hey there of my girl travelers welcome back !
Now as I've been putting out these videos I've been noticing there's a fair
amount of you who are already in the process of planning your trip to India.
And some of you are feeling very overwhelmed because you don't know where
to begin researching, where to go and you have your own questions. So today I'm
gonna dive into the question or the topic of trip planning tips for India as
well as, answer some of the questions that you had from me when I did a shout
out on my Facebook page. Before I get into that though, I want to do a quick
reminder that if you're new to my channel then please subscribe. Right next
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videos with your travel community, with friends who are travelling or
people who you know who might be on the fence about solo travel. Let more people
know so that we can grow this GRRR community. I also noticed that I have
some Indian viewers out there who have been awesome and leaving comments and
helping other travelers out with their questions. This is how we all learn as
travelers as these days it's all word of mouth and through other people's experiences
that we actually feel like we have more insight into things.
With no further ado, let's get down to it! It's gonna be a slightly different
format from the way I normally do my tip videos I'm just gonna talk through some
of this just to let you know I do have my how I traveled India playlist in on
my channel check out that playlist for things that I've already covered like
trains how to take you know get the foreign quote tourist quota I've covered
kind of a lot how to get your SIM card I have two videos in that playlist one is
the top five travel tips for India the other one is top five travel survival
tips for Indian culture now the second one I get hate mail and whatnot because
a lot of people miss interpret what I'm saying in that video and they think that
I'm being very negative India and it's actually quite the
opposite the five things that I share are common common common things or
observations you'll find travelers have or their concerns with India when they
travel it I'm tackling those common things and I'm kind of like flipping it
around and showing you a different way of looking at it so you can ease into
India I get a lot of Indians really upset with what I've said or how honest
I've been about conveying or communicating these general things that
other people and and I and myself have experienced going to India I've had a
little love affair with India for over a decade it started with my interest in
yoga and spirituality meditation from there I got really intensely into
Bollywood films I feel like I'm constantly watching Bollywood films
whenever they come out or when I when I can get this all of this stuff just
inspired me to travel India and to try and get deeper into to understand the
culture a little bit more the first thing that is like on the very forefront
of everyone's mind when planning a trip to India is where to go like what's your
site what's the best sightseeing route the second way to plan your trip is
according to interest or theme you're interested in something like
spirituality and you want to visit ashrams or you want to go to meditation
places or different temples temple hop a lot of Westerners love to come to India
because they they think of the yogic experience and yoga is completely
different in India than the way it's practiced in the West maybe you want to
focus on festivals because India celebrates festivals in a grand way like
very colourful and big what a lot of people don't know is that there are
certain cities that celebrate some of these festivals in a larger way than
others do for me like visiting Varanasi for Diwali was a big thing it was a
bucket list and then in the future Durga Puja would be best celebrated for me and
Kolkata number one top favorite route that you'll find with the laudatory
agents and new travelers happens to be the girl team triangle and it is from
Delhi to Agra to Rajasthan area which is Jaipur normally so you're creating like
this triangle and you're hitting like these palatial palatial areas
the first time that I came into India I did the golden triangle route but I also
added on like a Rajasthan route which is the number two rep that I'll I'll
mention to you I went from Jaipur down to become ear to
jaw Sameer and then jodpur you could do a different route Rajasthan is mostly
known for its Rajput royalty as well as its desert like area or region the third
route is what I did my second trip where I also want to experience like in ashram
like a yoga ashram as well as take my yoga teacher certification program I
came in from the western coast and flew into Mumbai went down the coast to go up
and from there hit Connecticut which is like happy and go karna from there I hit
number four which is like the Kali Ariel and there's a lot of backwater
Ripper tours with houseboats it's a beautiful area and you'll hit fort
cochin LP and from there I went down to Trivandrum which is where I had my
shivananda yoga ashram experience it was a really great experience from there I
went down to Connie Kumari which is like the southern tip of India and whenever
you make your route you kind of want to make it in a convenient way versus like
jumping all around with that trip I also shot up to my du-ri where the
architecture the temple architecture changes it is a lot more colorful and
and bright and a little more intricate in some ways the northern areas just
generally tend to feel like they have more influences from their neighboring
country like Nepal Tibet the time you'll see the faces the ethnicities change
kind of like mine I blend up there a little bit more I'm there I jumped up to
to do my yoga teacher certification experience Dharamshala where where it's
the home of the Dalai Lama I went to Amritsar and that's where it's very Sikh
Punjabi State and they had the Golden Temple there as well as the Wagah border
I would say even further up north there's the Ladakh and lay the landscape
changes again just into this very surreal
mix of desert and ice and just for me it was heaven on earth
I'm usually you can kind of like create a route but also start throwing in your
own interests and kind of doing a mix up there
Luiz asks what sites can you go to for a rough idea of where to go check out the
tour agency websites because they will list their itinerary and from there you
can kind of like pick and choose you can get an idea of what our top destinations
for please people to go to why people like going there or what kind of
experiences they can have and from there you can like mix and match your route I
also like to look at travel blogs for more in-depth information I might go to
India Mike calm and that's a good India travel forum it's very it's a very good
one I've used it for years now because you'll get you know locals answering
questions that you might have about your itinerary you know there's also like
travel groups on on Facebook you to our India Travel Facebook groups see
TripAdvisor offers a lot of good information if you're researching hotels
it's like Louise seems like she wants to wing some poor travels and she doesn't
want to lock it in stone one good tip I I talk about in my my why you should
splurge on tours video is to work with travel agents more actually they're
there they are godsend and that's how I win a lot of my travels definitely look
at even taking day tours working with the travel agents there's only so much
research you can do on your own and if you're gonna be researching it Oh while
you're traveling you're gonna be losing a lot of precious and valuable time on
the internet versus like out on the road experiencing things Aaron asks how much
do you spend per day on food and transportation and how much is
accommodation like hostel or a hotel okay so Aaron thank you for asking the
question it really depends on your budget I know people always ask like how
much does it cost and it's like well it depends on what kind of spender you are
or what kind of vacation you're taking there are vacation travelers
and usually they take anywhere from three days to two weeks those travelers
usually want to splurge just a little bit more so that they have a you know
good experience of the place and you know feel safe and whatnot if you are a
long-term traveler a nomadic traveler a round-the-world trip traveler and you're
gonna want to watch your budget a little bit more I would be in that category
because when I was traveling India this last trip I was also adding on different
countries and that meant flights here and visas there and I needed my dollar
to stretch longer through several months so for me going through India I would
say my average was anywhere from twenty-five to thirty-five dollars
that's kind of like where I I kind of like had my average per day when I
stayed at guest houses hotels my average was roughly around 900 rupees which is
around 14 or 15 dollars a night you can definitely upgrade if you do
like a mid-range to budget hotel you might pay I'd say like around 25 - or 20
to 30 dollars somewhere around there plus or minus and you'll get a decent
mid-range budget hotel obviously anything higher is gonna be like you
know like more luxury or more hotel hotel know that hotels will often have a
tax or tariff luxury hotels will have a luxury tax they're comparing a trip a
two-week trip to Europe or France say you might pay $3,000 for that trip if
you're traveling through India $3,000 might get you two through two months and
that's not counting flights either so that's kind of like the big difference
right there treat food roughly runs you around ten to sixty rupees and that's
like literally under $1 if you're staying if you're going to restaurants
they'll probably range around 150 rupees a dish depends on the restaurant you go
to also you know like if you're doing intercity travel through like Auto taxi
or auto rickshaw as well as workshop then I would say you're probably paying
anywhere from roughly around 70 70 rupees that's how I would Ballpark it
going from site to site unless the site's only really spread apart if
they're starting to quote you like 150 rupees which is roughly around 250 or
$2.00 then usually I've paid that for going to the airport I don't say flights
ballpark roughly around say $60 and up usually under under 200 but if you are
traveling during festival season then expect those place those prices to
inflate same thing with trains trains I pay maybe around once a 15 anywhere from
15 to 35 dollars and that's just for like a third-class train maybe even
second first-class I'm not sure I've never actually tried those trains
attractions can range depend on depending on where you go but I want to
say that a lot of attractions I would ballpark for around 200 rupees
so in the end I'm roughly paying or I'm budgeting for around 20 to 35 dollars a
day that's fairly inexpensive but for me stretched over like either a month
period or a three month period and that's not even adding in flights that
can add up so unfortunately this video was getting a little long and I don't
like my videos to drag on very long
there as well so tell that trouble see smart fun I will get you a burger with
you