How many days do you need in India?
Fourteen. That is the short answer for a first visit, and if you stop reading here you will not go far wrong.
The longer answer matters because India is the country where trip length is least about the number of days and most about a ratio. We have seen a happy nine-day trip and a miserable eighteen-day one, and the difference was not the length. It was how many times the suitcase was repacked and how many hours were spent in the back of a car.
The number that actually decides it
Two limits, and they are the same two we apply to every India itinerary we write:
- No more than one hotel change every two and a half days.
- No more than two four-hour drives in a week.
Above that ratio an India trip starts to feel like work. When someone tells us their last trip was too fast, this is almost always what they are describing, even when they describe it as “we did not have enough days”.
The second limit is why we ask for driving hours rather than distances. Indian main roads average 30 to 35 miles an hour (50 to 55 km/h), so a brochure line reading “Jaipur to Jodhpur, 208 miles (335 km)” is telling you about six hours, not four. Any operator who answers the question in distances, including us, should be asked again.
What each length actually buys
Under seven days
One city and one thing next to it. Delhi and Agra. Or Kochi and the backwaters. Or Mumbai and nothing else, which is a better short trip than most people think.
Under a week is a business trip with a weekend attached, and the honest advice is to treat it as a first taste rather than a holiday. Do not add a tiger park. Do not add Varanasi. The travel days will eat the days you were adding them to.
Seven to nine days
The Golden Triangle, done properly: Delhi two nights, Agra one, Jaipur two or three, with the train on the Delhi to Agra leg and a real day of nothing built in. Or Kerala on its own: Kochi, Munnar, a night on the backwaters, two or three at the coast.
This is a complete, satisfying trip. What it is not is a first sample of the whole country, and the brief that arrives asking for Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Varanasi, Kerala and a tiger in nine days is four holidays, which is the single most common reason a first India trip disappoints.
Ten to twelve days
The Golden Triangle plus one more thing that has been chosen rather than added. Either a tiger park, usually Ranthambore because it costs the fewest travel hours, or one more Rajasthani city, usually Udaipur, or two days of Varanasi at the end with the flight back to Delhi.
Twelve is enough for Rajasthan on its own at a good pace, which is the route we argue through in Rajasthan in twelve days. It is also enough for all of Kerala with time at the coast that is genuinely rest rather than a photograph.
Fourteen days
The number that works, and the one we recommend most.
In the north it buys Delhi, Agra, a tiger park and three Rajasthani cities, with two unscheduled days in it. Those two days are not slack we could not fill. They are the difference between a trip you enjoyed and a trip you survived, and they are the first thing to go when someone tries to add a fourth city. That route is the Golden Triangle and Rajasthan in 14 days.
In the south it buys the whole run from Kochi to the Tamil temple towns, with the hills, the backwaters and the coast, at a pace where nothing is a drive-by. See Kerala and the south in 14 days.
What fourteen days does not buy is north and south together. Delhi to Kochi is about 1,500 miles (2,400 km), roughly Madrid to Warsaw. Two regions need a flight day and three or four spare days on top, or they are just airports.
Eighteen to twenty-one days
Now you can have both halves of the country, with a flight in the middle, and it is a genuinely excellent trip: the north for the forts and the Taj, a flight, then Kerala or Tamil Nadu at half the volume. That is Deep India in 21 days.
Twenty-one days also buys the alternative, which is one half done deeply: Rajasthan including Jaisalmer and Bundi, two tiger parks rather than one, Varanasi with three nights instead of two, and Amritsar. Most people who have already been to India once choose that version the second time.
Ladakh is its own trip
Ladakh needs its own fifteen days and its own season, June to September, because the passes close by late October and the acclimatisation days at 11,500 feet (3,500 m) are not optional. It is not an add-on to a Rajasthan itinerary and we will not build it as one.
How we count the days you actually have
Most long-haul flights into Delhi and Mumbai land between midnight and four in the morning. Two consequences we write into every itinerary.
The room is booked for the night before you land, or you stand in a lobby until noon. And a trip described as fourteen days that lands at 3am on day one and departs at 9am on day fourteen is a twelve-day trip. We write arrival and departure days as what they are, and we count the real number back to you before we start building. It is an unglamorous conversation that removes a surprising amount of later disappointment. There is more on the first 48 hours in India for the first time.
Where we cut, when the days do not fit
When a brief has more places than days, we say which stop we would remove and why, and it is usually one of these:
- The fourth Rajasthani city. Two nights of driving to add one fort you will confuse with the last one.
- Varanasi bolted onto a Rajasthan trip with a road leg. Varanasi is worth two nights and a flight, or it is worth leaving for next time.
- A tiger park with only one drive. One drive is a lottery ticket, not a safari. Three or four is the number.
- A single night anywhere. One night means an afternoon and a breakfast, and the packing costs more than the stop returns.
More of this thinking, including the sights we leave out entirely, is in what we would skip in India.
Plan this trip
Tell us how many days you actually have, including the flights, and we will tell you honestly what fits in them and what we would leave for next time. Free, and with no obligation.
Keep reading
- India: the complete guide to planning your trip
- India for the first time: a realistic first itinerary
- Rajasthan in twelve days, and what to leave out
- What we would skip in India
- Deep India, 21 days
- India, planned by people who are actually there
Frequently asked questions
Is ten days enough for India?
Can we do the Golden Triangle in five days?
How many days for a tiger park?
Do we need longer if we are travelling with children?
What if we only have a week and we still want to go?
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