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.

  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...

  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 ...

  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...

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...