South India 2015

As we began to plan our fourth trip to the subcontinent, we decided it was time to explore South India…

From Mumbai to Chennai via the southern tip of India: we visited Goa, some sites of Karnataka we had not seen before, toured the Western Ghats, got bored in Kerala before getting our fill of temples in Tamil Nadu.

Full map of all South India 2015 pages

Other Things

Thinking of our next destination: Italy and Portugal come to mind, or maybe the time has finally come for a US road trip…

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Travel Budget

(vero;2015-May-07)

We are always amazed how cheap travelling in India can be. If you look at our budget, the costs incurred in the country only amount to 31% of the total cost, and we managed on an average of 880 Rs (9£/13€) per day for the two of us. Amazing. Of course, we are quite low-budget travellers, looking for cheap hotels (mostly without WiFi), eating thalis or street snacks, purifying tap water, avoiding taxis and rickshaws and using ordinary buses or sleeper trains. And we do not drink any alcohol while on the road… But we don't have the feeling of missing much doing so: travelling cheap means better interaction with the locals, we visit all the sites we want, are well fed and do not mind when the hotel rooms are a bit grim.

Hotels: the two most expensive places on our itinerary were predictably Mumbai and Chennai. In Mumbai, we had a room near Victoria train station with AC and detached toilet (but attached shower) for 1675 Rs per night. In Chennai, we paid 783 Rs for an attached non-AC room in Egmore. While on the road (all rooms being non-AC and attached), we “splurged” once in Kumbakonam for 4 nights in a nice clean and big room at 700 Rs while most of the others were in the range of 400 to 500 Rs, our cheapest room being 300 Rs in Mamallapuram.
Food: our diet is very simple… Thalis and snacks, purified water and the occasional fizzy drink, no alcohol. Prices for an (unlimited) Thali (or “meal” as they say in South India) varied from 50 Rs to 80 Rs (that's 45 to 75 pence), the cheaper ones having often fewer curries or no sweets; most of them (more than 90%) were tasty and of good quality.
Entry Fees: they were a marginal item in our budget, mostly because all the great temples in Tamil Nadu are free of charge, same for the ones around Hassan in Karnataka. In Hampi, having already been there two years ago, we decided against paying for the Zenana and the Vittala temple: anyway, we are of the opinion that there are much nicer temples around Hampi than Vittala. And by chance, we happened to be in Mamallapuram on April 18th, the open day of UNESCO's world heritage sites: that meant that all sites in Mamallapuram were free, a nice piece of luck!

Actually, we could have done better on the overall total as the figure associated to the visas is inflated by the cost we incurred for travelling to London to apply for them: it snowed on the day we had our appointment and to be on the safe side, we decided to take the train (expensive — 80 £!) instead of driving to the outskirts of London and from there take the tube as was planned.

It is also worth mentioning that the price for the flights include the cost of getting to Heathrow and one hotel night at a Travelodge (we were scheduled for an early flight).

Want to read more? Go on to Karnataka 2015 or go up to Blog