India Handbook, 17th: Travel guide to India with unparralleled coverage of the region (Footprint India Handbook)

What do we want in travel guides? I believe we want accuracy and a balance between context (history, literature, architecture, culture, etc...) and pragmatics (timetables, addresses, prices, etc...). This guide to India is the best of the lot, conforming to my simple formula.

It's nice and thick, to give the cultural traveler enough to contemplate, but it's also portable and durable, to fit the needs of the frustrated backpacker. Footprint has been at India for a long time (this is the 18th edition!), so you can expect a well-refined and useful product, not to mention an enjoyable armchair read. The book is as useful in the Indian countryside as in the cities. It's really THAT comprehensive, and it includes detailed chapters on Kashmir and other Himalayan provinces.

Don't buy this book looking for pretty color photographs or graphics. You'll need your mind to create those. And when you go to India, you'll get to test you visual imagery against reality...Read more

I echo the sentiments of the previous reviewers. I've spent 12 weeks in India over two trips and I've used the Lonely Planet, the Rough Guide and the Footprints. If I could only take one guide, it would be Footprints because it's the most concise and well-researched of the three (my second choice would be the Rough Guide; I like LP, but feel that their India guide isn't very well updated). So buy the Footprints and get thee to the India Mike website, which is the best travel website ever. Ask an impossible question and you'll get an answer (or 10), usually within a few hours.

Though I have not yet seen the 17th edition of Footprint's India handbook, I have read the 15th and 16th ("India Handbook 2009") editions, taking the latter with me during a recent trip in the Subcontinent. I found Footprint's guide vastly superior to its competitors, the Lonely Planet and Rough Guide publications.

The Footprint guide gives considerably more background on the history and culture of India than the Lonely Planet, and a bit more than the Rough Guide. If you are a traveler keen on understanding the people instead of merely seeing monuments and buying souvenirs, then you'll find Footprint's supplementary information to be of great help. Footprint also spurs the traveler on to tackling some challenges on his own, as interesting sites outside the beaten tourist path are occasionally mentioned without the exact steps necessary to get there. In comparison, the Lonely Planet especially seems like it is meant to hold a timid traveler's hand...Read more