Watch: Indian tourist gets scammed by 'aggressive' taxi driver in Kazakhstan, calls it the 'scariest thing ever'
"Here we are in the middle of the night locked inside a car in a foreign country in the middle of nowhere and nobody to be seen outside," recounts Komal Maheshwari, an Instagram travel vlogger, sharing her harrowing ordeal during a recent trip to Kazakhstan. Her experience underscores the unexpected dangers that can accompany travel adventures in unfamiliar destinations.
Check out her videos narrating her experience here:
Mahajan recounts her unsettling experience in Kazakhstan, starting with her arrival at the airport around midnight.?
Expecting to quickly get a SIM card and book a cab, she was met with an eerie, deserted airport and no SIM card services, leaving her stranded: "The airport was empty, There was no sim card facility and I was stuck there."
Just then, a cab driver approached her and her travel group, offering a ride with payment based on a metre. He said that the approximate total come would come to around 1,000 Tenge (about Rs 170). Trusting him because he showed an ID from a taxi company, they accepted despite their initial hesitations.
However, red flags soon emerged.?
"When we stepped inside the car, there was another guy sitting inside," who was introduced by the cab driver as his business partner. But Mahajan waived off the worry thinking that this must be common in Kazakhstan.
Things took a darker turn when they stopped to withdraw money and discovered the car was child-locked.?
Mahajan rationalised this as a normal safety feature in Kazakhstan, but the real shock came later. Upon reaching their destination, the meter showed an outrageous 77,000 Tenge (approximately Rs 14,000).
The situation escalated when the driver turned aggressive, trapping them in the car and threatening to take them back to the airport if they didn't pay up.
After a tense negotiation, they managed to settle on a payment of 30,000 Tenge (around Rs 6,000) to escape.
She reflects, "When you land in a new country, the last thing you expect is to get caught up in something like this right away. In hindsight, I can see the red flags, but in the moment, it's easy to overlook them, especially when you're in unfamiliar territory."
Mahajan concludes with a lesson: "I am someone who advises people to read about scams before visiting a new country and here I was falling for one of the most common scams of Kazakhstan."
If you have faced any issues while travelling abroad, let us know in the comments section.
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