Pathetic Experience With Chennai Cab/Auto Drivers

On December 21st, my girlfriend (23F) and I (23M) traveled to Chennai, and we were terrified to take an auto or cab to go anywhere due to the rude behavior of many auto drivers and their demands for excessive fares beyond the original price. Can you imagine? We stayed there for just two days, and our travel expenses ended up being much higher than expected. At the Chennai airport, a few creeps made things worse. When we refused to pay the price they demanded, one of them mocked us, saying, “These boyfriend-girlfriend couples spend thousands on hotels but hesitate to spend on cabs.” One driver even asked for ₹1,000 to take us from the airport to the Novotel Hotel in Sholinganallur. A drunk driver then approached us and agreed to take us for ₹560, even helping with our luggage. However, I smelled alcohol on him and politely said, “Anna, we’ll book a cab instead.” This upset him, and he started arguing with us, asking why we didn’t accept his offer. Things escalated when his friend joined in, and both started verbally fighting with us. Since we didn’t know the local language, we felt helpless at night after a hectic 30-hour flight journey. Somehow, we walked back to the airport's Uber booking point and finally got an Uber driver who offered us a genuine price and even suggested an itinerary for our two-day trip. That gave us a little hope. However, during the next two days, we faced similar issues. We booked autos through Uber about 5–6 times, and almost everyone demanded 20–30% extra fare. Even with cars, the same problem persisted. Since there wasn’t a metro station near our hotel, we had to rely on autos to reach the nearest metro station. We initially wanted to explore the city by roaming in autos, but this hope turned into a nightmare. That said, a few polite cab drivers were like a light in the darkness. We enjoyed every meal in Chennai, visited beautiful temples, and created some wonderful memories. But the bad experiences with many auto and cab drivers really overshadowed our trip. Perhaps it was just our bad luck that we encountered a majority of the problematic ones.