Traveling in India

Planing with my friends today to visit Kochi, Kerala reminded me my trip to the North of India in few months ago.

Traveling in India is very easy

Why? Because you do not need to spend a lot money to travel around India. I spent just about 15,000 INR to travel many cities in the North India including everything in two weeks. My trip was started from Hyderabad, my current city, to New Delhi, the capital, then from Delhi we came to Haridwar – Rishikesh – Dehradun – McLedganj – Simla – Daramasala – Chamba – Pathankot and final stop was Amritsa before turning back to Delhi for taking a train to back Hyderabad. Everything is very cheap from transport, food, accommodation and entertainment, of course if you do not go to expensive restaurants to eat and five star hotels to stay. Let make a calculation of the transport during my trip to evidence

• Hyderabad – New Delhi: ≈ 800 INR by train, sleeper class
• New Delhi – Haridwar: ≈ 200 INR by train, sleeper class
• Haridwar – Rishikesh: ≈ 40 – 50 INR by bus
• Rishikesh – Deharahun: ≈ 60 INR by bus
• Deharahun – Simla ≈ 450 INR by bus
• Simla – McLeodganj: ≈ 250 – 300 INR by bus
• McLeodganj – Daramsala: ≈ 10 – 20 INR by local bus just in 9 km
• Daramsala – Chamba: ≈ 200 INR by bus
• Chamba – Pathakot: ≈ 100 INR by bus
• Pathakot – Amritsar: ≈ 70 INR by bus
• Amritsar – New Delhi: ≈ 450 INR by bus
• New Delhi – Hyderabad: ≈ 800 INR by train, sleeper class

Total budget for transport was about 3500 INR, ( = 62 USD ). How do you think ?

Traveling in India is very cheap

The hard thing to travel in India is the distance because India is very big. For example, I had to take the train in 26-27 hours from Hyderabad to New Delhi and it was the fast train. For the others with lower speed, it takes almost 30 hours. It was also the first time that I spent over a day in train to travel. Before that traveling in Vietnam, 6-7 hours in bus from Ho Chi Minh City to Dalat was already far for me. From HCMC to Nhatrang was over 8-9 hours, I seemed to be dying. And from HCMC to Hanoi, the distance would be same from Hyderbad to Delhi, going by plane was my only option. But in this trip, nowhere that i took to move from this city to another was under 10 hours except from Haridwar to Rishikesh and Rishikesh to Dehradun with about 3-4 hours. Therefore, my partner from the trip, Dirk and I chose to move almost at nights. This thing made us to be able to sleep on the train and bus, and also save money for the hotel as well.

Traveling in India is the valuable experience.

However, you would be very mad during the trip because of the poor condition. If you are not a budget traveler as us, you should use the train in AC class. Firstly, the railroad car there is cooler and organizer than in sleeper class. We traveled in April, the beginning of hot season, so the temperature was also very terrible. It would make you drink a lot of water during the train. Secondly, the sleeper is very crowded. India is one of the country with the big population in the world. With over 1.1 billions people living in India, there are over 50 % people are living in poverty. No doubt that it must be many people in cheaper classes. ( I will talk more about this issue in another post about transport in India). One more example is the Toilet. It would be extremely hard to find public toilet in India. And although you find it, it will be not sure that you want to use it or not…and even though the toilet is a little bit OK, you can not find toilet paper to use…( Indian people do not use paper ) … and though you have everything, maybe you will not use because it is Indian toilet style … My advice is that do not eat Indian food that you are not sure it is good and hygienic and carry your personal toilet paper all the time during your trip 😀

sleeper class

Traveling in India is the challenge

Remember the first post when I wrote about India, I already called it INCREDIBLE INDIA to start my story in India since last year up to now. It is very true to say that India is INCREDIBLE. I would have to take more than a year to visit all of beautiful places in India. Every places in India have their own different colors and tastes and you just feel it when you actually travel by living with them, not visiting and seeing. The North and the South of India is a difference. It is different from the small things as language, culture, religion, lifestyle, food and so on… For languages first, there are about over 300 different languages that Indian people are still using now. Hindi is the national language and English India is the second popular language in India. (I would like to use English India because it is not English what people learn…it is just English for only Indian I think. Because I could not understand what they are saying. However, it would be normal when they mix English with their own languages in talking as Singlish or Malaylish) Besides both of them, in different states of India, they are using different main languages. For my current city Hyderabad of Andhra Pradesh, Telugu is the main language here. And in Bangalore, they are using Tamil or in Kolkata with Bengali. So, every students and people they have to know Hindi or at least English. If they do not learn it, there would be a funny situation that two Indian people can not understand and communicate each other. Believe me, I have seen it not just once time in India.

huahuahua

For culture and religion, it would be a little bit difficult to see clearly because you can find many people are Hindu or Muslim, and they are living everywhere in India. And it is not different from this place to others. But you can find that variety easily when you visit Amritsar. Most of people living there are Sikh.

For lifestyle in different places, particularly in big cities such as Hyderabad and New Delhi (P.s in New Delhi there are two different locations Old Delhi and New One. In the Old Delhi, everything is very dirty, crowded with cows on the streets and not much different with other places. But in New Delhi, everything is different. It is clean and varied in general. In New Delhi or the North, the women and girls are more open and modern than ones in Hyderabad. In Hyderabad or the South, they always wear traditional cloths as Saree and Kurta dresses. Not many girls wearing western cloths and short skirts or long pants, trousers. Almost of them seems to wear traditional cloths all the time even if in the office. Maybe you just see it when you go to the bar at night or I can introduce you one my friend in Hyderabad, she is very modern and fashionable. Therefore, there is a joke I often told my friends that when I was in New Delhi, I remember that friend all the time, because everyone is beautiful and fashionable there. I did not see one, I saw a thousand of girls like her 😉

Traveling in India is the difference

To mention India, one day is not enough to let me tell you everything I have seen.To travel India, one year is also not enough to let me visit all of beautiful places in this country. India seems to be the country that you have to come once time in your life in order to discover this land. Then you will never regret and forget it. Something good, something bad, no matter what I LOVE TRAVELING IN INDIA.