Discovering India in 30 Days
In october 2025 I spent three weeks in India with my brother and his girlfriend.
I love India and I feel like we organized a really good trip together. Yes, India can be loud and overwhelming and it might seem a little scary at first but I‘m here to tell you everything we did before and during our trip that made it as easy and unproblematic as it was.
Before I start, I just want to say, that if you‘re thinking about traveling to India, please do it. Social media has created such a horrible image of this place but you can only understand what it really has to offer if you actually go there.
I‘m a person that loves to plan trips and I understand some people prefer to be spontaneous but for India I would really recommend to at least plan your accommodations and transportation because it just makes things so much easier.
Our Itinerary:
Delhi 4 nights
- Daytrip to Agra
Jaipur 3 nights
- Daytrip to Pushkar
Jodhpur 2 nights
Osian 1 night
Jodhpur 2 nights
Bangalore 2 nights
Cherai beach 4 nights
Our goal for this trip was to make it as diverse as possible, since we knew we‘d only have a maximum of three weeks, we knew we wouldn‘t be able to spend a long time at each place but we still wanted to see different sides of India.
Before the trip
The first thing I did was to plan our itinerary. I collected different places that we wanted to see and then connected them. We knew that we wanted to see the main attractions like the Taj Mahal and different cities in Rajasthan, but I also wanted to visit my friend in Bangalore. We decided to start in Delhi because we thought it‘d be the biggest culture shock for us and it‘d be best to start right in. We were basically planning to do the famous golden triangle in an adapted version.
If you want to visit Agra, especially the Taj Mahal, you have different options.
You can book a tour which will take you there, you can take an uber, use public transport, hire a private driver or stay a night in Agra. We decided to take an uber to save money.
After Delhi we knew we wanted to go to Jaipur, which is probably Rajasthans most famous city and we wanted to see ourselves what the hype was about.
Around Jaipur you have various national parks and tiger resorts and we still had some time left over so we stayed one night at the Sariska tiger reserve.
After Jaipur we had to choose between Jodhpur and Udaipur because we knew we didn‘t have enough time for both. I‘m really glad that we ended up choosing Jodhpur because we loved it.
One of India‘s most famous holidays was about to start so we headed to Bangalore to celebrate Diwali.
After staying for only two nights we took another flight to Kochi where our trip ended.
Once we had our itinerary planned it was time to look for accommodation.
I usually use booking.com which really helped us a lot. In every city we chose a place with breakfast included, that was in our proce range. The prices vary greatly all around India, we paid 8€ per person per night in Delhi where we shared a triple room and 50€ per person per night at the Sariska tiger reserve where we had 2 suites with private pool. We always made sure to check out the location on google street view if possible to make sure we can also walk around comfortably once it‘s dark.
We tried to make the most of our time so after we had booked the main things, we wanted to look into tours or special activities. As already mentioned, after Delhi, we visited the Sariska tiger reserve where we booked a Safari. We unfortunately didn‘t see any tigers but it was still a very beautiful experience. I believe for better chances of tiger sighting you should visit Ranthambore park. We saw that Jodhpur is right at the beginning of the Thar desert, so we looked into getyourguide.com to find some overnight trip there and we chose one that would pick us up in Jodhpur and bring us to a village family‘s home near Osian where we stayed one night.
These were the main things we booked in advance and that I would recommend for you to book aswell. Of course you don’t have to book any trips or activities but if you do, I‘d do it upon arrival to avoid stress.
If you‘re planning to visit more places close to eachother (so like 4hrs in India) I would book a private driver but I‘ll write more about that later on.
The last thing we did in our planning process was to look into transportation, this is something you can do pretty spontaneously to be honest but we did some of the planning before getting to india.
We knew we had to take a plane from Jodhpur to Bangalore, which we booked some days before reaching India and we wanted to take either a train or a car between the other places.
If you want to book a train use https://www.irctc.co.in/nget/train-search which is the official website of the Indian railway.
We booked the flight to Kochi very spontaneously because we had originally planned to take a 10hr train but then chose the 1.5hr flight instead.
The last thing we did was to get the e-Visa. Just check online what Visa you need, according to your country of origin. The process itself is quite simple but the Indian government website is a bit difficult, so bring time and patience.
We also did get a bunch of vaccines to minimize the risk of any infection.
Accommodation
Let‘s talk hotels. Coming from a european country, the prices in India are of course cheaper but when it comes to hotels you have a huge price range. If you‘re staying at the top international chains you‘ll pay close to the price you‘d pay in Europe (we did not do that).
Delhi
Our Delhi hotel was hotel Ajanta, which gave us a great first impression of the trip. We had one room with 3 beds for 100€ for 4 nights. Our room did not have a window which was the only downside I’d say, but I don’t think we would’ve opened a window in Delhi anyways. The hotel had a restaurant which we ate at almost every day of our Delhi stay. They had quite a big variety of dishes and all the employees were super nice.I‘d even say this was the best hotel food we had on our whole trip, I still dream about the breakfast buffet. It‘s located in a nice street with lots of hotels and restaurants close to the Railway station.
Sariska
The Grand Sariska Baagh was a whole other experience, it was pretty expensive but we had to choose one that was close to the national park. After our 9 hour!? drive from Delhi we arrived late at around 8pm and were greeted by a whole lot of employees and flowerchains.
It was opened in January 2025, so by the time we visited in October it had not even been open for a year and you could tell that everything was super new. During our stay we were the only guests and all the employees (20 maybe?) were just waiting for us to do something which was a very interesting scenario. We usually don‘t go to hotels like that so we were not used to this.
We had two suites which were huge, one with a private pool and one with a small garden for 150€ for one night. For dinner we just ate at the hotel because there was nothing nearby and it was pretty good. After dinner they invited us to watch a traditional dance, the dance was really nice but it was such an awkward situation since we were the only guests.
In the morning we had our safari at 6:30 and afterwards we were supposed to have a breakfast buffet but instead, we were able to just order anything off the menu.
Jaipur
And again, a whole different vibe, I think each of our hotels really reflected the vibe of their city perfectly. Umaid Bhawan was a traditional rajasthani building and probably the prettiest hotel building i‘ve ever seen.
We had dinner at the hotel restaurant on our first evening and I had one of my favorite dishes (chili paneer). The breakfast buffet was also pretty good but a little too adapted to the foreign tourists in my opinion.
Here we had a triple room again for 300€ for three nights, this time with window and balcony, from which we could watch a lot of monkeys.
Jodhpur
The blue city of Rajasthan is known for its old city and we were right in it. We stayed at Bristows Haveli which is a traditional homestay. It’s owned by George, who renovated the whole building to bring it back to life. It‘s mainly operated by a local family who will make an every day changing breakfast, either traditional, european or a fusion. You can get dinner on request, which we did once and it was really good.
We had two small seperate rooms but we shared one bathroom. My room had direct stairs to one of the only gardens in Jodhpurs old city. Another great advantage of this place was the befriended auto (rikshaw/tuktuk) driver, who was always ready to bring us to our daily destinations or recommended new places. He even invited us to have dinner at his house on our last day, which gave us a great view into a local home and showed us the famous indian hospitality.
Keep in mind that they only take cash, so be prepared for that.
Bangalore
This was for sure my least favorite hotel of the trip. We stayed at the Bloom hotel in Indiranagar, which is a pretty modern/ western hotel chain. It was 160€ for 2 nights for 2 rooms, they were pretty big and clean, I just wasn‘t a fan of the breakfast buffet. The food was just not that great but overall it was a nice hotel.
Cherai beach
This was probably my favourite hotel of the trip, I just loved the whole vibe, we stayed at Vala house, which is right at the backwaters and it‘s surrounded by nature. Everything is open so we could hear the birds and enjoy the silence after visiting so many big cities.
They made us a different south indian breakfast every day and helped us anytime we needed anything. We paid 250€ for 3 nights for 2 rooms which were really big and had views over the water. Just know that there‘s nothing really closeby so we always had to walk around 20mins to the nearest restaurant and to the beach.
Itinerary
Delhi
This city is everything, it‘s loud, chaotic, overwhelming but it‘s also super diverse, interesting and rich in history. We spent 4 nights in Delhi but did one daytrip to Agra so we had 2.5 days in the city.
Day one
I planned a few stops in southern Delhi that we could all connect because we knew the traffic would be crazy and we didn‘t want to waste too much time on the road. Before we headed out we had a delicious breakfast at our hotel buffet which I could literally eat every day and then took an auto to Lodi garden which was probably my favourite attraction in Delhi. It‘s a park with different small temples and buildings that you can all visit for free. There are different birds to spot, monkeys and dogs and it‘s super quiet, you can not hear any of the surrounding traffic. After strolling around for some time we walked over to the Safdarjung tomb but we found the entrance fee a bit high so we didn‘t enter. Based on the pictures I would definitely recommend it tho, I don‘t remember the price they asked for but it was for sure not high (we just didn‘t want to spend money). We took an auto to the Hauz Khas village which I believe is essentially like a big gated community designed like a village within Delhi with restaurants and all and it‘s all located inside a big park. We didn‘t enter the actual village because we came for the park with it‘s ruins. I believe there would‘ve been more to see but we were not sure what areas were open to the public and there were a lot of people talking to us at the entrance of the village so it was not a place where we wanted to stay and look at our phones to check the map. The park was nice and there were a lot of monkeys running around but we were already quite tired from the heat so we probably didn‘t see everything that the place had to offer.
We had a quick stop at the Hyatt hotel where we met a family friend who was coincidentally staying in Delhi at the same time as we did. We had some drinks to cool down and relax from the rush of the city. After our lunch break we headed to our last stop, the Lotus temple. We arrived just as it started to rain so our visit was quite short. The temple building itself is quite impressive with its unique shape and if you get the chance, you can enter it (we did not do that) It started raining pretty heavily so everyone was trying to leave at the same time and we had to wait almost 45mins until we got an auto to pick us up. We ended the day with dinner at our hotel restaurant (I’ll make a seperate section about all the foodspots we tried) and then went to sleep after a day full of impressions.
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