By the Numbers

For those of you that may be interested in the numbers side of our trip I've written this post at the conclusion of our stay in India. Jeff and I have been keeping a spreadsheet of all our expenditures (give or take a couple rupees). Before we left, I outlined a rough travel budget with a per day expenditure amount, which I came up with after looking through our travel guide and talking with people that had visited India. I projected a $40/day budget, and after 69 days in India, we have averaged $35.11/day.

Average: $35.11

Lowest: $19.11 (In Hampi – we were both sick and didn't leave the room)

Highest: $81.67 (Included a first class train ticket to Amritsar)

Mode: $29/day (per rounded $)

Most expensive city on average: Agra (Taj Mahal is very expensive to visit)

We also kept our spreadsheet based on how much we spent on certain items. I created the following pie chart* to illustrate our expenditures:

*We are using Open Office, not Microsoft Excel, so I do not have access to super fancy charts!

And by percentages:

Room: 40%

Bus/Train: 15%

Food: 32%

Sight-seeing: 7%

Internet: 1%

Rickshaw/Taxi: 2%

Misc.: 3%

We did not include some items into our daily budget such as souvenirs and big expenditures like our flight to Bangkok, but we have included those in our overall total. In total, we have spent about $2800 (this includes expected expenditures through the last few days in India).

We could have spent less money, maybe $30/day if we had reduced our room standards. A cheap hotel in India goes for about 300-400 rupees, ($6-$9), but those usually mean a squat toilet or a shared toilet, and a mat atop wood planks for the bed (very hard). We stayed in a couple of these types of rooms, but we were miserable. So we averaged 720 rupees/night ($16). This typically includes a private toilet, a soft mattress, and a TV. (BTW, the movies on TV here are way better than at home.) Prices definitely range across the country and given how many tourists visit a city, so some cities everyone pays a premium, like in Bombay. We wouldn't change our room allocation – we found that with how overwhelming the streets of India can be, we needed somewhere comfortable to be to escape at times.

In all, I am pleased with where we are budget-wise; although I may have under budgeted the upcoming countries. It will also be good to have the money saved here for the end of our trip – the Trans-Mongolian Railway and Russia will be expensive.