India Itinerary: Thoughts and Tips
We spent three weeks in India with following routes:
Fly from Amsterdam via London..
Mumbay – back to Amsterdam via Brussels
I got my Indian tourist visa in one day at the Indian Embassy in the Hague. It was quick, not many paperworks and efficient. The visa allowed me to stay in India for six months. Most nationals including Dutch nationals should apply for visa to enter India. I told Dutchie that finally we were even – both of us had to apply visa 🙂 Having an Indonesian passport is not easy for traveling to certain countries. Most of the time I had to apply visa to enter certain countries while Dutchie as a Dutch national does not have to. Such countries, like Australia and United States of America, to get their visas are expensive and requiring lots of time and paper works preparation.
Recently the Indian government granted tourist visa on arrival for specific nationals: Cambodia, Finland, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Luxembourg, Myanmar, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, and Vietnam.
Indian currency is Indian rupee. You can get it in the airport via ATM machines. They have ATM machines for maestro and cirrus debit cards.
In the city, you can take auto-rickshaw or taxis to bring you around. Of course you can take public buses, but sincerely the cost of auto-rickshaw is not expensive and if you met a friendly auto-rickshaw driver, he might bring you to interesting places that not mentioned in tourist books.
India has developed sufficient and good railways and airways to connect their cities. Their trains has several classes, the higher tickets cost, the more comfortable the seats. Additionally they have numerous domestic airlines with brand new planes.
India is a big country with many ethnicity so the types of their cuisine are actually varied from region to region. I will not explain about each region’s type of food. But if you are not familiar with spicy food, then it is better to be modest for the first few days until your stomach adjust to Indian’s spicy food. Some type of curries could be very spicy, even for me who always eat spicy food.
Indian culinary is heaven for vegetarian and vegans. It offers numerous variety of vegan dishes. My favorite vegan food are: Papad Masala and Palak Paneer. My favorite non vegan food is Tandoori chicken and Vindaloo.
Coffee may be not the strong point of Indian beverages. However, India offers delicious tea such as Chai (Masala Tea). The tea is perfect to start your day replacing Indian coffee.
1. Never buy train tickets or tour package from someone that you just met in the street or suspicious travel/tourist office. I suggest to buy train tickets directly in train station, always. And for flight ticket, it could be arranged via hotel or buying the ticket directly at the airport.
2. Wear an Indian’s product. For woman, it could be shawl and for man, it could be Hindu’s bracelet. This is to show that you have been in India for a while. Additionally, it will help you in bargaining Indian products with the locals vendors.
3. Unfortunately, there were quite number of children beggars in touristy places. We refused to give them money but they kept following us. Tourists are their targets, therefore please keep strong and don’t give them money. Perhaps it is better to give them pens, pencils or educative small toys like this one. A thoughtful article related to Indian children beggars written by Jillian Keenan. He mentioned some reasons for not giving money to children beggars and how you can help them.
4. Be sure about where to go during Indian monsoon season (June to September). You don’t want to have my experience while in Goa 😉
5. Don’t bring too many clothes to India. India has excellent laundry service, especially in touristy area. The service is cheap, fast and clean. Besides of that, their textile products are really nice with good quality.
Lastly, if possible, please do not carry around your Lonely Planet or travel guide books, this is to avoid become a scamming target. Bring a small notebook of list of places that you’d like to visit.
Most likely, but it is not in my priority list yet. I would like to visit Kerala, Varanasi and Shimla-Manali-Leh (these places have amazingly beautiful nature and unique culture).
indahs: dive, travel & photography 
Thanks for sharing such nice post. If you are travelling to India and you only have 10 days of vacation and only a budget for two cities. What are the best two cities please, that the one cannot miss? Thank you 🙂
Hi Ahmed, thank you so much for reading the post! I am afraid I could not give you specific answer for that. For ten days, actually you can visit three cities in India 🙂 About the best two cities – oh well..it really depends on personal preferences actually. Agra has impressive history and amazing buildings from Mughal era that anyone who adores history (and even literature) should not miss the city when visiting India. Meanwhile Udaipur has romance atmosphere that make it differs than other cities in Rajasthan state like Jaipur. And Jaipur was actually quite dynamic and happy city with numerous pink-reddish buildings. From the previous trip I made, I would recommend these three cities. However, India has other attractive cities to consider – and unfortunately I was not able to visit them yet, like Jodphur, Varanasi, and Calcutta..and actually, I wish I will visit Ladakh (the city is Leh) someday, such beautiful nature there..
Thanks a lot Indahs for your detailed info. Very enlightening 🙂 I only knew Jaipur, but first time to hear about Udaipur and Agra! I checked them on the map and I believe that all fall in the north. So it would be easy to pass by the three or even two of them Agra and Jaipur for example. Thanks again for your lovely tips and reply. It really helped in setting my plans 🙂
My pleasure 🙂 I hope you can visit all of them. The train trip between cities was actually exciting as well, you can get lots of good portraits there.
Hi Indah this post is really great but I have few question. I will visit “the triangle” Delhi – Agra – Jaipur then going down to Goa on the last week of June, are the coconut huts is available in Goa during this period? I know its monsoon season. Would you suggest to go there even if monsoon? Or i should look for another place to stay. Thanks
Hi Hanns, thank you! June is the beginning of the monsoon and what I have read before that most of beach huts/coconut huts in Goa are dismantled starting in June. Maybe in Palolem beach there will be few still open. When I was there in August, the beach was empty: no activities and lots of rains & storm. But again no one can really predict weather nowadays because of global changing climate 😦
I suggest to check by sending e-mail to the respective beach huts owners or if you’d like to go directly, just have back up plan like a list of hotels in Goa that you’d like to stay. Hope you will have wonderful visit in India 🙂
Awesome
Thank you so much indah. Im really looking forward to my India trip.
Being an Indian myself, I will second your experience about beggars and overpricing when they see tourists. Best is to buy tickets in advance and haggle every price ..and yes…. Try butter chicken and butter naan or butter makhni and aloo parantha (potato stuffed naan bread, cooked fresh) … At a “Dhaba” (Dha- ba).. Roadside restaurants , they make fresh food and very reasonable !!!
Ahhh..I forget to mention how delicious the butter chicken and the butter naan! Thank you for pointing out! India is beautiful country – I love my travel there and still put India in my bucket list to visit again. The poverty remind us as human and to be human…I wish for the best that the economic progress in India nowadays will improve their welfare..
I am now in USA, sadly I don’t feel that any financial help will alter the Indian economic society Because the mentality is very laid back , the ships and stores don’t open for business until almost 11 am , that’s past half a day!! The government offices have lunch hours where no one works for the hour and it’s a complete shut down.. No one respects and follows time, rules and regulations .. The food is great, but expect god service only as long as you have money … Given a chance , every person will over quote you the prices.
It’s a country with rich culture, some ppl are genuinely very nice , but who .. You can’t be sure unless you take a chance