What is the best way to pick up packages in Northern India?
- By
- Aparna Patel
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- 8 Aug, 2023
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I’ve travelled to India many times, lived there a few years, often travelled to/lived in remote areas not visited by the usual tourist/trekker/hippytrail crowd, so this is based on my experience. I’m not a trekker or mountaineer.
If you contact a hotel that does a lot of business with trekkers, has a website, you can raise the owner by phone and they speak english, etc., you’re probably reasonably safe sending your package there. The owner has a large investment in the hotel’s reputation.
Not so the hotel boy. So I recommend you send your package as a well sealed bundle that would be difficult to open and re-close surreptitiously.
Delhi’s in the middle of the country, a long long way from the Himalaya. And it’d probably be harder to replace a specialized piece of gear like an ice ax in Delhi than in Khatmandu. Heck, to get to Delhi overland from Khatmandu you’d probably go through Darjeeling, Siliguri, and Kolkatta, any of which probably has whatever you need.
But ultimately, I’m with chx – you may be shocked to find the local DHL office isn’t open on saturday in some tiny village high in Nepal.
Finally, consider what you’re asking them to do. “Hi, you don’t know me, but in exchange for the normal cost of a room in your motel, I want you to hold a possibly large package whose contents you don’t know in your building for an indefinite period, without knowing if it contains illegal drugs or what.”
Letting us know what your route is would help. Somebody might know of a place they can vouch for (EG I spent a month in Kurseong, and know of a family owned hotel there).
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