India Travel Guide: Money, eSIM & Culture

Do

• ✓Eat and pass items with your right hand — the left hand is reserved for hygiene and using it for food or greetings is genuinely impolite.
• ✓Remove shoes at temples, mosques, gurdwaras, and private homes — and cover your head at Sikh gurdwaras (scarves provided). Many temples also ban leather items.
• ✓Dress modestly — covered shoulders and knees for everyone outside beach zones; women may want a scarf for temples. Lightweight cotton beats revealing gear on comfort anyway.
• ✓Negotiate auto-rickshaw fares before boarding, or insist on the meter where they exist — or skip the negotiation entirely with Uber/Ola, which India runs on.
• ✓Drink only bottled or filtered water (check the seal), eat hot, freshly cooked food, and ease into street food via busy stalls with high turnover — they're busy for a reason.

Don’t

• ✗Don't use your left hand for eating, giving money, or shaking hands.
• ✗Don't show physical affection in public — even couples holding hands draws attention outside cosmopolitan areas; same-sex friends holding hands, conversely, is normal and platonic.
• ✗Don't point your feet at people, deities, or shrines, and don't touch anyone's head — feet are considered unclean, the head sacred.
• ✗Don't photograph people, ceremonies (especially cremations at Varanasi's ghats), or military sites without permission — at the burning ghats, cameras away entirely.
• ✗Don't accept tour, hotel, or 'official tourist office' redirections from helpful strangers at stations — the real government tourism offices don't recruit on platforms.

October to March is the golden window for most of India — dry, sunny, and comfortable across the plains, Rajasthan, and the south (December–January can be genuinely cold in Delhi and foggy enough to delay trains and flights). April to June is brutally hot (45°C+ in the northern plains) — this is when you head to the Himalayan hill stations instead (Ladakh's roads open June–September). The southwest monsoon sweeps June to September: Kerala and Goa turn lush and quiet, but transport disruptions are real. Festival timing cuts both ways — Diwali (Oct/Nov) and Holi (March) are spectacular but booked solid.

Nearly all visitors — including US, UK, EU, and Australian passport holders — need a visa, and the e-Visa is the standard route: apply at the official indianvisaonline.gov.in (beware lookalike scam sites that charge double), at least 4–7 days before travel. The 30-day double-entry e-Tourist visa runs ~$25, the 1-year multiple-entry ~$40, and the 5-year ~$80. You'll need a passport photo and passport scan; approval comes by email and is verified on arrival at e-Visa-enabled airports. Japan and a handful of countries get visa-on-arrival; check current rules before booking.

India's headline risks for visitors are mundane: traffic (cross roads with locals, never assume right of way), food and water hygiene (bottled water with sealed caps, hot fresh food), and scams rather than crime. Violent crime against tourists is rare. Women travelers should take standard precautions amplified — modest dress, pre-booked transport at night (Uber/Ola with shared trip status), women-only train carriages and metro cars where offered. Air quality in Delhi and the northern plains is seriously poor November–January; sensitive travelers should pack masks. Emergency number: 112.

• Backpacker: $20–$35 USD per day
• Mid-range: $40–$80 USD per day
• Luxury: $150+ USD per day

Backpacker assumes guesthouses, thali meals and street food, sleeper-class trains, and rickshaws. Mid-range covers solid 3-star hotels, restaurant meals, AC train classes or domestic flights, and a private driver day or two. Luxury in India over-delivers — former palaces in Rajasthan cost what chain hotels cost elsewhere. Mumbai, Delhi, and Goa in season run well above the baseline.

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