Don't underestimate costs in India

  India is not an expensive country, but you must consider what type of lifestyle you are going to want whilst you are there. Yes, it is perfectly true that you can find a room, and eat, for less than five dollars a day in many places, but it will be Indian food and your room will be devoid of hot water, air-conditioning and, as for a TV – no way! Personally, I would feel awkward with less than U$10 a day, but quite happy with U$20. In 2004, for example, I took U$5,000 spending money on a six-month jaunt around South Asia. Admittedly, for most of that time, I staid in ordinary hotels without TV or AC, but I did go out almost every night and took half a dozen domestic flights to boot, at the end of which I only had a little money left over.

  In the coastal areas of Goa, there are none of the cheap and cheerful Indian restaurants you find elsewhere in India, and there are no cheap roadside eateries thereabouts either. I don’t know whether cheap Indian eateries in coastal Goa get threatened by other owners, or whether it’s pure market forces that make them raise the all the prices, but either way, you will not get a meal for fifty cents. On an over-tight budget, you may find yourself like some forlorn beggar: looking longingly at the spendthrift lifestyles of your compatriots. At sundown, whilst they are partying in some hip restaurant, you will be elsewhere, lingering the night away. It is best to have a free-spending good time for two months, rather than travel on a tight budget for three. 

  A good 750-ml. bottle of beer can cost U$1.75; a decent room with amenities will cost you U$10.00 a night in most places, so it is quite easy to blow U$25 a day. This is still very good value when compared to developed countries, but it is not as ridiculously cheap as some people would imagine. You cannot “live like a king” for a few dollars a day – sorry.

  Do not come to India with U$2000.00 for six months, that’s for sure. Some things in India are actually more expensive than in the West, per kilometre Indian flights are very costly, and phone calls are overpriced. It is usually cheaper to phone India, rather than phone from India. Ask the hotel you are staying in if you can receive a phone call there, then SMS or e-mail a time and number to those who wish to call. You might even want to leave some phone cards with your loved ones at home. One scam is for hotels to double or triple the price of your outgoing call to make more profit – which is yet more incentive to receive calls rather than make them. (At the time of writing, the type of call cards where you reveal a code and call a local number via which an international call can be made, do not seem to be available in India.)