India stole my heart but it didn’t steal my money.

India is one of the cheapest countries I have ever been to and during our 74 days travelling India, I became obsessed with tracking our finances. My husband, Tim, was off work without pay and I was only working part time. We had saved diligently but knew we were on a strict budget while also wanting to truly enjoy ourselves. Plus, I’m a nerd. I love a good spreadsheet and budget. After I found the app “TravelSpend” (best $14.49 I’ve ever spent), I couldn’t get off it. I tracked every single rupee that left our pocket.

I’d describe our overall type of travel as ‘cost effective luxury’. We quickly realised that India is not only cheap, but has great value for money. For example, you could get a mouldy hotel with stains on the bed for $25 a night, but you could also find a really nice Airbnb with a pool for $100 per night. Both things are nearly impossible to find in our home country, Aotearoa New Zealand. An average hotel in New Zealand is at least $150, so we took the opportunity to live life on the nicer side while being budget conscious.

I found it difficult to budget for travelling in India, so part of my incessant need to track our spending was my intent to write this blog post and help others know how much it costs to travel India for two and a half months.

We spent $12,883NZ during 74 days in India. This includes travel insurance, vaccinations, first aid kit items, food, accommodation, cars, trains, domestic flights, entry fees for sightseeing, activities, fees for cash out, and shopping. This doesn’t include our flights to India from New Zealand. That’s an easy figure to find out and will depend on what country you’re travelling from - plus we visited Australia on our way back so it was different to a direct trip.

A few things to note before I get into the details of everything…

We spent 8 days at a wedding with friends plus another week with them later on in the trip. We were also invited to stay one night on a houseboat for a discounted price in exchange for sharing a reel, stayed at the incredible Chokhi Dhani to film content, plus 6 days with friends in rural India. This means 24 nights of the 74 we were not fending for ourselves and paying full accommodation or food prices. But in my breakdown at the end of the blog post, I will factor these in to give you the amount of money we spent plus the average daily rate if we had not had these 24 nights paid for (which we’re incredibly grateful for!).

All sums in this blog post are NZ dollars and are based on the exchange rate as of the 9th of May 2023.

Spending: $9,654

Insurance: $1,226

Travel clinic: $2,004

Total amount spent by two people: $12,884

Let’s break that down.

*But I won’t break down the travel clinic costs. I am not a doctor and the vaccines/medications will vary from person to person.

Accommodation cost of travelling in India: $3,270.

I’ve already mentioned a little about our accommodation style, but I’ll pick it apart even more. We stayed at a range of places, mainly Airbnbs from $34.50 per night to $115.50 per night. Our most common and comfortable spend was $60-$70 per night for the two of us.

Delhi: House of Comfort. $77 per night (two people).

Udaipur: Farm Stay. $106 per night (two people). We met two friends here so the house was huge and worked out to be $106 per couple.

Jaipur: Studio apartment. $74 per night (two people).

Agra: Hotel Taj Plaza. $34.50 per night (two people). This was the worst place we stayed. The sheets were stained, the floors were dirty, everything was mouldy and gross. BUT the location to the Taj Mahal was excellent and that’s why we booked it. I still haven’t decided if I would stay there again. Probably not.

Amritsar: Super spacious apartment. $51.70 per night (two people). Ideal space to be able to spread out so I could take Zoom calls in a separate room.

Rishikesh: Smart Rooms. $40 per night (two people). The most epic Wifi, cute roof top, great location, best value for money compared to every other place we stayed.

Varanasi: Apartment. $99 per night (two people). We spent slightly more because there weren’t many middle of the range options and it was our wedding anniversary.

Fort Kochi: Old Courtyard. $115.50 (two people). It was super hot and we wanted to stay by the ocean and with a pool. This is totally worth it; it was beautifully kept, the staff were amazing, and we spent two days there without any transportation or activity costs.

Goa/Calangute: Two bedroom house. $73.30 (two people). We met friends here and shared a spacious apartment style room between the 4 of us.

We also stayed in Pushkar at the wedding, Kolkata in a friend’s flat, Hyderabad with friends, and took several overnight trains which reduced the cost of accommodation and got us there by morning.

Although these prices may look pretty reasonable, we felt like we lived it up in India when it came to our accommodation. We stayed at places that we could only dream of if they were located in New Zealand. And we don’t regret a thing!

Transport cost of travelling in India: $2,679.

Domestic flights: $1148.

Cars: $990.

Trains: $507.

Tuktuks: $34.

As much as possible, we took trains. This was because of the price (trains were generally a quarter of the price of flights, if not, cheaper), environmental reasons, plus the general experience of it. We travelled second or first class and had 8 brilliant train experiences. I booked flights and trains through 12Go. We also took one overnight bus which I included in the train total amount.

We found Uber and Ola to be helpful throughout India and we took a total of 34 trips in cars. Each city had a main app but it took a little trial and error to figure out which one of the two it was. Around a quarter of our longer car trips were taken with the sole purpose of visiting ethical fashion factories in India. Tuktuks were great, however we would often choose to walk the shorter distances and take a car for the long 45 minute to 1 hour trips, hence the low tuktuk spend (though that still accounts for 14 tuktuk rides!).

We took 4 domestic flights during our 74 days travelling India. These were from Kolkata to Kerala, Kerala to Hyderabad, Hyderabad to Goa, and Goa to Hyderabad. We paid slightly extra as our bags were a few kgs over the 15kg limit. Travelling with only 15kg checked luggage is your best option to reduce costs.

Food cost of travelling in India: $2,321.

Breakfast: $235.

Lunch: $748.

Dinner: $701.

Drinks: $170.

Groceries: $467.

As you can see from this breakdown, we rarely ate breakfast. We found a good rhythm of drinking only tea in the morning (if that) and venturing out for a big lunch. Some days we had a large lunch and simply snacked in the evenings. Staying in Airbnbs allowed us to order lots of food when out and keep it in the fridge at home. This reduced the constant decision making around where to eat at every meal, plus meals at home when you’re travelling for several months are often much needed.

The drinks total mainly includes hot drinks and lassi. We rarely drank alcohol when travelling in India as it was harder to find and we didn’t feel the need for it.

Adventuring cost of travelling in India: $868.

Sightseeing: $575.

Activities: $293.

The bulk of our sightseeing budget ($400) was spent on a day in Kolkata with a photographer guide. He showed us around and took photos which we will continue to use forever, both personally and on my social media. So if that isn’t your jam, then know that sightseeing in India is super cheap and always worth it! It literally only cost $25 each to get into the Taj Mahal and several places we visited didn’t have entry fees.

The activities money was spent on yoga classes, boat trips, a park walk, and our final day at Ramoji Film City where lots of Bollywood movies are filmed.

General shopping cost of travelling in India: $364.

Electronics/gadgets: $66.

Shopping: $51.

General expenses: $247.

I left my headphones back in New Zealand so I bought a basic pair to get me through. Tim also needed a mini tripod for filming which turned out to be the most handy thing! Though he lost an attachment at one point and had to purchase the tripod again.

The shopping total included four books (which I left in India for others to read), some flowers from a flower market, birthday presents for our two nieces, a tiny owl incense holder for us, and two mouse pads made uniquely for us by The Loyal Workshop.

I coded everything else pedantically, but we needed a general expense code that included random things like Tim’s tattoo, a haircut, a wooden spoon for my reusable tool kit, face paint when we went to the Wagah Border ceremony, shoe covers at the Taj Mahal, and SIM cards.

Fees cost of travelling in India: $152.

It cost us $6 every time we got out $175 at the ATM. $175 (9000 rupees) was the maximum amount allowed out, so we got out 9000 rupees every time and always made sure we had cash on us.

To summarise:

Transport: $2,679

Food: $2,321

Accommodation: $3,270

General: $364

Adventures: $868

Travel costs (fees, insurance, vaccinations): $3,382

Total: $12,884.

We spent $87.05 per person per day.

(This would have been roughly $128.84 per person per day if we didn’t have 24 days with other people)

When it comes to travelling India for 74 days, there are SO many variables and different ways to do things. If I were travelling solo, I would have opted for the pay-what-you-can dormitories that were vetoed by Tim who has higher standards. If we had stayed solely in the north of India, we wouldn’t have needed to take any domestic flights and we would have spent more like $79 per day per person. There were cheaper Airbnbs available but we decided we would prioritise nicer places to stay and spend less on food. I am coeliac, so we didn’t eat street food; our food bill could have been a quarter of what it was if that was the case!

At the start of our trip we budgeted $100 per day per person while factoring in the 24 days with other people. There are so many ‘ifs’, but these are the facts behind our India experience and we are stoked to have come in under budget.

Whatever India travel budget you come up with, don’t let other people’s ideas of India distract you from the type of holiday you want to have or the money you want to (or don’t want to) spend.

If you’re planning a trip to India, you’ll also be interested to read what to pack for three months travelling India.