Archive for October, 2010

Question: How much money (£) would I need to travel around India for 2 months?
I am planning to travel around India for 2 months in September. I would be going with my boyfriend so we would be sharing a room. It would be nice to do it quite cheaply, but probably not staying in hostels all the time, but apparently b&b type accomodation is quite cheap. We are not extravagant but wouldn’t be too frugal either.

The price would include accomodation, meals, sightseeing, travel within the country, but not flights to India (which is approx £500).

Any advice from people who have travelled round India would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!
india travel

Best answer:

Answer by Strudders67
Unfortunately it’s 10 years since I backpacked in India and I can’t remember what I paid for anything although I have very fond memories of a lot of aspects of the trip.

If you go to the Lonely Planet website, select India and then look at the Money section, it’ll tell you roughly what to expect to budget for, per day. Alternatively, search through their Thorn Tree section on India and check out other people’s questions & answers. Add a bit on for drinks (although they are cheap, they eat into your budget), a bit more sightseeing than you might expect, the occassional nice meal (2 months is a long time in India) and the occassional upgrade to a nicer hotel plus the odd souvenier that you WILL buy, despite any intentions not to. Note that a tiger safari could be expensive unless you can find a group to share costs with. The LP budget will be in USD, but if you divide by 2, you’ll have a rough idea of the £ equivalent.

I stayed in smaller hotels, of the type where I would meet up with other foreigners, although my travels by bus and train were in with the locals, otherwise why bother going.

Not exactly cost related but…
When travelling from place to place, 2nd class sleeper (soft) is perfectly adequate and comfy – but on some busier routes expect to have the carriage taken over by hordes of people who will sit anywhere they can find a space…which you can’t blame them for, but it makes for a disturbed nights sleep if it happens to be on the end of your bed. I had one nice man telling me that I could put my legs in his lap – but he wasn’t moving off my (top) bunk. Equally, by interacting and by chatting, half the carriage knew where I needed to get off – and made sure that I did when the train pulled into Aurangabad 2 hours earlier than I’d expected (and I was asleep).

If you go from Hampi to Goa (or indeed anywhere to anywhere) on a touristy overnight sleeper bus, make sure you get a bottom bunk and preferably one towards the front! You bounce around so much in the top ones and the back is just awful. I say ‘touristy’ but once we were all on and settled, the bus stopped and picked up approx 50 locals who proceeded to take over every available space, rather like on the trains, including perched on the edges of our bunks. Given the amount we had paid for this ‘luxury’ it didn’t go down too well.

Don’t pay someone to get you a ticket if the ticket office, especially at the train station, is busy…it’ll rarely be cheaper and may end up not being the ticket that you want.

One final point – as you travel aorund you may well meet locals who ask you how much you earn. Whilst this may seem rather rude to us, it is a social indicator in India and determines roughly where you fit in to the class system. I always knocked quite a lot off my salary…but also proceeded to compare costs with my questioner – how much do they pay for rent compared to my mortgage? how about water, gas & electricity?, tax for sweeping the streets & maintaining lighting (is council tax)? travel to work? basics such as bread, milk, meat etc. That way I could show that, whilst I earned a lot compared to them, my outgoing costs were similarly large. I was only stumped when I was asked, as a comparison, how much a sack of grain would cost? – I had NO idea.

And a very final point – have a fantastic trip.