Lonely Planet India (Travel Guide)

Essential for any traveller visiting India. We travelled to India for two months in January to March 2016 and visited Goa, Hampi, Kerela, Rajasthan, Delhi, Agra, Amritsar (Golden temple) and Shimla.I found the suggested itineraries useful to provide and overall outline of our trip.The most useful information was on transport, detailing how to get from place to place, which sometimes (when we did manage to get internet) was not even online. A friend had the rough guide which had no transport detail in it, very frustrating to travel with. He even copied loads of notes from our lonely planet for the next part of his journey! Sometimes the detail was a tad out but it gave us more than a basis to get more information when we were there. I'll try to submit any corrections directly to lonely planet.All of the suggested accommodations were good and to the description. Usually we take lonely planet restaurant recommendations with a grain of salt and they were a little hit and miss but overall better than expected and better than some guides of other countries.Yes the book is big, but all guide books on India are, and they have to be for the size of the country. Sometimes I wouldn't have minded more detail! It would be great if both a digital version and paper version were provided upon purchase because sometimes we took photos of the pages to use when out and about due to the book size (later deleted of course!).

Though I adore DK guides, Lonely Planet guides cut straight to the chase and are crammed with useful information. Thus, they are perfect for actually planning a trip once you've sussed out where you want to go. I purchased this particular edition as it contains mapped itineraries at the beginning and details what sort of trips you can make according to the time span you have, the longest one being a six month round trip of India, enabling you to get the most out of your tourist visa. The book is mainly taken up by an exhaustive compilation of activities which can be undertaken and goes through these region by region. At the back there is a large section entitled "Understanding India" which lets you know more about the culture, history etc. and also contains a "menu decoder" which is very useful for those countless foodie words which simply cannot be translated into English! In addition, there is a language section consisting of a good few pages of Hindi and Tamil phrases. In short, this is the perfect resource for planning your trip to India.

Bought this as a gift for my son who is hoping to visit India later this year. It looks a very informative book as it is very thick, but I'm not sure he'd want to actually take it with him - as it weighs a 'ton!'

I used to travel India with the backpackers bible, the Lonely Planet book. It used to be extremely comprehensive and could take you on many an exciting journey into the less travelled corners of this amazing Country. My wife and I plan on returning this Winter and so bought the "book" again. Sadly this is just a holiday guide and is no real use to me in this format. A very pale shadow of it's previous self I'm afraid. Now I will have to go with my old 1990's book and wing it :(

I had a VERY old Lonely Planet guide to India and for a recent long trip I wanted an update. I made a mistake with this - by buying the "Discover India" guide rather than the full 1200 page edition. Although this was good, I had to check my old guide for details on some sites as this was a bit too abbreviated. It told you key sites but not some smaller ones.

Very detailed. Lots of maps. Useful during my trip to India. Love Lonely Planet. Always accurate and useful.

The book itself has great content, it is really useful and accurate. The layout is great and easy to navigate. However, it just weighs so much and it became a burden to carry on our journey. I would suggest buying Individual chapters (if this is available?) that are relevant to you based on your destination, rather than carry the whole book of India with you!

I visited the North of India in January 2018 and this guide has been totally useless. Most information are out of date. I left it in India, didn't bother bringing it back and sharing it as I usually do.