Which is your favorite guide book?

indiamike

Which is your favorite guide book?

tracyprier

but probably just cause I am used to them. Back when I first started travelling there wasn't much else in the "budget" range of books apart from LP.

HOWEVER...

I am a firm believer that guidebooks are for reference ONLY and not to be used as some kind of glorified "trip-planner" to be followed religiously like some kind of treasure map.

I use them to point myself in the right direction and then make it up as I go along after that and actually DISCOVER stuff for myself.

(slight off-topic rant, apology in advance)

It amazes me to read some of the posts from the LP TT from people who want to know stuff like:

What hotel to stay in in Delhi (Jesus, there's hundreds of them, pick one!)

What a particular train journey costs down to the last rupee

and the brilliant... "I'm going to India, where should I go and what should I do and when and how often and what colour is it and what does it cost blah blah blah".

Hell, when I went to Nepal/India with a mate of mine neither of us new SOD ALL about either country, we just went and did it!

Sometimes I wonder if the WWW is a bit of a double-edged sword, it is FULL of useful information but then, is it too much information?

To me MOST of the fun of travel is the joy of learning things while you are there. I wonder if all this information is lessening our collective adventurism by telling us too much before we even leave home?

Anyway, sorry for the rant, it's Friday afternoon and I am sick of work and just felt like a bit of a rave.

Will be wheels-down in Delhi in 84 days, God that's a LONG time.

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edwardseco

Bravo Tracy!!

Midnite Toker

Having a majority of travellers never lifting their eyes from a thumbnail pressed into the crease of their guidebook is a bonus to people (like us?) who sometimes like to be different.
I'm not claiming it's "better" or "more authentic" this way, but the next-door restaurant can be empty, while the one in the guide (and we're talking LP) is crammed. The difference is even more marked in towns or villages not "on the route." Whoever goes to Ramanagaram in Karnataka? Or Champawat in Uttaranchal? Few, because they feature not at all in LP.

tracyprier, don't forget the other classic:
"Will I be able to call my husband/girlfriend/dog every day from India on my mobile phone?"

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Alan D

At the risk of boring you all shitless, in the good ole days (or were they the bad ole days?) of '66 there was nothing like LP, Rough Guide or Footprint. There probably was a Fodors but we weren't travelling in that price bracket.

We tended to rely on the other occasional travellers we met at train stations etc. Information was exchanged at a fast rate and we went on our separate ways, never to meet again.

Also the Government of India Tourist Offices quite often had a selection of phamphlets about places of interest, mainly designed for English speaking Indian tourists. We would grab a handful of these and then try to figure out the best way to visit them. In Tamilnadu this led us on a temple tour. I think we visited just about every important temple in the state. Mahabalipuram (as it then was) was a small village and the hotel we stayed at was, I think, the only one in town.

The backpacker set-up as it is now didn't exist. It was either small hotels that Indians used or the government chain of tourist bungalows, PWD rest houses or Dak bungalows.

When we returned to India in the mid -nineties everything had changed. There were hotels and restaurants catering solely for budget travellers and a lot more foreigners moving around the country.

I really don't want to knock this because in our 50's we were not nearly as adventurous as we had been in our 20's. We used LP, then Rough Guide and on our last visit, Footprint. At the same time we would depart from the usual tourist routes and check out places that only got a mention in the guide books. Sometimes we found places we liked. At other times we found ourselves thinking what the **** are we doing here and taking the next bus out. But that's the way it works.

Most people will stick to the circuit. That's inevitable and that's why the guide books exist but it's good to see that some of you are prepared to throw away your guide books and wing it.

Good travelling

abracax

"A Handbook to India, Pakistan, Burma & Ceylon" edited by Sir Arthur Lothian, 17th edition, published 1955. Priceless.

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indiamike

On my first visit to India I took one of those Frommer's guide books.

Describing New Delhi and I quote--

Obviously the author knows a part of Washington, D.C. that I am not familiar with.

The Frommers guide lacked on Hotels and I followed their advice and booked a Hotel in South Extension Part 1. After hours of trying to book the room, the manager finally told me to fax over the details. When I arrived at the hotel at three in the morning, they had booked my room but since I failed to tell them what time I was arriving it was not available. So my first experience of India was wandering the streets of South Extension at three in the morning trying to find a place to sleep.

Ahh...the memories.

Mike

Barry

Is it just me or is there something wrong with this thread?

Alan D

Don't exactly know what you mean Barry. Are you having technical problems or is it the actual content of the thread?

Midnite Toker

I want to come right out and say that I chose The Rough Guide, as no other option was close to my personal selection of guide book. I photocopied a swatch of RG pages before going on a trip once; aside from the daft hotel "price category" system they served me well.

But my book of choice is actually a bit more specific than an all-India guide, and I'm sad because its author, Hugh Swift, is no longer alive. The Trekkers' Guide To The Himalaya And Karakoram (now out of print), is a book which pointed me in the right direction many years ago. It contains detailed descriptions of routes in the mountains plus a wealth of advice on cultural interaction. It presumes that your understanding of the country will go on to develop once you put the book down and move around in India - something I don't see so much of in the LP guides.

Alan D: Barry is probably talking about the tiny hiccup yesterday whereby every page on the forum returned Mike's "about this site" info.
With respect to your last post, it's very true what you say. Either I'm getting more unapproachable as I get older, or today's travellers really don't interact very much. Like you, my experience way back was that travel advice was swapped around at staging points on the route. It seems to be rather "uncool" to ask a fellow traveller very much now.

Alan D

Sounds like you have a real collector's item there anonymous. Some things don't change. The Pudding Shop is still there in Istanbul and Century Lodge and the Snowman are still open for business in Freak Street Kathmandu.

vistet

I have a later edition of Swifts book ; it is priceless also in style. One of my favorite chapters is " A Himalayan Medical Primer" (Peter H Hackett, MD) which starts with a lets-not-get-carried-away- section and ends with a knowledgeable discussion of the practical problems in arranging high altitude funeral pyres...
For my current trip I have bought "Mapping the Tibetan World" which covers Sikkim, Ladakh, Tibet, Nepal , Bhutan , etc. This book shows the blank spots in the regular guidebooks - instead of leading me by hand from the ticketcounter to the bus it gives me a chance to understand more on what happens on the bus. Why did that woman stop to gather juniper branches, what is that stuff they are eating, why is there a horse on the prayer flag...

But there is a lot to be said for blank spots. Reading the map is in many ways the art of finding the nice blank spots to pitch the tent in. Now if I only could learn to read the guidebooks in the same way...

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paan wallah

namaste

the best thing in india is to never use a guidebook!
or maybe sometimes the little books or leaflets you get from tourist offices!
The best "guidebook" is to ask local people about nice places...with such informations you never get wrong,sometimes a bit lost but this is part of the game.
Second time I was in India I just stopped at places which funny names,got off the bus or train and adscha..good fun and experiences.
But on the other side I am very glad that people use guidebooks,sometimes I read them to know which places I have to avoid.
Let your heart be your guidebook.

tracyprier

If you have months in which to travel around India then yes, I do agree with Paan Wallah that local knowledge is great BUT...

For those of us who have actual committments back home and aren't able to bugger-off overseas for months at a time then guidebooks are a useful resourse.

As for avoiding places listed in guidebooks...to each their own Paan Wallah, but just so you know the Taj Mahal is a popular tourist spot for the simple reason that the Taj is ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE! and visiting it (this will be the 3rd time for me, 1st for my wife) is one of those things that will stay with me for life. We aren't going there for the touts and tourists, we're going there for the Taj.

I have nothing against the idea of visiting "unlistsed" places and if I had the time I would do it, trust me. But with just under 5 weeks in India I sure as heck won't be spending it hanging around some dusty little town that has bog-all to recommend it.

Travelmore

LP is good enough for me !!!

I agree with most of the above

A guide book should point you in the right direction BUT you have to do the walking!!!

It (a guide book) is (after all) only a GUIDE only!!