Customer Reviews

India: The Rough Guide, Second Edition (2nd ed)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Rough Guide to India is a concise, comprehensive and informative source of information for people planning a trip to the sub-continent. On reading the parts relevant to my own plans, I found it to give just the right amount of information and not the oversaturation I found with, say, one of the Lonely Planet books. Two areas I looked at in more detail in the book for this review were Ladakh and Varanasi. I felt that the Rough Guide book said what need to be said about both areas, but in half as many words and without getting too heavy, for want of a better word. For both locations, it only took me about ten minutes to get a decent overview, where to go and where to stay (let's face it, when you are travelling or on the road, you really only want to have a quick glance, so you know what you are doing), whilst it took me half an hour to get the same information from Lonely Planet. The former made you feel the places were worth the effort to get there, whilst in the latter case, you had lost interest after a few minutes.

Maps are also easy to understand and not overly complicated, another big plus. The Rough Guide's information was also right up to date, another big plus. Highly recommended and in my view, the best India guide available.

When my friend and I, two Americans of Indian descent took off for the Mother Land, we took two guides-The Rough Guide and Lonely Planet. When we realized we had packed too much stuff for the sort of advertures we sought, we ditched almost all our luggage and the Lonely Planet. Two years later, on my second trip, I once again went through shelves full of guides and picked up Ed.2 of the Rough Guide. Needless to say, I give it the highest recommendation. This guide was indispensible.

I have a different perspective on this book than a "regular tourist". I was looking for the following -
a) a reasonably clear overview of each city or historical site, when it was built, and by whom, and why it is of importance to tourists and to India
b) reasonable detail for cities, outside of the usual tourist attractions
c) some attractions/ towns not listed in most tourist books.

I was checking the sections on West Bengal and Orissa in particular (having lived and travelled in both states). I used those sections to compare between this guide (the 1999 edition) and Lonely Planet etc. For my purposes, Rough Guide was the most helpful - in describing places, in offering different ways to get around (with notes on how safe it is for women etc), in evaluating the historical and/or tourist appeal of places, and so forth. I think I fell for this guide when I noticed the level of detail it had on eating places and places of worship in a residential area in South Calcutta (not to mention a critique of the Pipli handicraft industry).

The little vignettes on getting around in a Hindu holy site (and in temples, where allowed in) were also quite interesting. I have never been one to make pilgrimages, but if I wanted to do so, this would be useful to have along. The history section was surprisingly thorough and balanced - and I learned new things not covered in Indian history textbooks in school.

Is this book perfect? Of course not. But a guidebook generally cannot cater to all tastes equally. For me (a non-tourist but an NRI returning home), it did quite well (even though Jammu & Kashmir were omitted but Ladakh was included). It sparked in me the determination to visit Madhya Pradesh (one of the few states I have never visited) and parts of the Northeast. I would love to see a Rough Guide or the equivalent that focuses more on Eastern and North-eastern India, but until this, this works fine.

A very solid guidebook for India - excellent maps

Authors of Rough Guides pride themselves on highlighting a country's culture, its politics, its people and maps, and this comprehensive guide to India is chock full of pertinent information on places, culture, history, facts and tidbits. Rough Guides are written for all ages of travelers with straight-forward, unsentimental information.

This book includes 140 great maps, and the concise lists of the best places to lodge and eat as well as an adequate list of attractions make this guide a recommended buy. As a bibliophile, I was impressed with the thorough, stellar list of recommended books. Also included are seven pages that discuss the various music found in India, and recommended artists and discs are listed.

One would think that with such strong sections in books and music that this guide also would have, as most guides to India do, a recommended list of movies about India and produced in India (India has the world's largest film industry) but, disappointingly, nothing. Also, since this guide was written by seven contributors, the writing is often inconsistent, fluxuating from clear, concise and engaging to obscure, rambling and confusing.

However, after spending three weeks in India using this guide, I found that nothing of significance was omitted and the recommendations and ratings were up to date and reliable - a commendable feat indeed. Recommended.

I got this book for my trip to northern and southern India. My travels included parts of Tamil Namu, New Delhi, Jammu, and Agra. So, obviously I did not manage to use every part of the book. However, the parts that I did use, the book was extremely accurate and quite useful. Various times, I had more information than locals! The restaurant recommendations, even in medium sized towns, were quite good.

An unexpected plus of the book was the amount of historical information included. The appendix in the back provides a moderately detailed history of India as well as descriptions of the major religions in India. Each section also has a brief history of important events that occurred there. This really helped boost my interest in the sights to be seen.

The only downside was that there is no coverage of Kashmir. The authors claim that it is too dangerous a place and therefore do not want to encourage tourists to go there. However, I did travel to Jammu (the winter capital of Kashmir) and this book was of no use there.

Overall, it is quite thourough and informative.

I've found the 3rd edition, Rough Guide India to be very disappointing. It's difficult to distinguish between places worth visiting or not, as the text for each state meanders along without sufficiently highlighting places of interest. You really need to know where you want to go before you pick this guide up.

The pictures used in the book are also poorly chosen. Rather than serving as ideas for possible destinations for travellers, the shots, focused on small details and areas would serve better on postcards.

Having said all this, if you know where you want to go and just need up to date information for accomodation and transport, this guide is a great source of information.

I took this book on my first trip to India and once there didn't even use it. We didn't go to the tourist-y places so didn't need the book, and the places we went weren't in the book. The history and culture sections were useful in pre-trip preparation. We found clean and inexpensive hotels and restaurants on our own; it wasn't difficult. While in India I did find a book called Culture Shock: India. This is the book I wish I would have found and purchased before my trip and it's the one I've been recommending to everyone (even if they don't ask me!). Go to India without a guidebook!

I would like to say this book has a pretty good overview of tourist attractions, accommadations and travellers tips. It is however at times just rude to India and Hinduism in particular. It always mentions Buddhism first such as "Buddhist and Hindu temples" and the like. It also has the nerve to say of Varanasi, "before it was the most sacred place in the world for Hindu, the Buddha preached his first sermon near here". Besides this and incorporating the bogus Aryan Invasion Theory in the history section, I would recommend this book to readers but beware of some of its facts