Visiting India: ten top tips

One of the major parts of our work is arranging visits and meetings between the UK and India. There’s no real replacement for meeting face to face if you want to get a collaboration going, but travelling between the UK and India, in either direction, is no small undertaking – a long flight, a new country, visas, different food, customs, rules etc. For a collaboration to work, we want that initial experience to be rewarding and as stress free as possible. So, if you’re a UK-based researcher, and planning a visit to India, here are the team’s top ten tips:

1. Get your visa sorted well in advance, you can’t travel without one! Check out the FCO’s latest advice on how to get one.
2. Talk to your existing academic contacts about logistics – local expertise about things transport, weather, accommodation and cuisine is really invaluable.
3. Do check out our handy map of India. It has information about places we’ve visited, projects we have at the moment and leading research institutes. If that isn’t enough, check out the mapping report of Indian Innovation that we jointly commissioned from Nesta. There’s lots of supporting data for the super-keen.
4. If that doesn’t help, ask our advice – we’re here to get to know the Indian research community and connect the UK with the best opportunities here. If you’re looking for something specific, we may know someone who does it. We have people in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Pune, Chennai and Hyderabad.
5. Check out the FCO’s travel advice for India. This includes specific information about things like health or local laws and customs. It also links through to some specific advice about food and water whist travelling.
6. Carry plenty of business cards and bring a brochure – exchanging cards at the start of a meeting is more important in India than it is in British culture. Weight limits permitting, if you have literature about your organisation; do bring it to hand over to key contacts. It goes down well.
7. Check with local contacts for weather and occasion-appropriate sartorial advice. India has some pretty variable weather: Delhi ranges from sub 5°C in December to 40+°C at the height of an Indian summer; Bangalore rarely gets below 20°C, even in mid-winter; humidity is a near certainty in Mumbai; and the local joke in Chennai is that the temperature ranges from hot through hotter to hottest. As a rule, suit jackets and ties are rarely seen on Indian campuses.
8. Eat local – whilst most people in Britain will be familiar with some South Asian food, the Indian members of our team would tell you that ‘Indian’ dishes in the UK are often more Bangladeshi. Even if you’ve tried something they’d recognise as Indian cuisine, you’re unlikely to have tried a representative sample! Where ever you visit in India, why not try out something from that region?
9. Socialise – many of the most interesting conversations you’ll have in India will be in the coffee breaks, over dinner or at breakfast.
10. Get some tourism in – India is a fascinating country to visit, and not just for the science! If time affords, take a weekend at the end of your visit to see some sights. Most people you meet, and any of the team, will be only too happy to tell you about their favourite places to see.

So that’s the team’s top 10. There’s plenty of other things we could have said, and we don’t hold a monopoly on good advice about visiting here. Do you agree? Did we miss anything you absolutely must know before coming? Let us know!