India Travel Guide: How to Plan a Trip, Region by Region

Planning a trip to India starts with choosing a region, because the country is too large and too varied to treat as one destination. India covers 3,287,263 km² (1,269,219 sq mi) across six loosely defined regions, and the difference between a Himalayan trek in Ladakh and a backwater houseboat in Kerala is the difference between two separate holidays. This guide covers the regions, the visa, how to get in and around, when to go, what to eat, what it costs and what to watch out for.

Rupee prices carry conversions at the rate of 11 September 2026, when €1 bought about ₹111 and $1 about ₹95.

India quick facts

The figures below are the ones you need before booking, and the population one has changed since most guides were written.

Size: 3,287,263 km² (1,269,219 sq mi), the seventh largest country in the world Population: about 1.47 billion in 2026. India passed China in 2023 and is now the world’s most populous country. The next census is being run for a 2027 reference date, so the detailed breakdowns still in circulation come from 2011 Capital: New Delhi Government: federal parliamentary democratic republic, 28 states and 8 union territories National days: Republic Day on 26 January, Independence Day on 15 August Time zone: Indian Standard Time, UTC+5:30, with no daylight saving Currency: Indian rupee (INR, ₹) Electricity: 230V, plug types C, D and M, which almost certainly do not match your devices, so pack a universal travel adapter Religion: freedom of religion, with no state religion. The 2011 census recorded 79.8% Hindu, 14.2% Muslim and 2.3% Christian, with Sikh, Buddhist, Jain and other communities making up the rest Languages: Hindi and English are the official languages of the union, and the constitution’s Eighth Schedule recognises 22 scheduled languages. More than 1,500 mother tongues were recorded in the last census. English is widely used in higher education, government and business Driving side: left, and an International Driving Permit is needed alongside your own licence Phone code: +91 Vaccinations: a yellow fever certificate is required if you have travelled through an at-risk country. Nothing else is compulsory, and diphtheria, hepatitis A, tetanus and typhoid are commonly advised Tap water: do not drink it. Some restaurants serve treated water; bottled is the safe default, and a LifeStraw personal water filter covers you where bottles are hard to find

The six regions of India

India’s states are usually grouped into six regions, and the grouping is a convenience rather than an official boundary. The 6 regions below are the practical way to plan, because each one has its own climate window, its own food and its own airport.

1. North India

North India holds the country’s two most-visited sights and its busiest gateway, so most first trips start here. The region takes in Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, plus the union territories of Delhi, Chandigarh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.

Agra in Uttar Pradesh has the Taj Mahal, the white marble tomb that functions as shorthand for the whole country. Rajasthan has the fort cities. Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand have the Himalayan hill stations and the trekking. Punjab has the Golden Temple at Amritsar and the food that most Western Indian restaurants are actually serving. Varanasi, on the Ganges in Uttar Pradesh, is the pilgrimage city.

Note that Jammu and Kashmir stopped being a state in 2019 and is now a union territory, with Ladakh administered separately. Security advice for both changes often, so check your own government’s current guidance before booking rather than relying on a guide.

The main cities are Delhi, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Lucknow and Amritsar.

2. West India

West India is the commercial half of the country and the beach half at the same time, covering Goa, Gujarat and Maharashtra. Mumbai generates a disproportionate share of national output and is the base of the Hindi film industry.

Goa is the primary seaside destination, with a coastline long enough to hold yoga retreats, party beaches and empty sand within an hour of each other, and a tropical climate that makes it a year-round option apart from the monsoon. Gujarat has Asiatic lions in Gir, Buddhist cave sites and, in Ahmedabad, the January kite festival. Maharashtra has the Ajanta and Ellora rock-cut caves, which are the region’s UNESCO sites and are worth more of your itinerary than they usually get.

The main cities are Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad and Surat.

3. South India

South India is the easier introduction to Indian travel, and it covers Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. The pace is slower, the transport works better and the temple architecture is older and less altered than in the north.

Tamil Nadu has the temple towns of Mahabalipuram, Madurai and Kanchipuram. Kerala has the backwater canals, the houseboats and the palm coast, plus national parks with elephants and tigers. Karnataka has the ruined Vijayanagara capital at Hampi. The cooking leans on cardamom, cinnamon, tamarind and coconut milk, which makes it fragrant rather than fiery and a reasonable place to start if you are cautious about heat.

The main cities are Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad.

Discover more about South India:

• 7 vegetarian restaurants in Hampi

4. East India

East India is the literary and tea corner of the country, covering Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal. Darjeeling, in the Himalayan foothills below Kangchenjunga, gives its name to the tea, and the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway that climbs to it has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1999.

Kolkata is the region’s capital and India’s third-largest urban area, after Mumbai and Delhi. It grew out of a British trading post established in 1690 and it is still the city with the strongest claim on Bengali literature, football and sweets. Rabindranath Tagore, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913, was from here.

The main cities are Kolkata, Patna, Bhubaneswar and Jamshedpur.

Discover more about East India:

• 10 things to do in Kolkata

5. Central India

Central India is the tiger region, covering Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Bandhavgarh and Kanha in Madhya Pradesh are the reserves most visitors have heard of and the most reliable places in the country to see a wild tiger, which is why safari operators concentrate here rather than in the north.

The region also has the Bhimbetka rock shelters, a UNESCO site where the painted caves record human occupation over tens of thousands of years, and the temples at Khajuraho. It is the least visited of the six regions by international travellers and the least developed, with forest, coal and mineral extraction driving the economy.

The main cities are Indore, Bhopal and Raipur.

6. Northeast India

Northeast India is the mountain corner beyond Bangladesh, covering Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura. It connects to the rest of the country through the Siliguri corridor, a strip of West Bengal territory around 22 km (13.7 mi) wide at its narrowest, and its culture owes as much to its neighbours as to the Indian mainstream.

Sikkim has Rumtek Monastery, the Yumthang valley, the alpine lake at Tsomgo and the sacred Gurudongmar further north. Meghalaya has the living root bridges and some of the wettest weather on earth around Cherrapunji. Several of these states require a permit for foreign visitors on top of your visa, which is the single most important planning point for the region.

The main cities are Guwahati, Shillong, Gangtok and Imphal.

Entry requirements and visas for India

Most visitors need a visa arranged before travelling, and the e-Visa is the usual route. Three e-Tourist Visa lengths are issued: 30 days, one year and five years. The 30-day version runs from your first arrival; the longer two run from the date of approval. Since December 2025 you can apply with an arrival date up to 120 days ahead, which is a change from the old 30-day application window.

Two constraints catch people. E-Visas are only valid for entry at designated airports and seaports, so an overland arrival needs a regular visa stamped in advance; no visa is issued at a land border. And your passport must have at least two blank pages and enough remaining validity, which for most nationalities means six months.

How to get to India

Flying is how almost everyone arrives, and India has four principal international gateways: Delhi in the north, Mumbai on the west coast, Chennai on the southeast coast and Bengaluru in the south. A growing list of smaller airports takes international flights, including Kolkata, Hyderabad, Kochi and Goa. You will be asked to show a printed or digital copy of your ticket and passport before you are allowed into the terminal building, which is not the case at most airports elsewhere. Compare flights and prices to India across the four gateways before fixing a route, because the domestic connection is often cheaper than the difference between them.

Overland entry is possible from Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Myanmar, always by road and always with a visa obtained in advance. The picture on rail and on the Pakistan border has changed and old guides have not caught up:

• Pakistan. The Attari-Wagah crossing was closed in April 2025 and cross-border rail has not run for years. The Samjhauta Express was suspended in 2019 and the Thar Express with it. Treat this border as shut.
• Bangladesh. The Maitree, Bandhan and Mitali Express trains have all been suspended since July 2024. Officials from both countries met in Dhaka in September 2026 to discuss restarting them, so this may change, but do not plan around a train that is not currently running. Road crossings and buses have continued.
• Nepal, Bhutan and Myanmar. Road only. Multiple crossings from Nepal, the Phuentsholing crossing for Bhutan, and a limited number of crossings into Myanmar’s northwest with their own permit requirements.

How to travel around India

Trains are the right default for long distances in India, and the network is one of the largest in the world with more than 7,000 stations. Overnight trains are more comfortable than overnight buses, and the class you book matters more than anything else about the journey, so read what each class actually gives you before you pay. Book sleeper berths well in advance.

Domestic flights are the fastest way to cover the country and the budget carriers are genuinely cheap. Buses go everywhere, need no advance booking and are sometimes the only option in the mountains, but night buses are worth avoiding where an alternative exists.

Self-drive car hire is available and rarely used, for good reason: road deaths run at roughly 168,000 a year, and pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists account for a large share of them. Most hire cars are also barred from leaving their home state without paying state taxes at the border. The normal arrangement is to hire a car with a driver, which most towns have agencies for. Get the terms in writing, including the sightseeing stops, who pays for fuel, and the driver’s meals and accommodation, because those are what get disputed at the end.

Best time to visit India

The cool, dry season from November to March is the general answer, and it is the wrong answer for the mountains. Across most of the country, November to March brings sunny days and cool mornings, which is why it is also the most expensive and most crowded window.

March to June is the hot season, dry and dusty, and it is cheap for that reason. The monsoon arrives somewhere in the country between June and October, moving from the southwest coast to the north. For the Himalayas, wait until after June, when Ladakh’s passes open. For Kerala and the south coast, avoid October to December, which is when the northeast monsoon brings heavy rain there.

What to eat in India

Indian cooking changes every few hundred kilometres, so the list below is the set of dishes you will find almost anywhere rather than the signature dishes of any one region. The 10 dishes are listed below.

1. Chaat: the street-food category rather than one dish, built on puffed rice, potato, chickpeas, chutneys and spice.
2. Samosa: a deep-fried pastry triangle, usually filled with spiced potato and peas.
3. Vada pav: a spiced potato fritter in a soft bread roll, Mumbai’s own sandwich.
4. Dhokla: a steamed, slightly sour savoury cake of fermented rice and chickpea batter, from Gujarat.
5. Biryani: layered rice cooked with meat or vegetables and served with raita, with a different version in nearly every city that claims one.
6. Masala dosa: a fermented rice and lentil crêpe wrapped around spiced potato, served with chutney and sambar.
7. Butter chicken: chicken in a thick tomato and butter sauce, made for mopping up with naan.
8. Rogan josh: the Kashmiri lamb curry, built on chilli, ginger and fennel rather than on heat alone.
9. Thali: a full plate rather than a dish, with rice, breads, dal, vegetable curries, pickle and something sweet, anywhere from six to twenty small bowls.
10. Chole bhature: spiced chickpea curry with deep-fried bread, the Punjabi breakfast that defeats most visitors.

Discover more about Indian cuisine:

• 9 popular Indian dishes

Festivals and events in India

India’s festival calendar follows lunar dates, so almost every festival below moves by several weeks from year to year. Check the current year’s date before you build a trip around one.

• Kumbh Mela, rotating between Prayagraj, Haridwar, Nashik and Ujjain, is the largest gathering of people anywhere. The Maha Kumbh at Prayagraj in January and February 2025 drew crowds counted in the hundreds of millions. The full cycle runs over twelve years, so you cannot simply decide to attend one.
• Uttarayan kite festival, January, Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Thousands of kites over the city to mark the sun’s move north.
• Holi, the festival of colours, March, countrywide. Coloured powder and water thrown in the streets, celebrated well beyond India.
• Thrissur Pooram, April or May, Kerala. The state’s largest temple festival, with processions and percussion ensembles.
• Bihu, April, Assam. The harvest festival, with community feasts and the Bihu dance.
• Hemis, June or July, Ladakh. A two-day monastery festival for Padmasambhava, with masked Cham dancing.
• Navratri, September or October. Nine nights honouring Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati, with the biggest public celebrations in Gujarat.
• Durga Puja, autumn, West Bengal. UNESCO-listed since 2021, with Vijayadashami falling on 21 October in 2026.
• Diwali, October or November, countrywide. Oil lamps, new clothes and sweets, and the busiest travel period of the year.
• Pushkar Camel Fair, October or November, Rajasthan. A livestock fair that has grown a festival around it.

Public holidays in India

India’s public holidays split into three national ones and a long list of religious holidays that vary by state and by year. The three fixed national holidays are Republic Day on 26 January, Independence Day on 15 August and Gandhi Jayanti on 2 October.

Everything else moves. Holi, Ram Navami, Mahavir Jayanti, Buddha Purnima, Eid al-Fitr, Janmashtami, Dussehra, Diwali, Guru Nanak Jayanti and Vaisakhi all fall on lunar or regional calendars, and Good Friday and Christmas Day are also gazetted. States publish their own lists, so if you are travelling within one region, check that state’s holiday calendar rather than a national one: banks, government offices and some transport run to it.

Cultural customs in India

A handful of habits will keep you out of trouble almost everywhere in India. Use your right hand for eating, giving and shaking hands, because the left is the one used in the bathroom. Take your shoes off before entering a temple or someone’s home. Do not point the soles of your feet at a person or a shrine.

Dress modestly, particularly at religious sites, where covered shoulders and knees are the minimum and a scarf is useful for covering your head. Cows are sacred and are left alone. And ask before photographing people, ceremonies and interiors of religious buildings; a good many sites forbid it outright and the rule is enforced.

Is India safe to travel to?

India is safe enough for independent travel with normal precautions, and the specific risks are worth naming rather than generalising about. Petty theft, scams and road traffic are the three you will actually meet.

Women travelling alone should take the standard precautions more seriously here than in many countries: avoid unlit streets, use pre-booked or app-hailed transport at night rather than street taxis, and do not accept food or drink from strangers on trains and buses. Road traffic is the largest measurable danger to any visitor; wear a helmet on two wheels and avoid travelling by road at night where you can.

The common scams are predictable once you know them: a taxi driver who has never heard of your hotel and knows a better one, a gemstone export scheme, a doctored meter, an unofficial fee at a checkpoint, and counterfeit train tickets sold outside stations. Book trains through the official IRCTC system and hotels through a platform, and most of these disappear.

Check your own government’s current travel advice for Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh and parts of the northeast, all of which carry specific advisories that change.

Money, cards and ATMs in India

Cash is still king in India for small transactions, and cards work in hotels, chains and restaurants in cities. ATMs are everywhere in urban areas and airports, and they do fail, so carry a second card on a different network and keep some cash in reserve. The larger banks give the better ATM rates.

Foreign transaction fees of 3% to 5% on credit cards add up over a long trip, so a travel card without them is worth arranging before you go. Exporting Indian rupees is restricted, so change what you have left before you fly out, and change money at a bank, a licensed exchange or your hotel rather than with someone in the street, because counterfeit notes are a real problem.

Staying connected in India

An eSIM is the simplest way to have data in India without roaming charges, and it replaces the hassle of buying a local SIM, which requires documentation as a foreign visitor. An eSIM installs on the phone and covers that one device, so if several of you are travelling together and want to share one connection, a rented portable hotspot is a different product and still the better fit.

We use Airalo eSIMs for trips of two or three weeks, using day passes rather than a monthly plan. Use code HARRY5578 for a discount on your first eSIM.

Travel insurance for India

Travel insurance matters more in India than in most destinations, because the things it covers are the things that actually happen here: a stomach illness that needs a doctor, a cancelled train, a phone that disappears from a crowded platform. Medical care in Indian private hospitals is good and you pay for it up front.

SafetyWing’s Nomad Insurance is what we use, because it can be bought after a trip has already started and runs as a subscription rather than a fixed-date policy, which suits open-ended travel. Whatever you buy, read what it says about motorcycles before you rent one.

Tipping in India

Tipping in India is expected of visitors and modest in size. Restaurants with table service take around 10% where no service charge has been added, hotel porters and drivers take small notes, and over-tipping reads as awkward rather than generous. Our guidelines for tipping in India give the amounts by situation.

Where to stay in India

Accommodation in India runs from ₹500 guesthouse rooms to heritage palace hotels, and the gap between the two in the same town can be enormous. Filtering by location matters more than in most countries, because a cheap room on the wrong side of a large Indian city costs you an hour in traffic each way. Search hotels and guesthouses across India with the filters set for what you actually need, and for whole apartments rather than rooms, Vrbo is the alternative we check.

A brief history of India

India’s recorded history starts on the Indus, in what is now Pakistan, where Harappa and Mohenjo-daro were built around 5,000 years ago and abandoned around 1900 BC for reasons still argued about. From about 1500 BC the Vedic period produced the Sanskrit texts that Hinduism is built on.

The Maurya empire unified most of the subcontinent in the third century BC under Ashoka. The Gupta empire, from the fourth century AD, is the period Indian mathematics and astronomy are dated to, including Aryabhata’s argument that the earth rotates. From 1526 the Mughal empire ran northern India for two centuries and built the Taj Mahal, the Red Fort and much of what visitors now come to see.

European trading companies arrived from the seventeenth century, and the East India Company took effective control of Bengal after 1757. The uprising of 1857 led to direct British rule. Gandhi’s non-cooperation campaigns began in 1920, and independence and partition came in 1947. India is now the world’s most populous country and one of its largest economies.

WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips

The 5 tips below each affect a booking rather than a mood, and all five are easier to settle at home than in India.

1. Do not plan a land border crossing with Pakistan. Attari-Wagah closed in April 2025 and the Samjhauta and Thar Express trains have been suspended since 2019.
2. Do not book a Kolkata to Dhaka train yet. The Maitree, Bandhan and Mitali services have been suspended since July 2024; talks on restarting them were held in September 2026 and nothing runs until they conclude.
3. Apply for the e-Visa up to 120 days ahead. The application window was widened in December 2025, and the 30-day version only starts counting on arrival, so an early application costs you nothing.
4. Check whether your northeastern state needs a permit. Several of the eight require an Inner Line or protected-area permit on top of your visa, which is not something to discover at the airport.
5. Hire a car with a driver rather than driving yourself. Most hire cars cannot cross a state line without paying state tax at the border, and the road safety record is the reason almost nobody self-drives.

About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, and the team covers India for independent travellers, including the tours, guesthouses and hotels worth booking across the six regions, and updates this page when visas, border crossings, festivals and prices change.