We started because the standard India itinerary skips the best part.

Most India tours run at the speed of a coach schedule: three cities in four days, a monument each morning, a shopping stop each afternoon. You come home with photographs and almost no idea who lives there.

Travel Real India was built the other way around. We pick fewer places, stay at least two nights in each, and hand the days over to people who live there — a fort historian in Jodhpur, a Khasi guide in Nongriat, a Banarasi weaver whose family has worked the same looms for a century.

Everything is booked direct. Guides, drivers, homestays and cooks are paid by us, at rates we are happy to show you. Groups cap at twelve, and most of our travellers go private in twos and fours.