Delhi rape: how can women travellers stay safe? Like many Delhi residents, Ms Narain doesn't hail street cabs any longer but phones for a radio cab, saying they are safer as they vet their drivers. I have taken her advice ever since I took one of the city's yellow-and-black taxis following a night flight and had an unnerving interrogation about sex from its young driver, who looked nothing like the photograph of the man licensed to drive it. Female visitors to Delhi do need to take particular care. It is just not the done thing to go up to a group of men and ask for directions as this Danish woman is said to have done. Instead, go into a shop or a cafe to read a map or ask for help. The Foreign Office says it now advises lone female visitors to Delhi - including its own staff - to avoid travelling on public transport, or in taxis or auto-rickshaws, after dark. If the journey is necessary it recommends ordering a taxi through the hotel or using the radio taxi counter at the airport. Despite local and foreign media highlighting the scale of attacks on women in the city, the authorities have done very little to make the streets safer. Last summer, the National Tourism Advisory Council issued badges to taxi drivers and guides saying "I respect women." It is hard to think of a more useless gesture. What is needed is for the police, the courts and Indian society to take the issue a lot more seriously. In a male-dominated society like India, this is going to be a hard task. Only last autumn, a high court judge in Madras, announcing a fast-track legal process for rapists, suggested that it would help if women stayed at home to avoid putting themselves in danger. India's first woman Additional Solicitor General, Indira Jaising, took him to task by quoting Mahatma Gandhi's words: "India cannot claim to have attained true independence until all women can walk on the streets be it at midnight without fear of being molested or raped." The latest Foreign Office advice, updated on its website today, states: "Women should use caution when travelling in India. British women have been the victims of sexual assault in Goa, Delhi, Bangalore and Rajasthan and women travellers often receive unwanted attention in the form of verbal and physical harassment by individuals or groups of men. Serious sexual attacks involving Polish, German and Danish women travellers have been reported so far in 2014. Women travellers should exercise caution when travelling in India even if they are travelling in a group.