Most western tourists hire a car with a driver. It is quite affordable from a westerner’s perspective and most actually do it, unless they go with a tour group. The drivers will sleep in dormitories or sometimes in their car, which I found quite sad. I wanted to travel as most locals do as part of the experience and went all in.
Trains: My favorite way of traveling. Many times it’s quite scenic and it’s also very smooth. The downside is that it’s hard to get seat reservations, even a week in advance. There are even waitlists. Once I headed for a train station on waitlist position 6, and my gamble paid off. Minutes before the train arrived I was confirmed with a seat number on the app! The different classes are quite confusing. I went with second class, daytime sleeper (beds are converted to seats during the day) and a first class splurge. This website helped me a lot to decide: https://www.seat61.com/India.htm
There are always train cars with no reservation needed but these can be really crowded.
Pat of the fun is that there are always food vendors who bring tea, samosas, even biryani! And I has some really nice conversations with local travelers.
Overland buses: They run very regularly between towns and villages with no reservation needed. Bumpy and dusty with constant near death experiences because of the crazy driving style in India. Another challenge at the bus junctions was that I wasn’t able to read where the buses were going, all in Malayalam or Tamil. People were really nice, they always helped me get on the right bus. Once on the bus, the conductors always took care of me and made sure I got off at the right place.
Domestic flights from and to Mumbai. Trains would have taken more than 24 hours! I liked the stylish Air India seats.
Tuktuk for when it’s really too far to walk. Sometimes it also helps to actually find a place because the tuktuk driver would ask the locals for directions until he found it.
They all seem to look the same but there are actually different types, some even converted to min-pickup trucks. Up to 10 passengers (well, Indians) can fit into a regular tuktuk!
Mumbai taxi
And of course a lot of walking!
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