India for beginners

India can humble, awe, amaze and intimidate visitors – all on the same day. Many travellers are itching to pack their bags for the mighty sub-continent but have a few 'India virgins' have apprehensions. Experienced travel writers give personal advice on visiting India for Get Up & Go readers.

Tricia Welsh With food, remember the maxim: peel it, cook it or skip it! And drink only bottled water.

Avoid fresh salads (washed in untreated water), ice creams and anything that has been pre-cooked like buffets where food sits for hours - opt instead for a la carte.

Food-stands serve tasty snacks but check the cleanliness of the chap doing the cooking and see if his food has a quick turnover. Hot fried pakoras and samosas are the best – straight out of hot oil.

Pre-check that your hotel has Western-style toilets and ask for a quiet, rear room as cities can be noisy.

Wash your hands often.

The heat and crowded conditions can get to you, so plan activities for early morning or later in the day and rest during the mid-day heat.

If travelling by train, hire a porter who will carry and protect your luggage and invest in a light chain and padlock to secure luggage on board.

Pack baby wipes, hand sanitiser, sunscreen, a small fruit knife, heavy-duty toilet paper, well-labelled medication and family photos to initiate conversation.

Tipping is vital in India – people survive on it. And take some stick-pins or key-rings as ‘thank-you’ gestures.

Freelance writer,  Tricia Welsh’s first foray to India was confronting, but she can’t wait to go back.

Mike Bingham India is a vast Imax screen which envelops first time-travellers from the moment their feet touch the ground. It is both mad and marvellous with its crowds, energy, heritage and culture, and is also hugely welcoming.

Australians brought up on tales of Delhi belly in years past will find themselves in a new world of quality accommodation and dining. And who, these days ever drinks anything but bottled water anywhere?

The traffic is chaotic, the noise constant, but there's little chance to focus on the negative. See the Taj Mahal at sunrise, the Red Ford at sunset, the Golden Temple at Amritstar.

Indulge yourself in elegant hotels with the world's finest service. Or wait patiently while your car or bus takes its place behind a donkey train, or a string of fodder-hauling camels on a main highway.

One visit to India is only a beginning and few can resist the temptation to return.

Mike Bingham is the travel editor of The Sunday Tasmanian and The Mercury in Hobart.

Susan Kurosawa India used to be primarily for those with an airy disregard for their digestive systems. Backpackers went seeking nirvana and the sort of trophy tales to make the folks back home squirm. But since deregulation in the 1990s, India has gone ‘luxe’, with palace hotels, efficient infrastructure, fab safari lodges and beach resorts to rival Asia's finest.

Mother India's trademark mayhem and ineffable sense of logic still reigns. "Do you have a room with a bath?" I ask at a small hotel. "Yes, madam," comes the reply, and I am shown to a room with no bath. Puzzled, I demand an explanation. "We have a room with a bath, madam. Presently it is occupied."

Indiaphile author Mark Shand wrote: "India shows what she wants to show, as if her secrets are guarded by a wall of infinite height. You try to climb the wall. You fall; you fetch a ladder – it is too short. But if you are patient a brick will loosen and then another." He was right: no other country requires such patience and perseverance; none rewards with such richness of experience. 

If I don't get my annual ‘fix’, I suffer withdrawal symptoms.
Tips? Carry anti-gastric medication. Insist bottled mineral water is opened in front of you (if the seal has been broken, it will not be the genuine article). Go vegetarian and avoid reheated buffets. Take biros to hand out to kids who pester for money at tourist sites.

Proceed gently. Stepladder optional. 

Susan Kurosawa is the travel editor of The Australian newspaper. She has visited India 30 times, including a long stint there in 2003 to write her first novel, Coronation Talkies, set in a 1930s colonial hill-station.

Bruce Heilbuth On my first visit to India I climbed into a battered taxi at Delhi airport. Soon, through the car’s open window I was assailed by the joyous sounds and sensations of the subcontinent. The humid air retained some of the day’s heat and carried a heady mix of scents: woodsmoke, frangipani, gasoline, spices, and a whiff of decaying vegetation. Small shops, stalls and dwellings lined the crowded sidewalks. At a traffic light, a swarm of motorcycles surged from a standing start, revving and weaving like angry hornets. Then, rounding a bend, they slowed to avoid a pale cow lying on the road, placidly chewing.

These are the kind of indelible memories any visitor takes away from India – that and recollections of outstanding food, staggering numbers of people and, everywhere, remarkable generosity and warmth.

Still, there are some key bits of advice all should heed:

• Don’t drink tap water; don’t even brush your teeth in it.
• Wash your hands after you’ve been out and before meals.
• Eat vegetarian wherever possible.
• Tip drivers and doormen even if it’s a tiny sum. Kingfisher beer is a wonderful hot-climate brew.
• Pay extra to stay in better-class hotels; the ordinary ones are just that.

Bruce Heilbuth writes travel stories regularly for a variety of publications.

Glenn A. Baker There is nothing at all passive about a visit to India, the most textured, diverse, challenging and confusing country on earth. This home of near a billion people can be so overwhelming that it needs to be bitten off in small chunks and chewed most carefully. Only within the borders of Russia, Indonesia, China and perhaps Argentina can such extraordinary diversity of geography and humanity be encountered. As one sage said: “If you have seen India, you have seen the world”.

You will also have seen inside yourself, for this 5,000-year-old civilisation, where the past imposes itself upon the present at every turning and brings visitors face to face with their own humanity. If you are willing to submerge yourself in this ancient melting pot of peoples, the rewards will last a lifetime.

Almost a hundred million of her’s people are tribal; her three million plus square kilometres embrace snow-capped mountains, rainforests, alpine meadows, fertile lowland deltas, tropical beaches, rocky deserts, rugged plateaus, rivers, vast plains and teeming cities. Indeed, Indian cities have no parallel. By all reasonable logic they should not function; but they do. The frantic pace is constant, the din ceaseless but when you’re in them, you don’t want to be anywhere else.

Glenn A. Baker is an Australian-based writer/broadcaster specialising in travel and music/the arts.

Shirley LaPlanche In a lifetime of travelling the world I need only close my eyes and the mind-blowing power of Rajasthan in north-west India fills my head. I’m back up on that mouldy looking camel lurching across the desert. Black-eyed men sporting large turbans and huge moustaches ride beside me asking endless questions about why a woman of my age is not married. They tell me of their beautiful wives and many children; shyly boastful. They have reason to be proud these descendents of the Rajputs a warrior clan who, when the odds were against them, would dress in their best saffron robes and ride out to certain death while their women and children committed suicide to avoid capture.

The desert has many ruins where we found shade during the daytime and isolated villages where slim women in dazzling robes and clattering jewellery followed us like children. We slept in small tents and ate around the open fire listening to tales of India’s past and present. On the last day my heart fairly burst with emotion as we rode soft-footed out of the desert and up through the monochrome walls and buildings of the remote, exotic, fort town of Jaisalmer.

Although my journey continued by train through the better-known Rajasthan centres of Jodhpur, Pushkar and Jaipur, my heart stayed in that desert with its people and camels and strangely romantic hush.

Season for camel safaris is November to March. Length of safaris is usually 2-7 days. Camel rides of less than a day are available from Jaisalmer.    

Shirley LaPlanche is a Sydney based, freelance travel writer/photographer ­– author of Stepping Lightly on Australia - A Travellers Guide to Ecotourism.

Richard Mole India is a great conundrum. It is the world’s largest democracy, but over 35 per cent of the world’s poor live here. Most Indians are Hindu, yet it has the fourth largest Moslem population in the world. Despite two million kilometres of roads, less than one per cent owns a car.

First time visitors will find it noisy, dirty, colourful, confusing and controversial. Streets that move confidently at first often disintegrate into medieval lanes that twist along discreet walls, past closed doors and crumbling edifices. The traffic is constant, loud and invasive. Shops and shanty stalls overflow with cheap jewellery, pungent spices, bright cottons, sugar-coated sweets and neglected vegetables. People are everywhere.

Ease yourself into the maelstrom by starting somewhere quiet, such as Goa or one of the smaller towns in Rajasthan (Udaipur or Jodhpur); leave the busy tourist sites till a little later in your itinerary; stay in reasonable accommodation (3 star or above) to reduce the chances of ‘Delhi belly’ which can be quite debilitating. But above all, don’t rush from place to place: travel slowly and allow time for India to work its magic on you.

Richard Mole spent six months backpacking from the southernmost tip of India to the snowy slopes of the Indian Himalaya. Most recently he was a director of Peregrine Adventures where was instrumental in setting up the budget brand, Gecko’s Adventures.