Thanks for your insight. I’m currently a 3-hour drive outside of one of the top 8 Indian cities (by population). I stuck to the highways and didn’t notice such a drastic dropoff in wealth, but I definitely saw it in less than an hour.
To add to your bill denominations, I’ll add the prices of things I’ve seen for context. Current conversion is about 1usd to 85inr. Dinner in my industrial rural hotel has been 350-500 INR (<$7USD) and it’s 5,000/night ($70). 1L of Tata Copper water in the hotel is 50 (<1). I stayed in a VERY nice city hotel overnight where a beer was 600 (<8), an excellent dinner buffet was 2400 (28usd), and the room was about 11,000/night (126) - not far off in price from my experience with, say, a suburban Hampton Inn in the US. My colleague tipped the city bellhop 200 (2.30) and the rural one 100, but I can’t guarantee that’s the proper amounts. My entire trip through a museum with all the add-on attractions cost 300 (<4)
If you have the opportunity there was another eye-opener from my western perspective that isn’t as flashy, but profound in its own way.
Go to a neighborhood market. Look how small it is compared to the supermarkets in the west. See how few processed foods are on the shelves, and look how inexpensive staples are like rice, chickpeas, and lentils are. I remember something like a 2kg for something like 30 INR (34 cents USD). You can get a reusable Gillette razor for 100 INR ($1.15 USD) I picked up one of these when I was there:
It really puts it into perspective how much worthless and needless junk we have in western our stores. What is needed to live is surprisingly simple, and inexpensive.
![Welcome to Brussels! If you look out the window you will see....fog? [OC]](https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/3db3ee35-d13d-4835-b545-8570378bb8cf.jpeg){kind=link}
Thanks for your insight. I’m currently a 3-hour drive outside of one of the top 8 Indian cities (by population). I stuck to the highways and didn’t notice such a drastic dropoff in wealth, but I definitely saw it in less than an hour.
To add to your bill denominations, I’ll add the prices of things I’ve seen for context. Current conversion is about 1usd to 85inr. Dinner in my industrial rural hotel has been 350-500 INR (<$7USD) and it’s 5,000/night ($70). 1L of Tata Copper water in the hotel is 50 (<1). I stayed in a VERY nice city hotel overnight where a beer was 600 (<8), an excellent dinner buffet was 2400 (28usd), and the room was about 11,000/night (126) - not far off in price from my experience with, say, a suburban Hampton Inn in the US. My colleague tipped the city bellhop 200 (2.30) and the rural one 100, but I can’t guarantee that’s the proper amounts. My entire trip through a museum with all the add-on attractions cost 300 (<4)
If you have the opportunity there was another eye-opener from my western perspective that isn’t as flashy, but profound in its own way.
Go to a neighborhood market. Look how small it is compared to the supermarkets in the west. See how few processed foods are on the shelves, and look how inexpensive staples are like rice, chickpeas, and lentils are. I remember something like a 2kg for something like 30 INR (34 cents USD). You can get a reusable Gillette razor for 100 INR ($1.15 USD) I picked up one of these when I was there:
It really puts it into perspective how much worthless and needless junk we have in western our stores. What is needed to live is surprisingly simple, and inexpensive.