I am shopping for the perfect India travel guide book. I have internet searched some titles: Insights Guide: India, Fodor’s Essential India and RBS Visitors Guide INDIA. These are great books with great ratings but I am looking for something that gives me unexpected insight. What titles give tidbits that aren’t well known and facts that make the area itself?
It is not a guide, but if you are looking for insight try Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found. It is a travel memoir based on the author's experience. Really, any travel memoirs are better than guides, because they are so personal and provide a lot of the emotional understanding of travel.
Honestly these days I don't really even use guidebooks -- my favorite resource to find interesting things to see or do are people's blogs or Instagram. If you have an Instagram account, what I usually do is search for random hashtags for places I want to visit - you can find some awesome inspiration for your travels by doing that, and it gives me a better look into more 'off the beaten path' type activities than guidebooks often do!
Yes, I would suggest looking at India travel blogs and read about people's real experiences at these places. That's what I usually do and I find it way more rewarding than reading travel guides.
With connectivity, I am also one to go without a tangible travel guide. The advantage is they're more updated as more and more people are sharing their travel experiences through social media sites such as FB, instagram, and even twitter. But if you truly want a book version for the love of paper (I do, with regards to fiction hehe!) perhaps you can look into Lonely Planet. A decade before, I have Lonely Planet to check out the different provinces in my home country the Philippines and another for the Southeast Asia countries. I'm sure there is one that's devoted solely to India.
I'm looking that will cover all in one: destinations, local cuisine, lodgings, and even local dialect. I'm not sure if everyone in India knows English but one cannot be too prepared. Perhaps directories of tour guides would also serve me well. They would best know what experiences first time travelers will be looking for.
I think researching on the tourist destinations would be kind of a let down, as the best part of traveling is being surprised at what you see before you. With these travel books, you see these countries and destinations through someone else's eyes, someone else's perspectives and opinions, so if these books do not recommend a specific spot or area, you will probably follow it as a tip and would avoid it entirely, when you can like it if you tried. There are lots of things that can't be contained in books, and the only way to see them is by exploring while traveling. Now THAT is time well spent.
In one hand, I seem to agree with the point on the SURPRISE element. The pleasure is indeed different when you chance upon something that is so different, unusual from what you normally have at home. On the other hand, if you're the type who wish to have a bit of control on things, researching will always be part of your travel journey. I guess, the key is just to strike a balance and to treat guidebooks NOT as the GUIDE OF ALL. Take in the advice, but not necessarily follow every bit of the suggestion. Make your own exploration. Guidebooks are akin to hearing first hand feedback from other people. It's one of my pet peeve when a person tells another to NOT go to this and that place because of X reasons. When I hear this type of advice, I just take it with a grain of salt. Like you said, EXPERIENCE is the important thing. I'd like people to go to certain places even if I happen NOT to have a pleasant experience there. Sure, I'd share my own experience, but I wouldn't flat out say or make a suggestion to NOT go. I've come to realize that people will ALWAYS have a different experience at any given place/moment.
While the guidebooks are still useful, I'd imagine that a lot of people are turning to blogs or even forum's such as this one for their information in different parts of the world. Most sites can also be accessed on a smartphone or tablet aswell, so it's not as if you have to even carry a guidebook around with you anymore.
The Lonely Planet has the most excellent guides from my experience and National Geographic travel writers and bloggers as well. Think about where you want to go first then you can look it up on the internet. Travel guides aren't so handy these days as a personal itinerary and a booked destination.
With India being so large it's difficult to find all the information you need in one book. I personally prefer to do my general research online via blogs and reviews. Once I've made a decision on where I would like to visit I pick up a Time Out guide about the city I will be in. There's less choice as the editions are city based as opposed to country based but there provide up to date information as they are updated regularly.
