800 rupees a day - possible or not?

spitze_udz

These options work only when you are going to stay at one place for more than a month's time, not for tourists..

phantom

Relax spitze..!!
first read my post carefully and then comment.

cyberhippie

800 Rps a day will be fine! My wife and I are averaging about 900 a day here in Palolem, which isn't the cheapest place in India, this includes our accomodation 150 Rps, A scooter on hire 125 Rps brekkie usually costs around 50 Rps, Lunch 100 and a touristy meal of chicken or fish around 250 Rps (including a couple of soft drinks) with water and cold drinks at around 80 Rps that still leaves a bit for a beer or whatever.
So 800 Rps a day for a single person travelling in India is sufficient, even taking travel into account!!!!
If you really get into living India stylee you'll find life in India is very cheap indeed here's an idea of what can be done!!!
Room 100Rps
Breakfast (puri bhaji, idli sambar and chai) 20 Rps
Lunch (a couple of samosas or masala dosa and chai) 20 Rps
Dinner (Thali, or meal and tea) 30 Rps
An Orange juice 10 Rps
2 litres water 20 Rps
A kilo of oranges or a pinapple 10-15 Rps

A grand total of 215 Rps
Travel wise 200 Rps will take you a long way on either bus or train like around 200 kms on a sleeper rain much more on a local bus!!
This may sound a bit austere but living like this can be a great way to get connected with the Indian way of life, and splashing out now and again really wont dent your budget too much!!
Getting used to spicy breakfasts (clears the passages wonderfully, a chilli breakfast) may well be the most difficult thing about sticking to a basic budget such as the one above, get used to eating Indian food and a whole new way of traveling India opens up for the individual!!!

Anyway have fun

Happy Traveling

machadinha

To follow up on a couple of things on this thread, rest assured I'll think of others :

As some people have noted traveling on a tight budget (and it's not looking like you will be mind you) can leave you a little overly sensitive to financial affairs. If you've been saving on accommodation you might want to treat yourself to a fancier place with a pool and a bar every now and then, it will be a bargain for Western standards. btw A double or more-person room will always be a lot more economical so if there's more of you so much the better.

About multiplying the costs I mentioned, that seems sensible yes; it's only some things that have gone up though, mostly hotels and entry fees. Many of cyberhippies' prices quoted just above here for anything else are just about what they used to be. A note about restaurants and many people will not agree with me, but at the fancier places you'll often find yourself paying for the stuffiness and the lack of ambiance, with a few good exceptions I never really saw the deal. And yes "western" breakfasts (often failed attempts at omelettes and toast or soggy cornflakes because we seem to expect them to be served in cooked milk) will be more costly and often less tasty by comparison. (see http://www.indiamike.com/photopost/s...cat/all/page/1 for a nice example, it's not *that* bad actually )

Train travel: don't forget about the buses too, state-owned incredibly cheap, more upmarket touring cars extremely affordable and they go just about everywhere, often easier to book too and/or faster travel if you're in a hurry. For lengthier journeys trains are obviously more comfortable.

Elephants: I don't know what your plans are precisely but a good read might be Mark Shand's *Travels on my Elephant* and its followups (see http://www.alibris.com/search/books/.../Shand,%20Mark ), and Tarquin Hall's *To the Elephant Graveyard* http://www.highlandco.org/BookReviews/elephant.html

As for covering the whole country in 2-3 months, it's more like a continent so it depends. You can see a lot in that time. I sort of ran around the perimeter in 3.5 months, the original plan had been 6 so it took a little compression so to speak. The Dutch author Hans Plomp (don't know if he's been translated) has been covering the country for many years and usually goes one state at a time. I mean there's just no end to it.

Cheers...

__________________
Reading tips, all picked up at IndiaMike : INDAX's A Comprehensive Guide To India / Dinoj Surendran's Desi Humor / ITHVC on Culture Shock & Travel Health / JetLag Travel Guides For the Undiscerning Traveller / India Travel Links

Sonomama

I picked out three days from my record to give you a rough idea about how much money you will need in India. There are a few things to note.

1. We (this is for two people, me and my friend) are two middle-aged Japanese women who have no intention of impressing people by "how we can live like an Indian" or with our bargaining ability, which means the money we spent was enough for us to spend time in South India comfortably without making too much effort to be thrifty.
2. We don't smoke or drink, and don't shop around while we travel.
3. We stayed at middle-class hotels ranging Rs700 to Rs1200 (we didn't make a payment to the hotel during these three days so it's not in this table).

So you may spend more (for beer, clubs, shopping etc.) or less (you can stay at a nice guesthouse for, say, Rs100) than what we spent. This is just a point in statistics to show you Rs800 is enough for you.

1/11 Sun Mysore

breakfast 143
taxi hired for the day 1500
shoe deposit at Halebid 2
parking 20
lunch 85
dinner at a rooftop restaurant 300 incl. tip

Subtotal 2050

1/12 Mon Mysore
breakfast 55 incl.tip
mineral water 24 12x2
lunch at RRR 79
tea at President hotel 70 Rs2 tip
auto 10
entrance fee to the Art Gallery 30 15x2
movie 80 40x2
dinner at Parklane 240 incl. tip

Subtotal 588

1/13 Tue Mysore/Calicut
breakfast 100 Rs2 tip
Internet 20 30 min.
lunch at the bus depot 30
bus tickets to Calicut 180 90x2
auto 7
baksheesh 2
tip to bellboy 10

Subtotal 349

swoon

Again, thank you everyone for such detailed information

Cyberhippie - I love spicy - bring it on! But maybe not first thing, though Thank you for your list - it's much appreciated.

Machadinha - No 'western' anything for me when abroad! But it would be lovely to float around in a swimming pool once or twice... I had a brief snoop at the books you suggested - thank you again - I'll be making a few trips to the bookstore About getting around, I'd like to take the trains (I admit, saw something about it in Michael Palin's world trek, and imagined myself there) but I hadn't thought about hiring a private car.

Sonomama - What a great list! Super-detailed and better information than I could've hoped for! The hotel fees you mentioned - was that for the three of you sharing a room? I was hoping to do 800 INR per day including all lodging, food, etc...

Sonomama

Every price is shared by TWO. For example, on January 13 we spent Rs349 and about Rs800 for hotel, so it's Rs1149 for two of us, which means less than Rs600 for each.

But hotels we stayed were all middle-range ones with twin beds and a bathroom. As other IMers have said, you can find nice enough guesthouses for a quarter of that price.

swoon

Cheers Sonomama!

vlad

how much is a beer?

rohan5577

Well the cost of the beer depends where you are buying and where you are drinking, and since you are from Canada and I recently moved out from Ottawa, I could say a few things:

1. A beer can cost anywhere from Rs 50- Rs 175 depending on where you are drinking. ( A local guy like me in Delhi used to even Drink by the sea-bed of the Yamuna with a bunch of freinds for Rs25, but suggest you don't do that)

2. The waiter will not ask you to tip him like they do in Canada at times, in a not so expensive palce, a Rs 15 tip will get you great service and that's less than 50 cents !!!

And the best part is in that you can find beer till at least 11 in the night at a beer store unlike the LCBO in Ontario ( IN hindi the liquor stores are called : Thekha's

Hope this helps.

Cheers!

Rohan

__________________
You can take a man out of India, but you can never take India out of a man!

vlad

thanx, it seems pretty expensive though - 800rs a day can't be enough if more than half of it is gonna go on booze (assuming you're buying to get wasted). so getting drunk off beer is not typical in india? well i guess not when you got weed everywhere

Ikuru

Hello there, nice eye.
500 rs will be more than enough really.
Ofcourse it depends what kind of traveller you are but I myself never spent more than 200 rs on a room. Often you will be able to get a Nice room (that is to say a bed, a window clean sheets etc. for less than 150 rs.
In Udaipur I had a amzing room, nice collors/bathtub/stained glass window and decent view for about 120 rs. In goa you will be better of getting a room in a famely house if you want to stay in this price range (still own door/window etc but toilet wwould be a bucket toilet outside the room).

Anyhow my best room has been a mudhut on the beach with a hamock inside.
Sometimes Basic is best. A clean matras is better than a "fancy" room with a telly and a toilet that stinks strange smells.

Most basic rooms go all the way down to 40 rs a night some places and then you get BASIC, but clean and safe is the two important things when travelling on a shoestring budget.

If the place you live in doestn feel all that safe (weak padlock etc) than you can stay there and put your stuff in a safe elswhere.

Normal food prices? You will be able to find NICE food anywhere from 30 rs to 150.
Five star meals range all the way up to maybe 600 rs. But that would be something like the michael Jackson hotel (taj mahal) in bombay.

Most places will serve you a really nice plate for 60 rs or less. Some places have really good street food for 15 rs. one Litre of mineral water about 15 rs, a nice fresh juice might be 20 rs a Kingfisher beer might be 50 rs and a small pack of local smokes (goldflake/foursquare) is about 20 i think.

So there you have it.
A train seccond class sleeper half way through the country will be less than 800 I think. All together cheap and nice and shant shanti.

Love your trip my man/woman

__________________
http://www.ikuru.se My art.

renedu

The 8.43 was Euros not dollars.

Goldrush77

I think that if you've never been to India before and are planning on travelling independently, it will be extremely difficult for you to accurately plan out a budget (although 800-1000/day should be doable) simply because you'll screw up so many little things that otherwise you would have saved money on. For instance, I know I'm not the only person to accidentally buy an AC train ticket without wanting to, and don't forget the torture that is arguing over auto fares (which can really eat into your budget if it's already so low). And I heartily reccomend having a separate budget for necessities (which you often can't control) and shopping (which you can). You'll probably spend much more your first month than your next two--and be extremely careful when you're jetlagged or otherwise burnt-out.

Don't keep your Tamil under your hat! Good lord, If I had said anything beyond 'amma' to people down there I think I would have had to help them up from the shock. Even most Indian people I met didn't speak a word of Tamil.

Urdu and Hindi are in practical terms the same language, aside from the script. It's only when you start trying to quote poetry or newspapers that you find differences. Of course, there are more than a few Hindi teachers that would argue pretty strongly against this, but then again, there are more than a few biased Hindi teachers.

Generally, if you ask politely, the vast majority of people will be happy to have you be a part of whatever it is their doing. Exceptions can include mosques and--since you're talking about painting elephants--South Indian temples (I've heard of many of them not allowing non-Hindus, and many more having extremely strict dress codes).

Of course, all of the general female-traveller caveats apply, and I would assume financially. I was not a female travelling, but I had great respect for those who did based on this--and I can assume the irritations extended into the financial as well.

Hope all this helps.

swoon

I'm thinking that I'm going to be missing my computer even more when I'm actually over there and won't really have you all to pester with questions. Yep, the simplest solution is for us all go en masse. Thanks very much for all your advice.

Ikuru: I'm going to try and stick to the 'basic is best' idea - I'm going to put my daydreams of being glamourous aside, and go for comfort, easy maintenance and low-hassle. But I plan to be able to buy special things (beaded saris and maybe some silver for my little jewellery design company) and don't want to worry that I'll have to go without food for a week! Great advice - thank you. And thanks, it's my eye - actually I have two of them and they're female

Goldrush77 - I will be going with two other girls, but you're right about the surprises - I don't know why, I hadn't even thought about the mistakes I'll make! In light of this very smart point, I will leave a contingency fund at home, and ask my parents to deposit it 'if and when' I need it - thanks for mentioning that. Will beef up on my few Tamil phrases and attempt to learn some Hindi while I'm at it - without meaning to sound 'funny', the times I've 'whipped out' a 'Vanakum - eppidee sugam?' to a Sri Lankan, I've gotten a double-take and a big grin. It's kind of a respect thing - to go somewhere and make the effort Good to know about asking to participate in events - I will take the advice of another IMer too - I'm going to find out what events are going on while I'm there and read up about them, then go to the priests/whomever and ask if I can help out. I will also take care to dress suitably.

Great, great suggestions - really tremendous - thank you