The Rough Guide to India (Travel Guide)

This book had at least 100 pages ripped out of it. Very disappointed. Sections were removed in two separate places. Because of this, the book was useless to me.

This is the best guidebook I know of for India. I used it on my recent trip and found it overall to have excellent, in-depth information, great info for putting things in cultural/historical context, and detailed, accurate maps. In my opinion it blows Lonely Planet out of the water. Several Indian guesthouse owners and the man at the tourist desk in Varanasi (who has worked there for 25 years) told me the same thing, and on the flipside I met not a single person who recommended Lonely Planet over this book. The general consensus about the Rough Guide is that rather than just giving a bunch of listings, it gives really practical information on how to get to places, get things done, get a ticket, avoid scams, and so on, in significantly greater depth than Lonely Planet. But not only is it more practical--it also gives more cultural/historical context, opinion, and descriptive writing. Lonely Planet, on the other hand, seems to have become lazy since they know they will sell a lot of books on name recognition alone. The last time I used Lonely Planet was on a trip to Brazil, and I was so disappointed with it that I vowed never to use them again. However, unlike Lonely Planet, I think you will have a positive experience with this book. A good guidebook is crucial in India because it is such a difficult country to travel in, and I think you won't be disappointed with this one.

I have just returned from a one month holiday in Bangladesh and Northeastern India. I was hoping for a more region-specific guide but there isn't one, so I had to carry this bulky country-wide guide with me. This appears to be an excellent guide for the more "usual" destinations in India, but people should be aware that it barely covers Northeastern India at all. Part of this is due to an editorial decision to drop information from prior editions due to political instability in many of those states, but the decisions on which areas to drop do not match local knowledge about which areas actually might prove unsafe for foreigners as opposed to local politicians. Granted, it is an ever-changing scenario, and this guide is by now a few years old. My main complaint though is the maps of the hill stations; particularly those of Darjeeling and Gangtok. They are just plain wrong, and not to scale (even in cases where they say they are to scale). Unfortunately the Indian government tourist maps for those towns and also Kalimpong are also wrong, and not to scale either, but are somewhat more helpful, so my suggestion is to visit the local tourist offices immediately upon arrival in each town and pick up their official maps. In both cases, however, contours are missing, and considering that these towns have several hundred to several thousand feet differential between top and bottom, and that there are no pedestrian steps to cut across the time-consuming road switchbacks, one can easily make a wrong decision at a switchback crossing and miss a major point of interest (such as the major monastery at the top of Gangtok). At the very least, since most roads are one-way (and few if any are marked), showing directionals would help. Considering this edition is many generations removed from the first edition, it is not acceptable that directions are often completely inaccurate. For instance, the major monastery outside Gangtok is listed as being to its east, when it is really to its southwest (but I did find it). And in Kalimpong, I missed the main monastery as I ran out of time after going more than twice as far as the stated distance and still not reaching the monastery south of town (which R.G. listed as being at the top of the hill, when ALL of the locals that I asked confirm it is near the bottom!). To be fair, the Lonely Planet guide is much, much worse all around. I have just ordered the Footprint guide to see if it is more accurate and complete for this region of India. I would at least like an accurate reference for matching against my trip notes, photos, and writeups! As far as the non-Himalayan eastern states are concerned, there is almost no coverage at all, for the previously stated reasons, but hopefully this will change in the next edition, as travel restrictions are blightening up and it is now possible to arrange permits for Aranchal Pradesh and Naga just a few days in advance (quite easy if you sign up for a local multi-day tour based out

I have a different perspective on this book than a "regular tourist". I was looking for the following -a) a reasonably clear overview of each city or historical site, when it was built, and by whom, and why it is of importance to tourists and to Indiab) reasonable detail for cities, outside of the usual tourist attractionsc) some attractions/ towns not listed in most tourist books.I was checking the sections on West Bengal and Orissa in particular (having lived and travelled in both states). I used those sections to compare between this guide (the 1999 edition) and Lonely Planet etc. For my purposes, Rough Guide was the most helpful - in describing places, in offering different ways to get around (with notes on how safe it is for women etc), in evaluating the historical and/or tourist appeal of places, and so forth. I think I fell for this guide when I noticed the level of detail it had on eating places and places of worship in a residential area in South Calcutta (not to mention a critique of the Pipli handicraft industry). The little vignettes on getting around in a Hindu holy site (and in temples, where allowed in) were also quite interesting. I have never been one to make pilgrimages, but if I wanted to do so, this would be useful to have along. The history section was surprisingly thorough and balanced - and I learned new things not covered in Indian history textbooks in school.Is this book perfect? Of course not. But a guidebook generally cannot cater to all tastes equally. For me (a non-tourist but an NRI returning home), it did quite well (even though Jammu & Kashmir were omitted but Ladakh was included). It sparked in me the determination to visit Madhya Pradesh (one of the few states I have never visited) and parts of the Northeast. I would love to see a Rough Guide or the equivalent that focuses more on Eastern and North-eastern India, but until this, this works fine.

I got this book for my trip to northern and southern India. My travels included parts of Tamil Namu, New Delhi, Jammu, and Agra. So, obviously I did not manage to use every part of the book. However, the parts that I did use, the book was extremely accurate and quite useful. Various times, I had more information than locals! The restaurant recommendations, even in medium sized towns, were quite good.An unexpected plus of the book was the amount of historical information included. The appendix in the back provides a moderately detailed history of India as well as descriptions of the major religions in India. Each section also has a brief history of important events that occurred there. This really helped boost my interest in the sights to be seen.The only downside was that there is no coverage of Kashmir. The authors claim that it is too dangerous a place and therefore do not want to encourage tourists to go there. However, I did travel to Jammu (the winter capital of Kashmir) and this book was of no use there.Overall, it is quite thourough and informative.

A very solid guidebook for India - excellent mapsAuthors of Rough Guides pride themselves on highlighting a country's culture, its politics, its people and maps, and this comprehensive guide to India is chock full of pertinent information on places, culture, history, facts and tidbits. Rough Guides are written for all ages of travelers with straight-forward, unsentimental information.This book includes 140 great maps, and the concise lists of the best places to lodge and eat as well as an adequate list of attractions make this guide a recommended buy. As a bibliophile, I was impressed with the thorough, stellar list of recommended books. Also included are seven pages that discuss the various music found in India, and recommended artists and discs are listed.One would think that with such strong sections in books and music that this guide also would have, as most guides to India do, a recommended list of movies about India and produced in India (India has the world's largest film industry) but, disappointingly, nothing. Also, since this guide was written by seven contributors, the writing is often inconsistent, fluxuating from clear, concise and engaging to obscure, rambling and confusing.However, after spending three weeks in India using this guide, I found that nothing of significance was omitted and the recommendations and ratings were up to date and reliable - a commendable feat indeed. Recommended.