The Rough Guide to India 6 (Rough Guide Travel Guides) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

I should begin by saying that I traveled around India with the fourth edition of the Rough Guide. Though I cannot comment on how updates and revisions may affect the utility of this particular version, I feel quite confident in recommending the Rough Guide over any other guidebook in the market.

My approach to travel has always been one of depth over breadth, cultural authenticity over the latest tourist craze. After spending 2 years in Senegal as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I went to India believing that I might somehow have the same ease of access to village life and cultural events that I had in West Africa. That belief was quickly dispelled, though I came to find many other redeeming qualities to travel and to life in India. In total, I have spent about one year in the country and have relied on my Rough Guide in many, many ways.

There is absolutely no way to compare the depth of historical context and cultural insight given by the Rough Guide with what you may find in Lonely Planet or other guidebooks to India. I frequently borrowed Lonely Planet guides from other travelers to compare its recommendations with the ones I found in my Rough Guide. I consistently found the Lonely Planet to be poorly researched, to offer extremely limited background information, and to eliminate many sites/entries of more obscure or esoteric value to the traveler. It would be incredibly difficult to stick to the Lonely Planet and not be one of the millions of blind backpackers circumnavigating the globe thinking they are actually seeing something. The Rough Guide, in comparison, offered countless 'text-box' entries describing the complexities of modern-day life in India. A few that come to mind dealt with drug use, journalism, organized crime, education, et al.

If you expect to spend a significant amount of time in India, you will want to know as much cultural information as possible in order to decipher the circus of events going on around you. In many ways you will be marginalized and will struggle to ever feel like you could possibly belong in the place. This of course is the love-hate relationship that nearly every foreigner who spends enough time there will eventually develop. That being said, your status as outsider will allow you to observe and analyze the country in ways that will teach you volumes about your own native land and culture. My Rough Guide proved to be an indispensable companion on trains and in hotels. It gave me the right combination of thorough logistical information for travel necessities and in-depth cultural information for personal ones. Use your Rough Guide to the fullest and get ready to see how much you can love and hate a place at the same time...

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 of a major town such as Guwahati in Assam).

It would have been helpful to be more specific about which languages are spoken in which towns/regions, as this area is quite a patchwork, and also to mention the likelihood (or not) of encountering English speakers. As it turns out, the main hub for northeastern connections, Siliguri (in the northern part of West Bengal state), inexplicably has almost no English fluency at all, even though ALL travelers must pass through this town to make onward connections. Most resourceful travelers can work through this though, but travel guides need to also guide the more timid tourists.

I will give Rough Guide credit for fairly good descriptions of the major highlights and how to reach them (which is quite difficult and more than one can ask from a guide that is only updated every two to three years). As always, they are the most culturally sensitive guide book and take the most effort to go for first source information (vs. Lonely Planet's habit of quoting second source information that is incorrect, without bothering to check it out -- and I am referring not just to location based information, but also cultural and historical background).

A bit too much like the Lonely Planet and like LP, a bit lazy and predictable. Why, for instance, do these guides not recommend hotels near the Jama Masjid in Agra (where one can find shops and food in abundance, where one is but a short walk from the Red Fort and hence a short walk from access to the Taj and where transportation does not involve the hassles that one encounters in other parts of town)? You tend to find that LP and Rough Guide give the same recommendations as far as hotels are concerned 6 out of ten times...it's not that difficult - most Indian towns of any size have an array of options.

I find the most frustrating aspects of this guide to be: the complete lack of maps for certain regions (I found there to be few maps of smaller towns in Tamil Nadu); inaccuracies in the maps (the Akbar Inn in Agra is 1km away from the point indicated and not on the same street as Tourist Guest House...in Gwalior, the guide will have you walking lenghty circles only to find that the hotel you are looking for is a stone's throw from the station on a road not indicated...in Bhavnagar a circle haphazardly placed on a map in the middle of a labyrinthine bazaar is apparently meant to serve a purpose); and the scales are occasionally wrong.

There are also internal contradictions...the time from town A to town B is indicated as 5 hours when one looks at the travel info for town A but as 7 hours when one looks at the info for town B.

Having recently decided that LP had seriously dropped its standards when it suggested turning left out of the bus stop in a Chinese town of plus 1 million people and looking for a red sign, I am at a loss for a decent guide book. Maybe the Footprint or Handbook guides are the way to go - I have yet to try them. What I tend to find most useful are older LPs (eg those of 10 years ago)...prices change and hotels open and close but those guides did tend to provide more options as far as hotels are concerned and the maps tended to be more accurate - some hotels will remain and where one finds one, one usually finds others.