Itinerary Advice for 5 week trip

Hello Angela

I've spent almost three months in India and almost all of my journeys were via train. This looks like a good itinerary - though 2 nights in each of Agra and Jaipur might find you a bit short of time - I would recommend 3 nights in each or a 2/3 split - as the distance between them is not great. You have 3 nights in Mumbai, but it doesn't really have many sights, most of the appeal is the vibe of the place.

Depending on the time of year, reservations for train travel can be easy or difficult. Anything around such major festivals as Diwali and Holi will be problematic. Thankfully most trains on the tourist route has a quota only available for foreigners - so even if the train is booked out you should be able to obtain a ticket. But now for the big minus of not pre-booking: consider your local train station where you live and the process of getting a ticket - fairly easy I imagine. Well, totally dismiss that idea when purchasing tickets in India - in my whole time in India there was only one train station that operated like this - Ernakulam station in Kerala.

In every other case, you should set aside a bit of time to purchase your tickets (my average queue time was approximately 1.5 hours) - the queues can move excruciatingly slowly and there is always paperwork to fill in - and when you are on tight time frame the last thing you want to do is to spend hours getting to/from a train station and waiting there just to purchase tickets. In addition many stations limit the number of tickets you can buy, so you may need to go to the back of the queue if booking more than three sectors. If you can manage it, prebook all of your trains and save your time once in the country. If you need to change a ticket it is possible to head to a train station, but it will depend on availability and you will need to pay a small service charge. Reply to this

Hi There !

While your itinerary looks good with whatever you may have known or learned about India. But, I feel that you are spending almost a month here and still missing the best of the country i.e. North east of India starting with Kolkata.

If you allow, I would like to suggest a little change and this is the advice I have been giving to almost all the travellers. It is not my thought alone, I have met almost a dozen people who followed this and could make the most of their time.It goes like this-

1) Start with Kolkata - 2 days in and around
2) Move to Shillong - 2 days in and around
3) Move to Sikkim - 2 days in and around
4) Move to Nepal or Bhutan( In Nepal you could visit Mount Everest base Camp) - If Visa rules permit. Mell and other travellers can contribute here.
5) From there back to Kolkata - 1 night
6) Move to Varanasi - 2 days
7) Varanasi to Agra - 1 night
8) Agra to Delhi - 2 nights
9) Delhi to Rishikesh/haridwar - 2 nights
10) Move to Jaipur - 1 night
11) Move to Pushkar - 1 night
12) Move to Udaipur - 1 night
13) Move to Mumbai - 1 night
14) Move to Goa - 2 nights

From here on you can go down south to Kerela and then back.

Do let me know how you feel about this ? Reply to this

Thanks everybody. Well here I am, one week before the trip and just now booking the train reservations. It's been a little challenging but glad to get it done before I get there. Crooze, thanks for the travel suggestions to the itinerary but I am meeting up with some people here and there so will keep the general itinerary outline as is. Thanks again for all your suggestions and help. Reply to this