[chinaphotographer]

Can anyone please suggest the best India guidebook for budget travelers? Lonely Planet has gone WAY too middle/upperclass for me as far as hotels. I need a guidebook that lists the cheapest guesthouses and youth hostels. Suggestions?
And/or is there an online list of the least exepensive lodging in cities across India?
Thank you,
Tom Carter

[indiaprof]

Chinaphotographer,

The days of dirt-cheap budget travel in India are winding down, I fear, unless you're really prepared to dig. Also, the hotel situation on the ground is changing rapidly - too rapidly for the guidebooks to keep up.

For super-cheap travel, you'll be thrown back on the kinds of hotels and hostels that serve Indian workers, and on the last few hold-outs of the glory days of Indian travel. Unfortnately, there are no guides exclusively geared toward this world. Also, some very low-end hotels don't take foreigners - not that they don't want to, it's that they don't have the "C" forms that foreigners need to fill out whenever they stay at a hotel in India. Still, sometimes you'll find a budget lodge operator willing to turn a blind eye and let you stay for the night.

The simple fact is that if you can find anything under Rs. 300 anywhere in India, you're doing very well. That used to be the norm - but now that's very much at the low end. If you drop below Rs. 200, you will see frightening things you can tell your grandchildren about. I can vouch for this, being a penny-pincher myself. We're talking super-nasty, disgusting, itchy. The last time I spend less than Rs. 200 for a room, my wife quite literally screamed when she saw it, and she's not at all squeamish. It was horrible. It smelled like some poor backpacker had died in there after an over-dose. The sheets smelled like vomit, Guiness, and sweat. Probably the cheapest nights you'll have in India are those spent on the train.

[machadinha]

Originally Posted by abracax

Does anyone know of any good up-to-date guidebooks about India published in India by Indians?

(Emphasis mine.) They've been mentioned as an aside on this thread but a long time ago & without any URL's, anyway these series come recommended by many -- never tried either, hope to soon:

Outlook Traveller.
Eicher.

[chinaphotographer]

Originally Posted by indiaprof

Chinaphotographer,

The days of dirt-cheap budget travel in India are winding down, I fear, unless you're really prepared to dig. Also, the hotel situation on the ground is changing rapidly - too rapidly for the guidebooks to keep up.

For super-cheap travel, you'll be thrown back on the kinds of hotels and hostels that serve Indian workers, and on the last few hold-outs of the glory days of Indian travel. Unfortnately, there are no guides exclusively geared toward this world. Also, some very low-end hotels don't take foreigners - not that they don't want to, it's that they don't have the "C" forms that foreigners need to fill out whenever they stay at a hotel in India. Still, sometimes you'll find a budget lodge operator willing to turn a blind eye and let you stay for the night.

The simple fact is that if you can find anything under Rs. 300 anywhere in India, you're doing very well. That used to be the norm - but now that's very much at the low end. If you drop below Rs. 200, you will see frightening things you can tell your grandchildren about. I can vouch for this, being a penny-pincher myself. We're talking super-nasty, disgusting, itchy. The last time I spend less than Rs. 200 for a room, my wife quite literally screamed when she saw it, and she's not at all squeamish. It was horrible. It smelled like some poor backpacker had died in there after an over-dose. The sheets smelled like vomit, Guiness, and sweat. Probably the cheapest nights you'll have in India are those spent on the train.

Thank you.

[chinaphotographer]

Originally Posted by machadinha

(Emphasis mine.) They've been mentioned as an aside on this thread but a long time ago & without any URL's, anyway these series come recommended by many -- never tried either, hope to soon:

Outlook Traveller.
Eicher.

Thank you.

[palerider]

Going off season is still a viable cut price option. Less tourists, less people in all, and much cheaper accommodation.

The down side is that a few places have become touristy, so they virtually close down.

I prefer this , but a lot of people like to hang with other western people when they travel. It's not my number one priority, so for me , it's great.

Last year, I got rooms in South India, for a lot less than 200 rupees. But like Prof, says, it's becoming a rarity.

[gurupaulj]

I've just bought the (just published)new edition of the Lonely Planet guide to India and INDIA MIKE is recommended as a web based resource, didn't see it mentioned in the last edition-credit where credit's due!!

[machadinha]

Oh, that's very nice; I'd missed it in their previous edition yes

[Nick-H]

gurupaulj... Commented on your post in this thread: -->


here

[PeakXV]

India guidebooks should be required to submit transcripts to Indiamike for content editing before be allowed to grace the bookstore & ecommerce shelves.

[unclelach]

After several weeks in India I've reached Pune and the vicinity of the Osho Ashram in particular. Haven't yet seen anybody use a guide book round here. Could it be uncool or not hip to use a guide? Maybe the travellers here feel they have reached their destination.

[thirdreel]

Originally Posted by unclelach

After several weeks in India I've reached Pune and the vicinity of the Osho Ashram in particular. Haven't yet seen anybody use a guide book round here. Could it be uncool or not hip to use a guide? Maybe the travellers here feel they have reached their destination.

Maybe. If you're going specifically to an ashram for an extended stay, you don't really need a guidebook.

But your question makes me kind of glad that after a couple weeks in India, I realized I didn't care if I was hip. I didn't want to one-up the backpackers who bragged about just how hardcore light they traveled.

I've been thinking a lot about the phrase "First-World Problems" and--while I realize it can be unreasonably dismissive to tell someone that they have no real problems--I can't help but think it's a little bit petty, when in the midst of homelessness, famine, exploitation and disease, to worry, "Does my Lonely Planet make me look bougie?"

On Dasaswamedh Road in Varanasi, I stopped at an enticing-looking sweet shop, then as I sat to enjoy a chai and burfi, realized that I recognized the name "The Madhur Milan Cafe" from the Rough Guide. I took the guidebook out to look it up, and a few minutes later, the waiter asked if he could look at it. He took it to the cook, and they both pointed at the page and chattered, then he brought it back to me and pointed to their entry. "That's US," he said. "That's this place. We're in the book." He gave me some business cards and asked me to recommend their shop to my friends. (Which I will right now.) Just seeing the pride they took that their shop was in a book, in English, one that people around the world bring with them to Varanasi, was worth any potential unhipness.

[machadinha]

It's a nice description, Thirdreel.

Reminds me of earlier this year in Dhar when the very friendly hotel keeper couldn't help but going on about how nice it was to have someone from the developed world stay there.

No little to my shame, of course, but, well, you'll get the idea (here's me paying, what, Rs. 300-400 for the room btw, and a really excellent one I might add, mind).

(And, but, yes, and very simply, in all our snottiness we may forget what just a favorable mention, and to anyone, may mean to many of these people doing their godawful best. Of course they're ff'ing proud to see that, wouldn't you be working in a hotel or eatery or so? Apart from the direct business of making a living, that's what you do it all for, right.

I mean cooks and restaurant and hotel owners where I live would commit murder to get a Michelin star.)

[unclelach]

thirdreel and machadinha, your posts are really thoughtful, thank you both.

At the risk of making much ado about nothing, my post arose partly from recalling an occasion I'd mentioned to another older person, a lady, that I had been offered marijuana on the street in Delhi's Paharganj and at the time felt mildly flattered though not a smoker of any substance. My friend suggested I "may have felt hip even", to which I agreed.

A more immediate prompt was the hippie appearance of many patrons of Pune's excellent German Bakery.

[machadinha]

They're equally funny observations, UncleLach. I think we're speaking along the same lines.

For that matter, I had to laugh at your

Originally Posted by unclelach

Maybe the travellers here feel they have reached their destination.

That might just be it yes (Come to think of it now and on a more serious note, I guess staying somewhere for longer like people might here, there'd be less reason to carry the guidebook everywhere. I think I tend to read it in my room then leave it there if I can help it anyway; it is indeed heavy, isn't it. Though walking lost the moment you do without that one little map on p. 936 is of course far from unthinkable.

I suppose a xerox shop would come in handy here; for some reason I never did solve it that way though. Hm. Note to self, perhaps. Possibly more detailed free tourist office maps if available [or with some luck your hotel might have something for you, of course] are also always a good thing, of course.)