always the case. In addition to having no clear way to figure out someone's credentials, the other issue is that here, everyone mixes business and "friendship," making it that much more muddled. Much of what the guides do is to try to get you to shop at the places where they receive commission.
The upshot of this was that I had the most annoying guide ever, that I couldn't shake in Jaipur. They are very pushy and they show up at your hotel and wait for you. He kept trying to get me to go drinking with him (uh, no thanks), everywhere we went his friends and family would show up to meet me, I spent hours having to ward off aggressive sales tactics, and barely saw much of Jaipur. I was so annoyed and a little spooked that I booked a flight out of Jaipur asap. Well, when I went to leave I tried to give him some $, which he didn't deem enough and we got into it. He pulled out some paper trying to tell me that I should pay 1000 rupees per day. I was so fed up with his bs at that point, that I just told him to take the $ or not. He's actually trying to block me from entering the airport, but regardless I go inside. I go do my thing, get my boarding pass, do all the security checkpoints etc. and am waiting to board my flight when an older lady comes and starts reprimanding me and demanding I come with her. Her English wasn't great, but I can tell she is very unhappy with me although I can't ascertain her authority to get me pulled off the plane. They take away my boarding pass and security clearance...everyone is staring as I yell that I want the police. I'm brought into some office where the taxi guy is asserting how I robbed him. I am LIVID at this point. Anyway, I call my friend who threatens him and the guy settles for 500 rupees. I ask for his information and he says he will get it from the car and never returns.
That ended up redeeming me and the old lady apologized telling me that he came to her crying, but now she sees he wasn't legit. I told her that I hoped she remembered that next time she pulled some poor, female tourist off her plane when she is traveling alone and is trying to escape some weirdo. And then I started to cry....