This website is mainly dedicated to people who post trip reports in luxury hotel, traveling in business class and taking expensive activities. Just to clarify, I have nothing against this, and I also enjoy some luxury hotel sometimes (but I would pay them 60 USD on the hot rate of hotwire).
I thought it would be amusing to describe what it is like to travel cheap, but like very cheap. In the middle of January, I did a 10 days trip in Kashmir, a region north of India bordering Pakistan and China.
I booked everything with a travel agency in Delhi. The organised trip costed me 220 USD for 10 days, including :
- private room/bathroom in guest house.
- breakfast and dinner
- one way flight from Delhi to Srinagar
The major drawback is that there was no western toilet in the guest-house, and no heating (there were half a meter of snow outside). Coming back each afternoon very tired after lots of walk, I was freezing all the time inside. The guest-house manager was an h....... who harrassed me to receive tips.

Do not idealise low-cost travel, it is good when you have a lot of time but I can understand that people who take 2 weeks of vacations in the year prefer a good old-fashion 5 star hotel.