A guide to tipping in India ….
India is primarily a poor nation, particularly in the North. The gap between the haves and the have-nots is extreme and you will see evidence of this everywhere. No matter where you think you sit in the scheme of things nothing you can say will convince anyone that you are anything other than wealthy.
On all of my adventures to India, you will need to budget 500 Indian Rupees per day for tips. If you are in Australia that’s about 8 dollars. You won’t need that every day and other days you will be more generous.
Let me put things in perspective.
The guy who lugged your bags around earns around $400aud per month and the cook in your hotel probably gets around $600 a month.
In many places, you will note pilgrims. Pilgrims come from all over the country in groups, they hire tractors and trailers, small buses or even walk long distances. They come to give offerings and receive blessings. You may notice them giving rice to the beggars, that’s because rice is important to them. A bowl of rice, often grown by their own toil, means the difference between going to bed full or hungry. Buying a 50-cent bag of rice and handing it out to beggars is at best disrespectful, that bag of rice is not important to you. Please keep all your smaller notes, 10 and 20 Indian rupees, and use these to give out along the line of beggars that you will encounter at temple entrances and walkways along the Ganga.
