India

Harry’s India material begins with Holi in Delhi, and recurs across later trips.

Observations

From Celebrating Holi in India with Locals

• Culture and festivals: Holi celebrates the triumph of good over evil in Hinduism and is one of the biggest days of the Indian year. It’s celebrated by taking to the streets for an open paint-and-water fight, and normal life carries on around it — Harry’s strongest impression was of people driving and working while completely covered in colour.
• Attention as a foreigner: he was warned beforehand that tourists are specifically targeted during Holi, which proved true. Strangers pulled him into street celebrations and then asked for money, and two men followed his group for at least ten minutes.
• Money and costs: entry to the organised Holi party was around 3,000 (from video – unverified); a moong dal cheela from a street stall was 500 rupees (from video – unverified).
• Food: moong dal cheela — a thin, crispy, caramelised batter pancake cooked on an oiled pan with vegetables, egg and onion, served with a sweet sauce Harry likened to hoisin. Spicy by his standards.
• Atmosphere: at the organised event he found people of every age and, in his words, no bad atmosphere anywhere.

From India’s Best Street Barber 🇮🇳

• Scale and contrast: over a billion people, the second-largest population in the world. In Mumbai what struck Harry hardest was skyscrapers standing directly beside slums — a word he flags as unkind but uses because it’s the label on the map.
• Money and costs: a street shave cost 40 rupees, which Harry puts at just under 50 cents. He paid 500 rupees — six or seven dollars — roughly the price of a shave in England.
• Street trades: barbers work from pavement pitches with their tools laid out, often decorated with Hindu statues and calendars, and Harry assumes there’s no fee for the spot. Quality was far higher than the setting suggested: two full passes, the back of the neck, and a face massage.
• Language: outside tourist contexts, expect no shared language at all — his whole transaction with the barber ran on gestures.

From Crazy $10 Challenge in Delhi, India 🇮🇳

• Money and costs: a full day in Delhi — chai and a snack, a head massage, a tuk-tuk across town, a paratha meal, a plate of sweets and a shirt — came to a little over $10. Harry calls Delhi one of the most inexpensive cities he has ever visited. Individual prices: chai 20 rupees, papadum 5, head massage 150 (down from 200), tuk-tuk 130, cheese paratha 120 with chutneys included, sweets 100, shirt 250.
• Cash: nobody has change — Harry’s blunt generalisation is that this holds anywhere in the country, even at train stations. Break notes in advance.
• Bargaining: it splits by trade. Tuk-tuk fares are heavily negotiable and opening quotes can be three or four times the fair rate, while the market stalls in Old Delhi hold genuinely fixed prices.
• Touts: they open with a friendly question rather than a pitch, and visible foreign currency draws them immediately.
• Chai culture: served in very small cups at any hour, made on a portable burner with milk, sugar and ginger. Harry had never had ginger in tea before India and came round to it; the skin on top he still avoids.
• Food: cheese paratha — dough stuffed with cheese, vegetables and spice, deep-fried in about ninety seconds and served with a tray of chutneys that are much spicier alone. Indian sweets are bought as mixed selections rather than whole cakes, which Harry notes you can’t really do in the UK.

From Flying to India for the Cricket World Cup Final 🇮🇳

• Cricket is the national event, and the 2023 World Cup final in Ahmedabad filled a stadium of well over 100,000. Virat Kohli is cheered as an individual in a way Harry says he has never seen for a single player anywhere.
• Big events reprice everything: hotel rooms at two to three times their normal rate, flights booked last-minute at around £115, five-hour delays to make way for charter traffic, and tuk-tuks quoting triple the app price.
• Hospitality has a religious framing that can be used in a negotiation. Harry’s successful line at a hotel desk was that in Hinduism the guest is treated as a god.
• Security scales with the prime minister’s attendance, to the point that accredited journalists were unsure whether their approvals still covered them.
• Counterfeit sports kit is a fifth of the price: a fake India shirt 200 rupees against 1,000 official, and a flag 200.
• Gujarat: camels on the roadside, kurta and kediyu as local dress, and a visible Muslim population alongside the Hindu majority.

From I got Kicked out of the Golden Temple for this 🇮🇳

• Sikhism, seen close up in Amritsar: founded in the 15th century by Guru Nanak in Punjab, one God, everyone treated equally, other religions respected. The Golden Temple gives out around 100,000 free meals a day and lets anyone sleep there regardless of religion, and is kept clean by volunteers. Harry rates the Sikhs he meets among the friendliest people of his travels.
• Covering the head is required in the temple, and shoes and socks come off at a counter. Sikh men do not cut or uncover their hair; a turban tied for a visitor cost 400 rupees.
• Filming has limits. Plainclothes police at Amritsar airport stopped Harry and demanded to see his footage — a first for him anywhere — and the Sikh police moved him on for filming while swimming in the holy water. He accepts both.
• Partition is a living presence: India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were one country until the British divided them, and Amritsar has a museum to it.
• Religious tension is real and Harry doesn’t edit round it. A tea invitation turned into an anti-Muslim conversation; he said he had been to Pakistan and found the people kind, declined to press further, and reflected afterwards that he shouldn’t have asked the question.
• Touts: persistent rather than rude near the temple. His method is to be persistent back and kill them with kindness, and the one Hindi phrase he tells a first-timer to learn is “I don’t want it”.
• Population and its costs: he is blunt that the rubbish and pollution are serious, attributes them to scale rather than neglect, and equally blunt that you look past them.
• Money and costs (2023): airport prepaid taxi 750 against 400–500 on a ride app; chai 10 rupees; a turban tied 400; a mixed-to-order perfume 200.
• A coincidence he enjoys: he is told his own surname is a Hindi word for someone who invents their own job.

From I Survived 24 Hours in India with No Money 🇮🇳

• Sikh hospitality is institutional as well as personal. The Golden Temple in Amritsar feeds anyone free, and its information desk hands out a booklet of more than twelve guest houses offering free stays to visitors of any religion. Harry’s verdict is that he picked the right city to have no money in.
• Money offered back gets refused. Two men who had given Harry rupees to start a business declined to take them back and told him to pass them on instead.
• A free lift came from the first bike he flagged, whose rider turned out to be a policeman and would not accept payment.
• Tourism is overwhelmingly domestic, and foreign visitor numbers have fallen since Covid according to a local.
• Diwali brings enormous crowds and a run on electronics.
• Harry’s own honesty note, which belongs on the record: having found a free bed, he and Will went back to their hotel and said so on camera rather than imply otherwise. He also points out the people sleeping rough outside the temple and what that makes of a 24-hour game.
• Money and costs (2023): street-market shoes 250–400 rupees; a bottle of water 20; a touted trip to the Attari border 1,000 a head.

From James Bond Finds Love in India (Bollywood Edition)

• Gujarat is a dry state. Alcohol is banned; visitors buy on a permit from shops that are deliberately hard to find — Harry’s was in a hotel basement — and he was charged a processing fee that never appeared on the receipt.
• Gujarati cuisine is entirely vegetarian, for religious reasons stated plainly by his host: eating meat is a sin, as is alcohol. Tobacco is not.
• Fine dining exists and is regional: a nine-course Gujarati tasting menu with a thali built as a pyramid, 24 vegetables in the kitchen, different plates for different diners, and a betel-leaf digestive as the final course.
• Tibetan communities displaced by the Chinese occupation live and work in India with the government’s permission, and run their own markets.
• Weddings are public. Harry walked into one off the street.
• Money and costs (2023): Indian whisky 1,100 rupees; a 1,000-rupee tip on a nine-course dinner.

From Avoid Delhi! Come here instead 🇮🇳

• Waste is a national problem with a stated cause. Harry’s guide puts it down to recycling systems still developing against a population of 1.43 billion, and thinks the government compares well to its neighbours. A two-child policy is under discussion. Harry’s own framing is that everyone watching, himself included, is part of the problem.
• Landfill is an economy. Pickers earn 300–500 rupees a day collecting plastic bottles to sell on to recyclers; children go in for metal; armed guards control access.
• The Ganges: flows from the glacier at Gangotri, bathing in it removes sins, and the water is believed to keep for years without spoiling — people fill containers to take home. Rishikesh is where the rafting, the pilgrimage and the yoga all meet.
• Rishikesh is the yoga capital of the world, and where people come to qualify as teachers.
• Sadhus live very roughly — roadside huts — on donations, which surprised Harry, who had assumed otherwise.
• Atithi devo bhava, explained to him on camera: the visitor is a god.
• A request from a local, passed on directly: don’t pollute the Ganges. Harry widens it to every river.
• Money and costs (2024): Dinner in the Sky 3,500 rupees, about $40; a hat 150; a lemonade 50; Maggi noodles 50.

From $1000 USD Street Food in Delhi, India 🇮🇳

• Tibetan refugees have a settled place here. The colony in north Delhi sits on land granted by the Indian government, has been there over 25 years, and its residents hold Tibetan registration rather than Indian passports. It sells imported Southeast Asian goods and laphing — the same dish Harry ate in Nepal — at 50 rupees.
• Delhi’s air is the headline health problem: an index above 500, primary schools closed, and specialists putting a day in the city at 25–30 cigarettes.
• Honesty is the criterion, not need. Harry withholds a reward from a seller who quotes him dishonestly and says so on camera, on the same day he gives 8,000 rupees each to a barber, two shoe cleaners and two noodle stalls.
• The line that gets money accepted when it’s refused: offer it for the family rather than the man.
• Trades are inherited: a 55-year-old salon in Ahmedabad run by the son of the man who opened it in 1967, when a haircut was one rupee.
• Everyone on a street sells the same thing. Harry’s observation is that copying is the norm and the first person to try something different — his example is bubble tea in Paharganj — would do very well.
• Money and costs (2024): a street shave 30 rupees; chicken chow mein 10; shoe cleaning 40; a shoe cleaner’s daily earnings around 800; bubble tea 140; a full salon treatment in Ahmedabad 800.

From Tourists at India & Pakistan Border 🇵🇰

India seen from the other side of the gates, at the Wagah border outside Lahore.

• The daily flag-lowering ceremony is performed by both armies at once, to stands holding thousands on each side, every day of the year. The two crowds compete to be louder and the guards never speak across the line.
• Harry’s reading of it, from the Pakistani side: what looks like staged hostility is two militaries cooperating precisely, every evening, for decades.
• He was told he would be shot if he crossed the line, and that the crossing is on alert around the clock.