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Exploring India: Independent vs guided tour travel – What is a better choice

What is the best way to explore the sacred temples, remote island corners, and green-cap mountains.

India is the majesty of all culinary delights, bustling landscapes, secluded islands, and hidden gems. It’s the land of spirituality and peace, a natural paradise filled with an abundance of beauty. 

But what is the best way to explore the sacred temples, remote island corners, and green-cap mountains? Well, we have some advice for you!

The preferred method of traveling varies depending on the individuals who travel. There are various ways of traveling, whether it’s with friends, family, or solo. While there’s no right or wrong way of traveling, there are some big differences in partaking in an independent vs guided tour. Let’s see some of the pros of each tour and determine which one is the best for you.

A guided tour – Pros
You’ve taken the first step to travel to India and explore the beauty of this amazing country, so now it’s time to organize your itinerary and choose the preferred traveling method. A guided tour offers many benefits, moreover since India is a vast land, considered an industrialized country with an increasingly developing economy.

An organized itinerary
You might wonder how this affects your mode of travel. It will affect your itinerary and travel pace since it might be difficult to travel due to the infrastructure not meeting the standards of your home lands. India guided tours will take you to the most popular places, depending on your preferences and the type of tour you’ve booked.

This way, you can avoid the unfamiliar chaos of New Delhi, or in India in general, and explore the beauty of the Taj Mahal, get on the track in the villages of Tordi, or experience the nightlife in Goa, going directly to the best places with people who know the path!

Learn more
On a guided tour you’ll be taken from one place to another and be given recommendations about which places to visit throughout your trip. Additionally, the tour guide will talk about the history of the places you visit, the culture, traditions, myths, and more.  In these instances, it’s usually a local person who is doing the guided tours, so they have generations of stories and insider knowledge to share.

It’s a great way to learn more about India through the eyes of the locals and their lifestyles.

Visit many destinations
Many destinations have traveling restrictions or safety concerns. Thus, you’ll need a guided tour to visit these places and participate in the activities. Whether you are traveling to a country where there is political turmoil or participating in activities like horse riding, you’ll be exposed to higher risks if you travel solo; especially with the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions.

Taking a guided tour opens up a world of opportunities and allows you to travel safely to places that weren’t even on your list. Moreover, if you don’t speak the local language, you are not aware of the local customs or don’t have any plan, it might be pretty stressful.

Hassle-free planning
With a guided tour, you can have a definitive plan and structure of each plan instead of figuring out what to visit or how to get there. India has many places to visit, and if you end up caught in the traffic chaos or don’t manage to find transportation, you’ll end up wasting your free time.

A knowledgeable and experienced guide will help you understand more about the places you visit and can make your trip more enjoyable. Plus, guided tours can save you a lot of time, energy, and money.

Independent tour – Pros
There’s nothing more exciting and life-changing than exploring a particular country on your own. Let’s see some of the benefits that make independent traveling appealing to some.

Be your own guide
While some people prefer having an organized itinerary and a structured plan when visiting a particular country, others want to feel the excitement and adrenaline of traveling solo on such an adventure-like trip.

Everyone is different – some people like to spend most of their time seeing as much as possible, while others want to enjoy the culinary delicacies and try everything India has to offer.

On an independent tour, you’ll be your own guide and have complete control over your schedule and time.

Flexible journey
With a guided tour you don’t have as much flexibility as you’d like to. Nevertheless, in some cases it depends on where you’re going or what you are doing, but traveling solo is more flexible and budget-friendly.

Rather than booking a group tour and visiting all at once, you can decide which places to visit and when.

Freedom
Going solo offers greater flexibility, but it also allows you to choose what to do and where to go. It provides the ultimate freedom in doing things your own way and deciding how you’ll be spending your time. And since in India you’ll never be bored, you get the freedom of being spontaneous.

Combine both
These are the benefits of each type of tour in India, now it's up to you to choose the preferred traveling method. We might advise you to combine both, a guided tour in certain locations and traveling solo in others, but we’d leave the choice to you.

News Editor - TravelDailyNews Media Network | + Posts

Tatiana is the news coordinator for TravelDailyNews Media Network (traveldailynews.gr, traveldailynews.com and traveldailynews.asia). Her role includes monitoring the hundreds of news sources of TravelDailyNews Media Network and skimming the most important according to our strategy.

She holds a Bachelor's degree in Communication & Mass Media from Panteion University of Political & Social Studies of Athens and she has been editor and editor-in-chief in various economic magazines and newspapers.

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