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

Annie Dare (Author), David Stott (Author)

Book Description

Series: Footprint India Handbook | Publication Date: December 28, 2009

Incredible India: beaches and backwaters, temples and tea plantations. Whether one wants to escape it all with a rural retreat, learn yoga in Goa, hike the Himalayas, or be dazzled by Bollywood, this new edition of Footprint’s celebrated and authoritative guide will take travelers off the beaten track to experience the real India. The only guide to India updated annually, it’s full of up-to-the-minute recommendations for eating, sleeping, and drinking, plus details of the vast array of adventure activities on offer and advice on how to get the most from one’s trip.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Annie Dare, a writer and journalist based in London, is the author of South India Handbook and Goa (both Footprint). She has been traveling to India regularly since 1995. David Stott, a writer and photographer, is the author of Rajasthan Handbook and the coauthor of Northeast India Handbook (both Footprint). He divides his time between India and Sydney, Australia.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1616 pages
• Publisher: Footprint Handbooks; Seventeenth edition (December 28, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1906098689
• ISBN-13: 978-1906098681
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 4.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #692,862 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best by a mile, September 24, 2009

By 

Jon L. Albee "Faulkner Wannabe" (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: India Handbook 2009: Tread Your Own Path (Footprint India Handbook) (Hardcover)

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. It's really quite exhilarating!

As a fan of Rough Guides, this is one of the few that I will recommend ABOVE that excellent series.

If you haven't been to glorious India, buy this book and go... alone if necessary. I've been four times, always with this book. It has NEVER let me down.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Is The One, February 5, 2010

By 

B. Nelson "bruce3404" (Pacific NW, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: India Handbook, 17th: Travel guide to India with unparralleled coverage of the region (Footprint India Handbook) (Hardcover)

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.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not perfect, but better the the competition, December 16, 2009

By 

Christopher Culver - See all my reviews
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This review is from: India Handbook, 17th: Travel guide to India with unparralleled coverage of the region (Footprint India Handbook) (Hardcover)

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.

Footprint's guides use a rather different organizational scheme than other guidebooks, dividing each province into zones and listing all accomodation, restaurants and transportation options for each city in the zone at the end of the zone section instead of at the end of the city entry. This can take some getting used to. The only real complaint I have is that Footprint has clearly not been updating its listings much from edition to edition. The 15th and 16th guides are basically identical even as prices rise and some once-venerable guesthouses become dilapidated. I don't use listings, taking a guidebook along only for the maps and the walking tours, but readers who depend on them might not be getting the best info.