In November we took our backpack and started our journey through Asia. First destination India! Being for the first time in this country, we chose to visit the most famous landmarks, but also to embrace the chaos that comes along with it.
We spent a month in this country, and most of the time in the state Rajasthan. We can say that it is not a country for the faint of heart, impressionable or who can not negotiate. But surely you can make it better if you have a well-established program with objectives to visit and transport.
Below is our itinerary for the 28 days spent in India. We do not say it’s a perfect program, we’ve seen people run and visit much more through this country. But for us, it was the ideal combination of: visiting everything that we think was worth it and relaxation, blogs/vlogs, break from agitation.
Of course, this is a delicate subject for many people and has many variables: the number of people, how much you are willing to spend, how you are willing to travel (eg train or plane), accommodation (hostel or hotel), etc.
We tried to keep our budget within 1000 euros, two people without airplane tickets and visa. And we almost succeeded. After we drew the line we reached the amount of 1093 euros. This amount consists of 5 categories, as in the chart below.
This is the biggest category of our budget (34,03%). After a month in India we realized that no matter how much money or little you spend on a night of accommodation, you never know what to expect. And here we refer to cleanliness and facilities. The cheapest accommodation was 8 euros per night, and the most expensive, 27 euros per night. Booking proved to be the platform with the most accommodation options. If you want a 10% discount on your next stay, click here.
We managed to get over a month in India without having a stomach problem. And the food was delicious, and we always asked to be spicy (we eat spicy :D). We think it was also luck. What we did and we would advise you is to look for reviews before eating in a restaurant. We’ve managed to fit our budget by choosing the cheap restaurants with good reviews (4-5 stars) from Tripadvisor.
! You have to avoid at all costs water that is not bottled (sealed) if you want to have no health problems!
The organized trips are the ones that cost the most and you should avoid them if you do not want to break the bank. We just limited ourselves to one such a trip, a night in the desert. In rest, 20% of the amount was spent on entrance tickets to forts and museums. The most expensive was obviously, Taj Mahal.
I think we’ve tried all the variants of transport to travel through this country, except the planes.
Trains. Buses. Rickshaw. Inevitably you will travel with rickshaw/ tuk-tuk, and it is very important to set a price before getting in and negotiating it at times even half. If the first driver does not want the price you’re comfortable with, go to the next and next. (In Amer I think the 10th driver has accepted the amount we wanted to pay).
If you do not want to be fooled by travel agencies, the safest option is to buy tickets for buses and trains online. These sites have a small fee, but they are without headaches.
For trains, we used: 12go.asia
For Buses: redbus.com (searches for discount codes online).
In this category, we put cosmetics (soap, shampoo etc) and souvenirs + transport to send them home (we continue our journey in another country). If we could refrain from souvenirs, we would have saved ~ 100 euros, but it’s hard to do that.
For all Asian countries, you must have a visa to be able to visit them. Whether you get it online, from the embassy or directly at the airport in that country. For India, there is the option to get a “visa on arrival” online (e-visa). More details about the visa here.
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Those overnight sleeper buses were great Navin. We took 'em from Pondy to Bangalore, from Bangalore to Cochin, and we took one to Chennai too, I believe. Cheap and comfy.