DesiTraveller

  Our new Tata Nexon Prime EV, with just about 53 kilometres on the odo, is almost here. Barring the registration and the plates and the FasTag and rest of the documentation, we should be ready to roll across India soon. One recharge at a time. Why the Prime? Frankly, the driving dynamics are better than the Max, for us. And we like to go slow and easy.  Why the Tata Nexon? Well, we always wanted one, and no better time than now. Keep watching this blog for more.

  At the oldest and newest and best bespoke 5 star hotels in India, the word is out - the era of the wealthy Indian tourist in India is truly here. Just about a week ago, I was staying at the best hotel in Kolkata, not one of the new pretenders or the old relics, but one with lineage as well as class, not to mention style. The breakfast buffet is amongst the most opulent I have seen, and they also have, in addition, a separate card for South Indian filter coffees and yet another card for freshly cooked Indian breakfasts from different parts of the country. And yes, Eggs Benedict, with double proper pork ham is what I found on the card too. The evening before, we were parked at their bar, exercising our elbows. And there also, the finger foods served were from the best of Indian options, with a huge range of Indian origin spirits and beverages. Unlike in the past, when I had stayed at this grand old hotel, however - there was one huge change. There were no foreigners in the bar and ...

  A wee bit off-topic but relevant all the same? A year or so ago, I withdrew my booking for a new car just short of the time of purchase, because the dealer staff referred to their stockyard as “dump”. It starts from there. Are you looking at buying a new car? Insist on going to see their stockyard first. Amongst all the mass purchase car brands in India, the only one that came anywhere close to being acceptable for me was Toyota, and they are not one of the biggest sellers of cars in India - as yet. But more than the condition of the dealer or manufacturer stockyard, is the way they treat the new vehicles there, and it is not as though they can not do better. I have seen the condition in which the same cars are loaded on Pure Car Carrier ships and trains meant for export shipments, and why they can not do the same for the domestic market is beyond me. There are customers like me who shall willingly pay extra for a new car to be treated better when in transit. Buying a new car is ...

 Do you need to travel by train suddenly, for a holiday or otherwise, but are daunted by the huge waiting lists that are increasingly common as the holiday and festival winter season draws nearer? Well, keep your bags packed, and be ready to travel as short notice. Not only are there going to be a large number of "festival special" trains, some have already been declared and can also be spotted on the booking websites, but there are often "special trains" declared on some routes at short notice. One way to do this is to keep looking for options on the booking websites, for your preferred routes, with the "Flexible with Date" option ticked. Another option that works very often is the quotas being released 4 hours before the train opted for departs from origin railway station or en-route charting station. Either which way, it is always good to check up on the booking websites about 4 hours before departure, as trains often open up with seats and berths avail...

  People in the trade are already talking about a surge of inbound tourism to India this winter of 2022/2023. The impending fuel shortage in Europe as well as rising inflation makes it not just cold but also unhealthy to hang around there. Likewise, there is the expected rush of ex-pat Indians from abroad, whether NRI, OCI or foreign born confused desis, running away from the recession that is staring them in the face. They too will arrive on Indian shores. Whether long-stay or short, foreigners or OCIs or NRIs, all of them will need some amount of tourism facilities. From fancy expensive hotels in Metro cities to home-stays in rural parts of the country. And for once, we appear to be ready as a country, for this influx. Today, for example, we have international gateway airports in India that provide direct bus services to the interior parts of India, Delhi to Punjab, Bengaluru to everywhere in Karnataka, Hyderabad to different parts of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh are some example...

  It is not unknown for differential pricing to be used as a means of ensuring that resident Citizens are not charged for subsidised benefits used by Foreigners. A huge example is public transport, which globally is subsidised for Citizens as a larger social benefit, but in India especially in context with road transport is often used as a revenue generator. To start with, I simply do not understand why Foreigners pay the same train fare as Indians, in India, on Indian Railways, and why they should not be charged double, or even more -- as is often the case in many parts of Europe when you look at train fares online. Most certainly the British, at the very least, should be made to pay a huge surcharge if they use our train, for all the money they took out of India. Especially if they continue to go on yapping about the misbegotten "glories" of the Raj. We were their slaves, as the movie RRR has shown so well, and it is now time for them to start paying back. All 47 trillion d...

  Want to drive all over India? FasTag will track whatever motor vehicle you are in (unless you are from the VVIP/VIP categories, which is certainly something that needs to be re-considered. Want to travel by train in India? Reserving online and often across the counter requires some form of identification or the other and then once onboard, yes, you do have to prove your identity  Want to fly across India? Most certainly a digital trail, from booking the ticket through to check-in and often even when making an exit, will track you. Need to withdraw cash or make payments? Unless you carry wads of cash, which shall get you stopped at various checkpoints, or exchange gold for cash (again, very risky) you just left tracks as bright as spotlamps. Have to check into any sort of hotel, guest house, paying guest accomodation? Be prepared to enter and provide a copy of some form of digital ID that will be placed in multiple data-bases. Taking fuel at a filling station? Some have start...

  There has been a huge change for the better with tourist guides across India. I say this with confidence because decades of domestic travel which began with avoiding tourist guides in the early years to a total respect for the tourist guides I come across all over India is a personal anecdotal experience, backed by inputs from other travellers, and something which, in my humble opinion, has not been documented or written about. One example out of many - at a particular temple complex in Peninsular India, over 1000 years old, my taxi driver is an elderly man from another religion. I am usually interested in seeing parking lots, especially paid parking lots, to get an idea of the environs. Not much tells you more about a new place than the paid parking lots, if you can spot the gambling, the pushers and the fake "receipts", you have made a start. So after parking the taxi, our driver asked me how much I knew about this particular temple complex, and I told him that, yes, I ha...

  Breakfast buffets at Indian hotels are probably the best means of sorting out what the F&B experience will be like at their other restaurants. Unlike with hotels in many countries abroad, the Indian breakfast buffet is usually largely vegetarian, with an egg and dosa counter, as well as a token display of cold cuts and sausages. Marked, usually, with an absence of pork. What are the points to look out for with a breakfast buffet in India? 1) Go for the pre-boiled eggs. Crack one open. The rest of the egg adventures will depend on the colour of the yolk inside and how fresh the egg tastes. If the boiled eggs served are lousy, then the rest of the breakfast is also, probably, a collection of lowest bids. 2) Check out the idlis. If they are fresh-steamed, plus points, but if they are lying sadly neglected in some sort of serving apparatus, then once again you realise that the typical Indian star hotel truly has not learnt anything from the many Indian vegetarian restaurants on t...

  This is probably the first and most important question that needs an answer, documented in writing, before even thinking of making a reservation. The second question which I am adding after an experience at a property owned by one of India's biggest hotel chains is - do you have silent generators or what? We are on a bit of a West Coast of India drive as I type this. Highways are mostly brilliant, except ghat sections which have borne the brunt of higher traffic and stronger monsoons, and toll booths which are a disgrace to everything we stand for in India in context with cleanliness and good behaviour. Toll booths will be a separate article, post, essay - on how the typical behaviour especially towards those without FasTags continues to be that of extortion based collections.  Almost all hotels in India make a sizeable part of their revenue out of functions of all sorts. From early morning through till pre-dawn, and so be it, which is probably why room rates and breakfast a...

Simple fact - in context with tourists from any country in the world - very few, if any, will admit to having been made a monkey of on an expensive trip to another country. This is a universal truth, and the reasons are not far to see - most do not know anything about the destination unless they have really researched the destination. In our context, whether inbound or outbound India, especially after paying out big fat visa fees. And if they have researched the destination well, then they will certainly have steered clear of all the relevant tourist traps, something many of us learnt early in life. For example, take coastal beach tourist towns anywhere in the world, and start from the restaurants which are right on the beach. Broadly, these can be defined as "greedy row", where everything is over-charged or watered-down or both. On the second street from the beach-front are usually the back-ends of the restaurants on the beach-facing row. Prices may be lower, but then also b...

  Destination weddings, or destination functions of any sort, are amongst the biggest evolutions of package tours without the tours. In most cases they comprise of taking a flight plus some other form of transport to a resort or a hotel, attending expensive choreographed functions, and then returning back to base. Getting wasted appears to be, often, one of the core objectives. Trying to imitate a random Hindi movie is another aspirational here. In almost all cases, all that this achieves is travel inside another tube, and food that tastes the same. In addition, your budget is likely to go totally out of shape on basics like drinking water and airport food, because those are not cheap. I have done a few destination weddings, in addition we also live in a second home sometimes in an Indian city which has a lot of destination weddings, so there is a wee bit of experience involved too. Destination weddings abroad are something else again. Here I try to tell readers how a good quality ...

  Contrary to most supercilious, patronising and condescending write-ups on domestic travel in India that many of us may have seen, I have yet to suffer a bad stomach due to food when on the road or in the trains, but then again there are simple basics to follow. Anywhere in the world, incidentally, and not just in India. I love meat. But Number 1 on my no-go list when travelling is meat. Non-vegetarian food, especially mince meat in any form, and especially highly spiced curries and kababs based on mystery meats, are by their very nature, suspect, globally, unless you see the meat with the bone attached prancing or swimming in front of you, or nearby. Anything that has been in transit, cold chain or not, and then stored, has a reasonable chance of being tainted.  I do not say this lightly - storing of food in freezers was amongst the most serious and important cross-domain functions going on ships. The engineers needed to ensure that the fridge rooms (all four or more) functi...

The traveler who has eyes to see occupies a world as fresh as the first day and just full of wonders.   Simple fact - there are many more Warrior Queens in India, not just the Rani of Jhansi, who took on the Mughal invaders and European Colonials that I did not know about till I got moving on budget travel all over India. The simple reason for this was that almost all of them hailed from smaller towns and cities in India when compared to the Metro Cities and barring a few, were simply not there in the larger public mindspace. So there I was, on my way by road from Pune to Belagavi (Belgaum) to Bengaluru. Every which way, one of the explanations for its name was and is "Village of Bamboos", and that's what got stuck in my mind. In addition to the fact that it is the Maratha Light Infantry Regimental Training Centre as well as the location for the Commando Training Centre - both of which are well worth the visit too.  Belagavi is one of those newer tourist destinations, whi...

  Online reviews of hotels, as found on a variety of travel and aggregator websites, are chancy at best and outright shaky at worst. By the way, this is global, so not India specific.  So what do you do if you are travelling on a budget and leaving hotel bookings for the end, like we often do, or have opted to travel suddenly? 1) Book a room for only one night. Extend if you like the place, otherwise go walkabout in the same town, and choose something else. We also very often sit in the lobby whilst one of us goes and checks the rooms on offer. Select what you like, not what they offer. 2) Call up the property before making a booking. Very often, the response and quality of answers, will tell you a lot more than the reviews put up online. And in this context, owner operated properties are often a better bet. 3) Use a credit card to make a booking. Specifically credit cards can give you the rights to ask for a reversal of charges towards  delinquency  in services rend...

  Very recently, I applied for a United Kingdoms tourist short-stay visa, was not supposed to be a big thing since I have been in and out of pretty much all of UK / Great Britain / Wales / Scotland / Ireland North and not North / Hong Kong and a few of the British Territories / Commonwealth / Tax Havens also. Every time there were options to stay back; every time there were good reasons for not wanting to stay back. At the same time, travel abroad does open ones eyes, and if one is observant as well as looking for the Truth - then there is so much history as well as science in travel. For me, navigation and astronomy were and still are important, as well as patterns in civil construction in older Houses of Religion which appear to be like open source repositories. For the curious. And that I am. Asking questions at the risk of sounding foolish? No issues. So anyways, by the time I submitted my UK Visa, and then applied to get my passport back, a lot of time had elapsed, almost two ...

The long, scenic and slow, way from Goa to Bengaluru. Article coming up, but don't do this if you are going to be in a hurry.  Just look at this route for a bit. Coastal, hills, rain, highways, a car slips sideways into a ditch, help comes by way of a 4WD and a tow-rope, and then at the end - traffic jams!

As the description says, this one will be about documenting and writing about domestic India travel by surface, aimed at a not higher than 5000/- rupees per couple per day all in effort - which is a reasonable number in this post-COVID world. Travel, board and lodging, with sight-seeing. We actually managed that last month, May 2022, Goa - Udupi - Coorg - Bengaluru. 5 days, 4 nights, driving a 9 year old WagonR.  And we've done it in the past too, though COVID put a bit of a gap in the proceedings. Both of us are in our mid-60s and so we also aim at a similar profile of readers, not in a very big hurry, and where the journey is also the best part. If you feel tired - stay another night! Every which way, if you are no longer fascinated by paying vast sums of money for doubtful holiday experiences abroad, then India awaits. The Indian tourist in India is the big focus for the smarter tourism industry - especially outside the larger cities, where real estate is still affordable. Our p...