Narrative of a VERY VERY cheap travel.
 

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.

I can rough it, but not having a western toilet or heat is pushing it a bit for me. An outhouse, with a western toilet seat, is about as far as I would go. And this is after almost 50 countries. $220 for 10 days is cheap!

Thread moved to a more appropriate forum.

DanielW
Moderator, Trip Reports.

trips like this are fun every once in a while....every year in october i get together with 4 friends of mine from school & we take one of these cheap trips to some destination in india....the point is to re-live our old school days when we had no money so our budget for the whole trip is inr 15k (a little over $200) per person....the trip lasts 4-5 day max with cheap airfare & lodging....we wouldn't venture out in a snowy area with no heat though & have been fortunate enough to not encounter indian toilets so far....

I have been on trips, like Thailand, where you arrive, spend 2 or 3 nights in a five star hotel - using points, and then go off to the countryside where accommodation is cheap but great value. Then after the holiday, return to (another) five star hotel for the last 2 or 3 nights, rounding off the trip.

I was quite surprised that most of the really cheap hotels in Ahmedabad are for Indian nationals only, even though they can be booked on most OTA's. Is this limited to Gujarat or is this throughout India? Apparently, Kashmir plays by different rules, but this is something that would concern me on a trip like this (although the restroom situation is enough to keep me away).

Every hotel is supposed to record the information of the foreigners staying at their place and report the details each day using form C to the local FRRO. This was started after the Mumbai Terrorist attack and recently the paperwork was moved online. Hotels that seldom have foreign guests don't bother with the registration for this paperwork and just refuse the occasional foreigner to stay with them.

Or...
 

Often actually these hotels will accept foreigners, and just do not bother with the registration...