What a Day Costs
Street food in India runs $1-2 per meal. That is the floor. A thali from a stall, some idli, a plate of momos. If you eat at mid-range restaurants instead, budget $10-20 per meal. Luxury restaurants start at $35 and climb. A take-away meal of shareable pasta, meat or Indian food costs about $10.
So food alone can swing your daily spend from $3 to $100. Most people land somewhere in the middle without trying.
One traveller spent just over £300 a month in India three years ago, over three months. That converts to roughly $405 per month at 1 GBP = 1.35 USD. Call it $13 a day. Another traveller reports spending roughly $500 per person per month. That is $16-17 a day. The gap between those two figures is not inflation. It is style. The $500 figure comes from a slower travel pace, staying three or more days per location.
Sleeping
Hostels and budget hotels in India run INR 750-1,500 per night. That is $9-20. For that you get a clean simple room or a dorm bed. The bottom of that range is a dorm. The top gets you a private room in most cities.
Prices for backpacker accommodation and sights have gone up significantly. That is worth repeating because the old numbers floating around online are stale. If you budgeted from a 2019 blog post, add something.
Getting Around
Buses. Almost the entire three months, one traveller took buses and booked them the night before or the day of. No advance planning required for most routes. That flexibility has a cost in comfort, not usually in money.
The practical snag is payment. Some booking apps work with foreign cards, some do not. One traveller used an app that accepted a UK card. Another had a card that would not work and got the hostel to book instead. Carry a backup plan for paying, because the bus itself is rarely the problem.
The Daily Math
You can spend your day in just $10 in India and Pakistan. That is a real number from someone who did it. It means street food, a dorm bed, buses, and not much else. No alcohol. No paid sights. No taxis.
India can be as cheap or as expensive as you wish it to be. It is a perfect budget destination, but costs add up quickly if you only visit the tourist areas and are keen on drinking often. Two beers in a tourist restaurant can cost more than your bed.
At $10 a day, a month is $300. At $16-17 a day, a month is $500. At $30 a day, which is still modest by Western standards, a month is $900. None of these are wrong. They are different trips.
What Actually Moves the Number
Three things. Where you eat, how often you drink, and how fast you move. A $1-2 street meal versus a $10-20 restaurant meal is a $9-18 difference per sitting. Three meals a day and you have just added $27-54 to your daily total. Do that for a month and the budget report writes itself.
The traveller who spent $405 a month was not eating at luxury restaurants. The one at $500 a month was not either. The difference is mostly pace and small daily choices, not one big expense.
Accommodation is the second lever. $9 a night is $270 a month. $20 a night is $600. That single line item can exceed everything else you spend.
Buses keep transport cheap. Booking the night before or the day of rarely costs more than booking early, and it means you are not locked into a schedule you have already outgrown.
India rewards slow travel with lower numbers. Three days minimum per location, street food most meals, buses between towns. Do that and $13-17 a day is achievable. Do the opposite and India will cost you what any other country costs.
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