10 days in India...Mumbai & then what??

Hi, everyone, my wife and I are visiting India in January and need some good advice. We are flying into and out of Mumbai for a 10 day trip. We'll be staying in Mumbai for 3 days, but I'm a little overwhelmed about how to flesh out the rest of our itinerary. We'd prefer to stay off the beaten tourist path. We're primarily interested in the regional cuisines of India, art & architecture, and simply experiencing the culture & people of India without being inundated by tourists. We won't be renting a car but are willing to travel by train (preferably), bus, or plane. I realize 10 days is not much time, and we have no illusions about taking in the entire country in that amount of time. I'd love to hear suggestions about a couple of more destinations in addition to Mumbai where we could get interesting indigenous food and get a better appreciation of the country. Thanks in advance!

Kerala. Great food, good beaches, hill stations colonial cities. Since you don't have a lot of days, I would suggest flying down there. Check out Kochi, Munnar, maybe a houseboat trip and perhaps a beach trip to Varkala.

I'm going to the USA for 10 days. I'll spend 3 days in Washington DC and then what should I do?

I'm afraid I really can't get my head around the idea of committing to an expensive trip to India without having even the foggiest idea of where you want to go.

I would suggest getting a couple of guidebooks and doing a quick read-up. You'll get more reliable results by skimming through Lonely Planet, Footprint, and DK Eyewitness Travel Guides than by asking a nebulous question on IndiaMike. Here on IndiaMIke you'll get plenty of opinions: but most tourists will simply recommend what they've done themselves (which must be good, because they paid so much to do it); locals will recommend either their own home turf (because it's their own home turf) or somewhere in India where they themselves were tourists (which must be good, because they paid so much to do it).

To your credit, you've tried to help us in doing your work for you by suggesting parameters. But a desire for food, a&a, and culture-no-tourists isn't in the end that much help – everyone wants that.

The place where IndiaMike can really help is in refining an itinerary you've worked out for yourself. Expect to be told you've chosen to try to do far too much in far too little time. Expect to be told that travel in India is difficult and slow – think 30mph/50kph by car, long downtime getting to train stations and coping with crowds, worse downtime with airports but less tumultuous crowding.

Also expect to be welcomed to IndiaMike (as I do now) and wished a happy trip (as I do now). Good luck.

Thanks for the advice, and I apologize for not being more specific regarding our itinerary. I have actually read a handful of guidebooks, but there seem to be so many inviting choices that it's overwhelming. After our days in Mumbai, we are considering spending a couple of days in Pune or Aurangabad (traveling by rail), and then spending a few days in Kerala (traveling by air to Kochi due to our limited time). If that itinerary is too ambitious, we could simply eliminate that Aurangabad portion of the trip and focus solely on Mumbai and Kerala. So, trying to narrow down what I'm asking, let me try the following questions:
1. Aside from the nearby caves, should Aurangabad warrant a visit for two or three days?
2. Is Kerala overrun with visitors during the time of our visit (mid-January)?
3. In addition to Kochi, are there any recommended foodie destinations in Kerala?
4. Should we purchase airline tickets from Mumbai to Kochi before we go to India, or once we are there?

Thanks once again for the advice.

Aha, so you do understand. Welcome to Inja.

We haven't yet been to Pune – we'll be there early next year – so can't comment on it knowledgeably. Have the impression that there are some interesting buildings, and there are temples of consequence on Parvati Hill. Don't know about the food, wonder whether Pune is an essential destination for a first trip to India.

As to your questions –
1. Aside from the nearby caves, should Aurangabad warrant a visit for two or three days?

We went to Aiurangabad for the Ellora Caves. Did a pretty thorough job in one day, drove to Ajanta Caves, with a stop at Daulatabad Fort, the second day, got to see the Ajanta Caves in the late afternoon light, then again in the morning light the next day. Did some clean-up work photographing Ellora caves that afternoon, then away after three days.

Found the experience of Ajanta to be better than Ellora – much more interesting site, far fewer tourists (though still busybusy). On the whole we like the caves better, though there's a far greater range of architecture at Ellora. Note that the famous painted caves at Ajanta, with intact murals barely surviving, are being reproduced in ersatz mock-ups (ā la Lescaux),and you may be required to visit those rather than the originals by the time you get there. But that still leaves you about a gazillion unpainted rock-cut cave temples to visit.

We'd recommend such a trip, except that it means that a third of your time in India will be spent visiting (chiefly) Buddhist cave temples.

2. Is Kerala overrun with visitors during the time of our visit (mid-January)?

Depends on where you go. Beaches will attract tourists. But if you stay in Fort Cochin, you shouldn't see more than one tour bus and few few independent tourists.

3. In addition to Kochi, are there any recommended foodie destinations in Kerala?

How much travelling do you mean to do in pursuit of food? And how rarefied does the food have to be? I don't know what your exposure to Indian food is, but I found all the food of South India to be unfamiliar and surprising. Any streetcorner dhaba (greasy spoon) can provide something to amaze your pallet. Why exhaust yourself running all over the country when you can slow down and eat the roses right here?

4. Should we purchase airline tickets from Mumbai to Kochi before we go to India, or once we are there?

Others will have to chime in here. We always arrange our entire itinerary through an office in Delhi and let them attend to the bothersome nitty-gritty of getting airline tickets. I would caution, though, that you might have trouble booking to a popular destination unless you do so well in advance.

This is a rather recent thread covering Mumbai and Aurangabad, containing several links Ajanta-Ellora-Mumbai from Kolkata in December 2012

For backwater activities in Kochi there are tours organized by the tourist organisation. For house-boats it is better to go to nearby Alleppey.

We did sometimes take a domestic flight, most of the times we want to be sure and bought the ticket on-line, a simple process. On some other occasions there were tickets available for the next day.

Trains tickets is another issue.
If your only train is Mumbai Aurangabad, see here, on train 17057 are two tickets reserved for foreigners. You have a good chance to get them when you are in Mumbai.

In all other case you must reserve these tickets, for details see http://www.indiamike.com/india/india...012-a-t165379/

I think you're being way too ambitious. Yes, you could do Aurangabad in two full days, but the RT train trip is going to eat up the better part of two more days (though I suppose you could do an overnight train IF you sleep well on trains). I'd suggest focusing on Kerala, since there isn't enough to do in Aurangabad for nine days. (And no, hfot2, I'm not promoting Kerala because I spent too much money there-I've traveled most of India over the decades and I do so independently and on a budget--I selected Kerala because it seemed to meet all of the OP's needs, with a special emphasis on food. No need for snarkiness on this forum).

Aurangabad is one of my favourite cities in India it just has a nice quiet ambiance about it..You could tack this onto a visit to Madhya Pradesh, in places like Mandu, Maheshwar and Ohmkareshwar, Gujarat, Ahmedabad, Patan Taranga Jain Temples and Modhera, with maybe the bird Park at Nal Sarovar. Or even Southern Rajasthen, Udaipur, Bundi, Chittor and Kumbhalgarh-Ranakpur..
Donīt be too concerned about tourism itīs a often vented idea that somehow anywhere there are tourists, that the destination is somehow obscured by this. Not always, follow your nose away from the tourists, and find a local eatery or chai shop and just people watch, itīs facinating.
Most of the places I mentioned above with the exception of Udiapur donīt have a huge flow of tourists anyway but there will be some. Just donīt get hung up on this.
Great food in many of these places too.....

The tourist advice is a good piece of advice, Klompen. For the most part, you'll be running into Indian tourists vs Western tourists. The big exception to this rule would be in the Golden Triangle and at certain beach resorts but, as stated above, it's pretty easy to dodge the beaten path by simply wandering a few blocks.

Nor hypersensitivity either. Why do you necessarily feel that my caution was directed at you? Do you feel you fit the category of "most tourists?"

I was simply trying to suggest to the OP that advice on this forum often comes from people with limited perspectives. This should not be surprising, since India is too big for any one person to take in the whole. Better, I think, that a newbie should have a good look at the available literature to work up a first approximation of an itinerary than to rely on the chance suggestions of whoever happens to notice the thread and reply.

Who are you accusing of limited experience

Point taken. I guess I felt that the comment was directed at me since I was the only one who had posted specifics prior to your post. "Most tourists?".....when that day comes, I'll stop traveling!

Ah, peace, perfect peace!

I can see why you might have thought I meant to slight you, from the sequence of posts. But I would never slight anyone whose avatar is a VW van just like the one we traveled in for so long. Kept it going even after I lent it to someone in the office, who rolled it and deeply stove in the roof. Eventually rainwater pooled up in the dents and rusted through. Solved the problem by inverting an enormous fiberglass rowboat atop the van - only used the rowboat during sunny weather. It was all marvelously ad hoc - kind of a foreshadowing of India, really.

Still got two buses in my garage, including the avatar and, like India, never sure what to expect when I take 'em for a spin, but it's most always a different kind of adventure. Spent a few weeks in VT several years back and it felt like I never left OR. Mountains, trees and microbrews, what more do you need?