India Travel Tips: How to Pack

A backpack is the best choice for travelling in India. Unless you’re planning to spend the whole India holiday in one place, or you’re mainly travelling by taxi from one hotel to another and can get someone to carry the bags from the hotel to the car, a backpack can make travelling much easier than having to drag brand new luggage down potholed roads, dirt paths and beaches.

A Morning on Gokarna's Kudle Beach

What to Pack for India

Don’t pack too much. If you’re going to travel around India a lot, and especially if you are travelling on a budget, you’ll have to carry your backpack around train stations and bus stations, along beaches and down suspicious alleyways in search of cheap guesthouses.

Most visitors also end up buying a lot in India: souvenirs, insence sticks, clothes, books, spices – you can come back from India with a surprising amount of things you never intended to buy in the first place. Since clothes, cosmetics and everyday necessities are very affordable in India, you do not need to bring absolutely everything from home.

Some things to pack include prescription medicines, your favourite hair conditioner (outside big cities and their well-stocked supermarkets there’s not a lot of variety, and much of India still uses coconut oil instead of conditioner) and high SPF sunscreen.

You’ll also need some long-sleeved shirts and long trousers or skirts if you’re going to travel anywhere outside Goa or other tourist resorts. Beach wear is not really appropriate for anywhere else than Goa, Gokarna and some of the other most touristy beaches. Even though in India’s bigger cities people wear Western clothes and show some skin, much of India is still very conservative. If you’re planning to visit temples or other holy places, it is important to have something decent to wear. Shorts, sleeveless tops and short skirts are not appropriate for temple visits.

Fortunately clothes can be very cheap in India, and having whole outfits tailored costs a fraction what it would cost back in the West. Whatever you wear, forget about wearing white unless you’re planning to visit an ashram where white is compulsory: white won’t stay white for more than 24 hours in India. Even if you hand it over to laundry service, it rarely comes back as white as it used to be.

Things You Can Get in India

South Indian Coconut Palm

Although most Indian toilets are made for the local water-and-left-hand –method, toilet paper is widely available in India. Tampons are available too in some places, especially supermarkets such as the Nilgiri’s chain, but there is little variety and you may want to bring your own Tampax.

Medicines are ridiculously cheap, and pretty much everything can be bought over the counter in Indian pharmacies. If you are looking for a specific medication, it is good to know the name of the active ingredient (eg. ibuprofein) as opposed to a Western brand name (eg. Nurofen in the UK). For any serious health problems it is best to see a doctor. Doctor visits are also very affordable and you can ask a guesthouse or a hotel to recommend a practitioner.

It is often said that medicines sold over the counter in Indian pharmacies can be out of date, stored badly, may not contain the right medicine at all and so on. This is something to keep in mind when buying medication in India, although during my over three years in India I happily bought everything I needed from local pharmacies and never had any problems.

Coming next… getting sick in India.

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