Agra & the Taj Mahal Very cheap
Mughlai food is the local tradition — try dal Agra and petha, the local sweet. Eat where there is a queue of locals, drink only bottled or filtered water, and give street food a few days before trying it.
Budget travel in India
What a visitor's money does in India: every guide rated from very cheap to very expensive, cheapest first, then the things that cost travellers money without buying anything — the ATM, the taxi, the SIM.
Good value average across 5 guides · 5 is very cheap
Money
Indian Rupee (INR) · 1 EUR = 110 INR · 1 USD = 95.8 INR
Exchange at a bank or an authorised dealer, never on the street. Cards are widely accepted in hotels and restaurants but not at the smaller shops. Keep small notes for tips and rickshaws, and check that any note you are handed is not torn.
ATMs
Avoid: standalone machines near the monuments
Use: SBI, HDFC, ICICI, Axis
Use machines inside bank premises. Withdrawals are usually capped at 10,000 rupees with a fee each time, so plan around fewer, larger ones.
Getting around
A short ride in Agra & the Taj Mahal: ₹120–350 across town — very cheap
From the airport: Delhi airport to Connaught Place ₹400–700, against ₹60 on the Airport Express
Much cheaper than a pre-paid taxi booth and vastly cheaper than a hotel car.
City by city, cheapest first
Varanasi Very cheap
Street food with an old reputation: kachori sabzi for breakfast, tamatar chaat, malaiyo in winter — a saffron foam whipped in the night dew and gone by ten in the morning. Blue Lassi in the old lanes is famous and deserves it. Avoid anything uncooked and unpeeled.
Goa Very cheap
Goan food is its own thing — fish curry rice, pork vindaloo as it is actually made, and bebinca for dessert. Beach shacks are good and inexpensive; feni, the local cashew spirit, is an acquired taste.
Jaipur Good value
Rajasthani food is built for a desert: dal baati churma, laal maas which is fierce, and ker sangri made from desert beans and berries. Pyaaz kachori from Rawat, which has a queue. And lassi in a clay cup at Lassiwala on MI Road, which has four shops all claiming to be the original.
Kerala Backwaters Good value
Coconut in everything: karimeen pollichathu, a lake fish grilled in a banana leaf, appam with stew, and the sadya vegetarian feast eaten with the right hand off a banana leaf. Toddy from the palm is fermented by the afternoon and drunk at toddy shops.
The cost rating is this site's own, for a visitor, from the guides' authors and the corrections readers send in. The general rules — the conversion prompt, shoulder season, the airport taxi — are in budget travel tips.
The guides in India
Agra & the Taj MahalIndiaA tomb built for one person, visited by eight million a year
VaranasiIndiaThe oldest continuously lived-in city on earth, where the Ganges is lined with steps and funeral pyres
GoaIndiaPortuguese churches, Arabian Sea beaches, and no hurry at all
JaipurIndiaA pink city laid out on a grid in 1727, with a fort on every hill above it
Kerala BackwatersIndiaNine hundred kilometres of lagoons and canals behind the coast, crossed on a converted rice barge