You’ve been travelling in India for a while on your own and you’re missing company. Or you’ve just arrived and you want to hear where other people have been and catch up on the latest traveller news. Or you simply want to see some people from back home, speak your own language and compare travel experiences. Here’s where to go in India when you’ve had enough of being a lone traveller and want to catch up with other travelling people:
Views Just Outside Manali
Manali
Manali in Himachal Pradesh is where everyone heads to in April and May when the rest of India gets too hot for comfort. Old Manali is where backpackers and budget travellers stay, New Manali is the town centre that has the better hotels and is popular with domestic tourists and those who like their accommodation standards to be at least above 2 stars. Surrounded by Himalayan mountain views and filled with cosy guesthouses and restaurants that serve the typical traveller food (falafel, pizza, pancakes), Manali is a place to hang out for a while and to meet other travellers. In fact you can’t avoid meeting other travellers here, so if it’s peace and quiet you’re after, Manali is not the best place. But if all you want to do is to sit in a restaurant talking about your India experiences for hours, Manali is the place.
Hampi
Hampi has developed from a budget traveller hangout to a popular tourist destination and is a stop on the well-trodden Goa-Hampi-Gokarna route. 14th century temples and ruins of old palaces spread out for miles and miles around Hampi’s backpacker guesthouses, hotels and restaurants that are made for hanging out with a book and eating one banana-nutella-ice cre pancake after another.
Gokarna
Gokarna is the new alternative to Goa. Once a quiet village on the Karnatakan coast South from Goa, it is now a very busy beach destination, but still quieter than Goa and cheaper too. The four beaches, Kudle, Om, Half-Moon and Paradise, are very popular with Westerners, and since there’s not much to do except to sunbathe, to swim and to sit in a beach shack drinking endless cups of chai or bottles of beer, Gokarna is another place to meet up with travellers or possibly find someone to travel with.
Om Beach, Gokarna (Enzo Coribello)
Pahar Ganj, Delhi
If you’ve just arrived in Delhi, are travelling on a budget and want to meet other backpackers, you’ll probably head to Pahar Ganj. It is a dump (although I hear it was somewhat tidied up for the Commonwealth Games last year, but I’m not sure if that has made it any less of a dump) but it’s where most budget travellers stay. Cheap guesthouses, restaurants that serve falafel, pickpockets, dodgy travel agents and an overwhelming stink of sewage: it’s not pretty, and if it’s the first place you see when you arrive in India you’ll probably want to turn around and head home, but you’ll meet other backpackers if that’s what you want to do.
