First Time in India: What Nobody Tells You Before You Land

The visa: start earlier than you think

India has no visa-free entry and no visa on arrival for most nationalities. You apply online for an e-Visa before you fly, and approval is not instant — allow at least four days, and more in peak season. People do get caught out by this, and there is no fixing it at the airport.

Apply through the official Indian government portal rather than a third-party site. There are many agencies that charge several times the real fee for filling in the same form, and some that are outright scams. The fee, the eligible nationalities and the validity options all change, so check the official source for your passport rather than an article.

Print your approval and carry it. Immigration will usually find you in the system, but a printed copy has resolved more queue arguments than any amount of explaining.

Landing: the first hour at the airport

Delhi's Terminal 3 is modern, well signposted and in English. Immigration can take thirty to sixty minutes at busy times, and the queues are worst in the small hours when most long-haul flights land.

Get cash before you leave the arrivals hall. ATMs are there and work with foreign cards, and you want a few thousand rupees for the first day even though cards and UPI are accepted almost everywhere now. Small vendors, auto-rickshaws and monument extras are still cash.

Arrange your transport before you walk out, not after. Prepaid taxi counters inside the terminal fix the price in advance. Uber and Ola work well and have designated pickup zones. What you do not want is to walk into the arrivals concourse at 3am and start negotiating with whoever approaches you.

• Take ₹3,000–5,000 from an airport ATM for the first day.
• Use the prepaid taxi counter, an app cab, or a pickup you booked in advance.
• Ignore anyone who approaches you inside the terminal offering a taxi or hotel.
• If someone tells you your hotel is closed, overbooked or burned down, they are lying and want to take you to one that pays commission. Call your hotel yourself.

Getting a SIM card

Buy it at the airport if you can. Airtel and Jio both have counters at Delhi T3, and having a working number from the first hour changes everything — app cabs, maps, WhatsApp to your guide or hotel.

You need your passport, your visa, a passport photo and an Indian address, which can be your hotel. Activation takes anything from twenty minutes to a few hours, so buy it before you need it rather than when you do. Tourist SIMs are cheap by any international standard.

An eSIM from your home provider or an international eSIM app is the simplest alternative and works immediately, usually at higher cost per gigabyte. For a trip under two weeks, many guests find that trade worth it.

Money, cards and what things cost

India is far more digital than most visitors expect. Cards work in restaurants, hotels and shops, and UPI — the local instant-payment system — is used everywhere from taxi drivers to vegetable sellers, though it generally needs an Indian bank account.

Cash still matters at the edges: auto-rickshaws, small stalls, tips, temple donations, and some monument extras. Keep small notes. Breaking a ₹2,000 note at a chai stall is a daily minor struggle.

Tell your bank you are travelling. Cards blocked for unusual activity on day one is the single most common money problem we see, and it is tedious to fix from another time zone.

Tipping: what is normal

Tipping is customary rather than obligatory, and the amounts are lower than in North America. Nobody will be rude if you do not tip, and everybody appreciates it when you do.

These are the ranges guests ask us about most. They are guidance rather than rules, and you should adjust for how the day actually went.

The scams worth recognising

Almost none of this is dangerous. It is commercial, it targets people who have just landed and do not yet know what things cost, and it stops working the moment you recognise the shape of it.

The common thread is someone creating urgency about a problem you did not have, then solving it for you.

• "Your hotel is closed / overbooked / has moved." It has not. Call the hotel yourself.
• A driver who will not use the meter and quotes a flat fare four times the real one. Use an app instead.
• A "government tourist office" near New Delhi railway station that is nothing of the sort. The real one has an address you can check in advance.
• The gem or carpet export scheme — buy stock here, sell at a profit at home. It is always a scam, and it has been running for decades.
• A helpful stranger who takes you to a shop "just to look". He earns commission on whatever you buy.

Water, food and staying well

Do not drink the tap water anywhere in India, including in good hotels. Bottled water is cheap and available everywhere — check the seal is intact. Many hotels now provide filtered water in the room, which is safe and better environmentally.

The same logic applies to ice in unknown places, pre-cut fruit left out, and raw salads washed in tap water. Cooked food served hot is generally the safest thing on any menu, including on the street.

No vaccinations are mandatory for most travellers unless you are arriving from a yellow fever country, but several are commonly recommended. That is a conversation with a travel clinic a few weeks before you fly, not something to read off a travel page.

What actually surprises people

• The traffic is not aggressive so much as continuous, and it works. Crossing a road is a matter of walking at a steady pace rather than waiting for a gap that never comes.
• You will be asked for photographs, particularly at monuments and particularly if you are travelling with children. It is genuine curiosity and a polite no is fine.
• Distances are longer than they look. Two sights on the same page of a guidebook can be an hour apart in Delhi traffic.
• Shoes come off at temples, mosques and some tombs. Slip-on shoes save you a great deal of bending down.
• English is widely spoken in cities and in the tourism trade. You will manage without a word of Hindi, though a namaste is always well received.