Many of us have that dream. To spend one summer, backpacking across Europe.
Even though it was not my first time in Europe, I finally got some time off to do a trip across Europe this summer. I am not sure why. But suddenly, I am getting queries from many of my readers to help them plan their trips to Europe and they see me as some kind of a Europe vacation planner.
Even though many of my readers consider me as a Europe trip planner from India, I really cannot spare the time to plan someone elseβs vacation. Planning Europe trip from India is not a cakewalk but I give you pointers in this post. I had written a similar one for USA and hopefully, this guide will be as helpful as that one. Here I give you tips on planning a Europe trip from India.
I have gone more than 20 times to Europe in the past 10 years and you can find more about my favourite European destinations. This Europe travel blog by an Indian hopes to be the foremost expert on this subject.
Planning your Europe trip at the last minute?
I know everyone is busy and don’t have time to plan their itinerary to Europe. Here are some quick links to make you the best Europe trip planner.
- Booking is my go to for booking boutique hotels in Europe.
- I always use Skyscanner for all my flights to Europe.
- Getyourguide is my favourite tour aggregator in Europe.
- I use Hostelworld to book all my hostels in Europe.
- I use DiscoverCars to compare car rental prices.
- FlixBuses for all my bus transportation in Europe.
- RailEurope for all my train bookings in Europe.
Don’t know how to plan your Europe trip on your own? I found many preplanned Europe tours for you to choose from:
Table Of Contents
- 1 Tips on planning a Europe Trip From India / How to plan Europe trip from India
- 1.1
- 1.2 Read a lot of travel blogs/ travel articles online while planning Euro trip from India:
- 1.3 Booking Your Flight tickets while planning a Euro trip from India:
- 1.4 Preparing a 5-6 week Europe trip itinerary from India
- 1.5 Applying for a Schengen Visa for Indians:
- 1.6 Internal Travel within Europe during your Euro trip:
- 1.7 Accommodation while Eurotrip planning from India:
- 1.8 How to book other Activities to plan a trip to Europe from India:
- 1.9 Public Transportation in Europe:
- 1.10 What to Pack for Women for a trip to Europe?
- 1.11 Foreign Currency in Europe:
- 1.12 Europe trip cost from India / How much does it cost for Europe trip from India?
- 1.13 Which Mobile SIM to use in Europe:
- 1.14 Using Google Maps in Europe:
- 1.15 Inform all your banks and mobile phone operators while planning a Europe trip from India:
- 1.16 How do I plan a 15 day trip to Europe?
- 2 Conclusion:
Find out my recommendations for Europe
Before we go any further, find out some of my recommendations for day trips for your trip to Europe.
Hvar, Croatia
The 5 island tour from Split is a favorite
Colmar, France
Colmar is definitely one of the prettiest towns in Europe.
Algarve, Portugal
My favorite beaches in Europe are here
Tips on planning a Europe Trip From India / How to plan Europe trip from India
Find below few options for best itinerary for Europe trip if it is your first time in Europe. You can find more details in my detailed Europe itinerary post.
Read a lot of travel blogs/ travel articles online while planning Euro trip from India:
A year ago, if you had asked me where Algarve was, I would have probably stared at you like you were from outer space. But now that is a thing of the past and Algarve has been added to my list of favourite places from around the world. I read a lot of travel blogs, national geographic/ lonely planet / Conde Nast travel articles every day.
I read voraciously any travel related content that I can get my hands on. I now have a better sense of the places that I really want to visit. So why do I ask you to read them? Because if you donβt, then you end up visiting only the famous cities like Paris, Amsterdam etc and you tend to ignore all the other gorgeous lesser-known cities/towns/villages. If you want to be your own Eurotrip planner, then no one can judge your tastes better than yourself.
As travel bloggers, we can only give you our version of how a place is and give you tips based on our experiences on how to plan Euro trip. This post gives you some ideas on how to plan a Europe trip from India.
Booking Your Flight tickets while planning a Euro trip from India:
This comprises a huge chunk of your travelling expense. So you need to find the best possible deal for this. In my case, I had made my mind to fly into Lisbon and then fly back to Bangalore via Dubai (I stayed with my sister for a few days on my way back) from one of the cities in Western/Central Europe.
With this intention in mind, I logged into Skyscanner and Kayak to give me the best possible rates and dates for this combination. After many iterations, I finally got a good deal and picked Emirates which was my best option. Both these sites are extremely good when it comes to finding the best flight deals.
I flew into Lisbon and flew out of Frankfurt via Dubai to Bangalore. Even though my cheapest option was Oman Air, I did not want to spend a lot of time in transit and preferred a straightforward route rather than taking multiple flights.
Read this post
Preparing a 5-6 week Europe trip itinerary from India
I know that there are many people who would love to take traveling as it comes. Go without any pre-set plan and make plans on the go. I am not such a person. I always love to know beforehand where I will be staying, for how long I will be there in any particular place.
Even though it sometimes does not go according to plan, my mind is still at peace if I knew beforehand.So what did I first do? While planning my Europe travel itinerary, I made an initial list of places I wanted to visit. I did take a lot of inspiration from this post by BlondeAbroad. So my initial draft of places for my Europe tour plan from India looked like this:
β’ Lisbon
β’ Porto
β’ Madrid
β’ Costa Del Sol
β’ Seville
β’ Barcelona
β’ Andorra
β’ Paris
β’ Strasbourg
β’ Luxembourg
β’ Bruges
β’ Ghent
β’ Amsterdam
β’ Frankfurt
But then I decided to consult a map and realised that my geography was all over the place. I knew that I had to make some changes. A friend helped too. He was like why are you not going to Central Europe or Mallorca in Spain?
Since I had been to Paris, Amsterdam and Frankfurt, I decided to cut short my days there and decided to add Vienna and Prague to the list. I had to remove Andorra also since I realised that I needed a multiple entry Schengen Visa and I had applied for a single entry.
After multiple iterations, my itinerary for Europe finally looked doable. My final Europe tour itinerary looked like this:
β’ Lisbon
β’ Algarve
β’ Madrid
β’ Seville (This got canceled)
β’ Barcelona
β’ Mallorca
β’ Paris
β’ Amsterdam
β’ Brussels (Took day trips from here to Luxembourg, Bruges and Ghent)
β’ Luxembourg
β’ Bruges
β’ Ghent
β’ Strasbourg (Day Trip to Colmar)
β’ Colmar
β’ Vienna
β’ Prague
β’ Frankfurt (Only went to catch a flight to Dubai since changing the port of exit to Prague meant paying a huge deal of money.)
Whew, that is too many places to see. Donβt get disillusioned by the number of places. It is definitely doable. I wish I can follow the concept of βslow travelβ but currently, that is not an option for me. Once the places were decided, I had to decide how many days I was going to spend in each of these locations.
I had an excel sheet where I tracked all these changes and I have no clue what I would have done without that excel sheet.
Many attractions in popular cities like Paris, Rome tend to get sold out months in advance. Check your availability for tickets below.
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Recommended Read – Where to go in Europe
Applying for a Schengen Visa for Indians:
I have already written about this in detail here. Once I figured that I was going to spend 9 days in Spain, I realised that I had to apply for a Schengen Visa through Spain consulate.
There is one thing I would like to tell my readers here. I cannot give you any guarantee that you will be granted a visa. But what I have seen is that if you have all the required documentation, then they have no grounds to reject the visa.
Internal Travel within Europe during your Euro trip:
I know the temptation of buying those Europe travel packages from India. But you need not do this and can entirely plan your travel within Europe on your own at half the price.
If you do not use Rome2rio yet, please start using it at once. It is one of the most helpful websites that I have come across. So what does it do? It gives you a list of options of how you can go from one place to another. It even tells you which mode of transportation is the shortest and the cheapest.
Many people asked me if it is required to get a Eurorail pass. There are contradictory views to this. But when I evaluated it in my case, it was coming out to be too expensive. The only advantage that an Eurorail pass gives is flexibility and it may work out to be cheaper if you are less than 26 years old. Also in some of the countries I visited, buses were cheaper and more convenient. Since my dates were already fixed, it was easier for me to pre-book all my tickets. But if you want flexibility, then a Eurail pass may be better.
Another great resource for train travel in Europe is Man in Seat 61. This dude knows everything about train travel and you can check him out. He gives you multiple options on which trains to take from Point A to Point B. He also tells us which website is better to book trains in each country.
From Rome2Rio, I figured out if it was better to take a bus or a train. It also redirects to the websites of the various bus operators in the continent. Flixbus is a good and cheap bus service if you want to book buses within Europe.
I took only one flight within Europe, that was from Barcelona to Mallorca and back. I booked through Ryan Air and they are one of the cheapest options. But there are several things to keep in mind if you are flying with Ryan Air. I will detail them out in a later post.
Accommodation while Eurotrip planning from India:
So do you want to book hostels, budget hotels or luxury hotels? It really depends on what kind of a traveller you are. Since I was given sponsored stay in some locations, I did not have to worry about them. But for the rest of the locations, I still needed a place to stay. I went with a combination of all three.
I researched like crazy on Tripadvisor, Booking and narrowed my choices for the hotels.
In cases where I was staying in hostels, Hostelworld and Hostelbookers were my go-to guide. If you are staying in a 4-bed female dorm in a hostel, it will cost you a minimum of 25 Euros and this depends on how expensive the city is. Even in hostels, a private room can cause you around 80-100 Euros easily. In some cases, the hotels were cheaper than the hostels. All my accommodations in Europe cost me between 20 Euros β 110 euros per night during my Euro trip plan.
Need more budgeting tips. See how Amy managed to go around Europe in 45 days on a 3500$ budget.
Many people are apprehensive when it comes to booking hostels. But I really enjoyed my time in hostels this time around and I would definitely be using them more next time.
Most hostels now cater to the luxury traveller who wishes to have some privacy but at the same time want to meet new people. Hostels host a variety of fun events like bar crawls, free walking tours, traveller nights etc.
I did not opt for an Airbnb this time since I was travelling alone. Else Airbnb is an excellent choice in Europe.
I was very happy with all my choices and the only one I would have changed is the one in Amsterdam.
But you cannot have everything in life and there will be few cases when all the above sites fail you. But through all the three sites, you can research which is the best locality for you and which hotel/hostel suits your tastes.
All these sites also offer deals and they can be a steal if you do your research right.
How to book other Activities to plan a trip to Europe from India:
You can always book for other activities online through Viator and GetyourGuide. But for most of it, I left the dayβs activities idle. This gave me the flexibility for me to go there and decide what I wanted to do and what I did not want to do.
However, for things like the Opera in Vienna, you may have to make your booking in advance if you want a good seat.
Public Transportation in Europe:
I love the public transportation system in Europe and you can always use Google maps to help you figure out how to go from one point to another. Else you can always walk, which I feel is the best way to discover a city in Europe.
I did not have much success with Uber though in Europe. They were always 15 minutes late. This has definitely become much better over the years.
What to Pack for Women for a trip to Europe?
Carry an umbrella. You never know when it is going to rain. Since I was there during Spring/early Summer, I had carried with me a combination of clothes that would suit both weather conditions.
I was able to wear shorts only in sunny Algarve. Most of the other places I had to stick to wearing jeans and tops coupled with a light sweater. I wore a lot of dresses but I had to wear tights along with it. A jacket is also ideal for colder locations like Paris.
You are going to be doing a lot of walking. So it is ideal that you carry a good walking shoe and a pair of flip flops. I managed to considerably reduce the amount of baggage I was carrying this time.
The thing to remember is that you can do your laundry there and most hostels will have a washing machine which you can hire for less than 5 euros.
Europe uses round pins for all their electronic devices. So make sure to carry multi plugs if your devices have a square pin.
Try to keep all your toiletries to the maximum allowed limit. Most of the hotels and hostels provide them.
Foreign Currency in Europe:
Do not carry too much cash. That is always my motto. Even though I lost all my cards this time, I will still stick to carrying the minimum amount of cash. In case you want to withdraw, you can always go to an ATM and withdraw cash.
Only thing to note is that you have to pay around 3% on every card transaction. So it makes better sense to withdraw in bulk.
Also get yourself a cash passport. They are the most helpful cards that I have used till date.
Europe trip cost from India / How much does it cost for Europe trip from India?
Most people ask me how much it cost for my European vacation. In most places, I was able to manage with 50-100 Euros per day.
It also depends on the location you are travelling to. Places in Eastern Europe like Montenegro and Sarajevo are some of the cheapest destinations I have travelled to in Europe.
Which Mobile SIM to use in Europe:
I preferred Orange in Europe. You can use your Orange sim in all the countries in Europe. The only issue is that you cannot recharge them in another country. For instance, if you bought a SIM in Spain, you can use the SIM card in France too.
However, you cannot recharge the card if it is out of balance. Initially, in Portugal, I went for a lesser-known company. But that SIM stopped working the minute I was out of Portugal. Hence it is better to stick to the known operators.
But public free Wifi is the best thing in Europe. I will definitely write on that later.
Using Google Maps in Europe:
Always remember to download an offline Google map of the next city in your itinerary for Europe and should be in your to do list when you are planning on how to plan your trip to Europe. You will not realise how useful this is for you. I forgot to do this for Madrid and you know how that turned out.
Inform all your banks and mobile phone operators while planning a Europe trip from India:
You are going for a long trip. So it is better that you inform all your concerned banks and mobile phone operators.
Airtel has pathetic customer care service and be prepared to scream at them for their incompetence. In spite of informing them, I still had to pay an exorbitant amount once I got back.
How do I plan a 15 day trip to Europe?
I have written extensively about planning your Europe itineraries. Use a combination of any of them to pick out the best one suited for you.
Conclusion:
These are some of my tips on how to plan a Europe trip on your own from India? Do you have any other queries regarding your trip to Europe? You can always shoot me an email and I will get back to you at the earliest. Hopefully, I have covered most of the queries first-timers have when they plan Eurotrip on their own.
Donβt forget to take a printout of every booking and leave a copy of it at home.
Liked it, then pin it.
Find some recommendations for Europe guidebooks
Guidebooks for Europe
Traveling to Europe and need more guidance on which books to read? These are our recommendations for you to read before you go.
Recommended: Best DAy Trips in Europe
BOOKING RESOURCES
Looking to book your trip now? Find some of my favorite resources I use while booking my trip. You can also find my travel gear here.
Book Your Flight
I am a Skyscanner fan when it comes to booking international flights. I use Makemytrip and Yatra for domestic flights.
Travel Insurance
As an Indian, I prefer ICICILombard and I am always insured when I am traveling outside India. In addition, I have used World Nomads and SafetyWing for some of my trips.
Book Tours
I do go on a lot of day tours especially when I am traveling solo and love going on road trips with my husband.. Depending on convenience, my choices are Viator or Getyourguide.
I'd imagine that for most travellers from India, six weeks in Europe would really tax the budget. Exchange rates would be pretty tough when you're converting Rupees to Euro. That's possibly why you're getting lots of enquiries about budget travel. What are the most popular destinations in Europe for travellers from India?
Great all-inclusive post about travel to Europe. I must admit, I had to google Algarve. Now that I've seen photos of it though, I am dying to go! Great tip about the visa, too.
Great tips about planning the trip! I must say I would have really hard time choosing just some places to visit during a trip like that. Europe offers so much, I really do not know how would I choose. What was your criteria, besides geography? π
Great tips about planning the trip! I must say I would have really hard time choosing just some places to visit during a trip like that. Europe offers so much, I really do not know how would I choose. What was your criteria, besides geography? π
I plan my trips pretty similarly, with a lot of research and inspiration from fellow travelers and magazines. I love Rome2Rio also and I use it nearly every time I travel near or far. Hopefully I'll be touring Europe soon and I'll probably borrow some of your itinerary!
It sounds like you are super organised in planning your trip, especially using an excel spreadsheet – sounds just like me! I am a planner too and love to read up on places to go and also keep an eye out using sites like Skyscanner. Your trips are fantastic and really helpful to plan a trip to Europe, especially for first time visitors.
There was so much useful information crammed into one post! I have done both kinds of long term trips : planned from start to finish, and completely unplanned. I honestly enjoy both but I agree that sometimes it's better to have an itinerary planned, especially if traveling to areas like Europe that tend to cost more than say, SE Asia. It's definitely no fun to get to city and realize the only available accommodation is either out of your budget or already booked. I've been in those situations and sometimes you just have to bite the bullet, which ends up costing more. Plus, pre-planning your trip allows for more time to actually enjoy the place you're in instead of surfing the web. I'll definitely have to check out Rome2Rio. Thanks for sharing!
I know some friends who have done the backpacking trip and I so wish I had the energy to do it! There are a ton of amazing tips in here. I was surprised to read that you were able to find some good deals with Emirates. I thought they were the nicer airline companies that are on the pricier side π
Great article abput how to plan a trip to Europe. It has all the important information one could need about visa, currancy etc. Thanks a lot! I love planning holidays. Probably my favourite past time activity.
Great itinerary for a Eurotrip, I've been to several of those cities already, a great choice of places! Also very useful info about those who travel to Europe for the first time. Thanks for sharing this!
There is definitely a lot to consider when planning a long trip especially in Europe. Hope it works out. Great list of things to research and places to visit.
Currently the most popular destinations are Paris and Amsterdam. Hopefully this will change in the coming years.
Currently the most popular destinations are Paris and Amsterdam. Hopefully this will change in the coming years.
You should definitely go. It is a gorgeous place.
Well I wanted to go to Western Europe this time. So that was my criteria this time. π
Well I wanted to go to Western Europe this time. So that was my criteria this time. π
Hope you have a fun time in Europe when you go.
Hope you have a fun time in Europe when you go.
Yes I love planning most of my trip. I leave only some parts of the trip unplanned.
Yes I love planning most of my trip. I leave only some parts of the trip unplanned.
Yes Europe can turn out to be costly if we do not prebook in advance.
Yes Europe can turn out to be costly if we do not prebook in advance.
I am a frequent traveler on Emirates. So I usually have points. However this time I booked well in advance so the price difference was not much. Not as cheap as Oman Air. But the travel time for Oman Air was like 50 hours which meant I had to sleep in two different airports each way. Definitely not worth it.
Yes It is definitely a fun activity.
You are welcome
I am a frequent traveler on Emirates. So I usually have points. However this time I booked well in advance so the price difference was not much. Not as cheap as Oman Air. But the travel time for Oman Air was like 50 hours which meant I had to sleep in two different airports each way. Definitely not worth it.
Yes It is definitely a fun activity.
You are welcome
Yes I definitely did have a great trip except for a few bumps here and there.
Yes I definitely did have a great trip except for a few bumps here and there.
Looks you have planned out your trip in detail very efficiently and its good to plan before visiting the place so you can utilize your time maximumly and can explore and enjoy the place.
Yes I love the planning part the best. So the trip was carefully planned.
Your article is a life saver. I can’t tell you how relieved I feel after getting all the inputs from your side. Coincidentally I started the planning thing on excel as I was bored at work :D. You’ve wonderfully attempted to explain every important aspect of travelling. Kudos !!
Thank You so much Abhishek. I am glad that you found it helpful.
You have mentioned about the Excel file with the planning here in the article. Could you share that with me please.
Even as a Swede I would probably try to mix it up a bit and put it into groups. This because some countries are easier to explore than others. Countries like France, Germany and Italy are groups one by one due to their size. Then you have the Benelux countries which is easy to travel between. You have the Iberian peninsula. You have Eastern Central Europe, with Austria, Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia. You have the Nordics (Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland), Balkans and Balticum. There are of course a few more. By sorting it out in groups like this, then for a 6 week trip you have the possibility to choose three groups and really have the time to explore and enjoy each place. π
I think you managed to pick a lot of lovely places, mostly very characteristic of their countries. I have realized that there is no such thing as a perfect itinerary. We need to enjoy each destination for what it is.
You definitely have some great tips here. Picking a geographical area is definitely key. Also, I’m heading to Belgium this summer, and saw you did a day trip from Brussels to Luxembourg. Now googling that for my trip π
Europe is an expensive destination but if planned well and in advance definitely could be done. We have recently moved To Ireland and are planning to cover as much Europe possible by scoring some deals on flights. Downloading offline maps is a great way.
You have done a fab job listing these tips for someone looking to plan a Europe tour. Though everyone has their own set of plans but these basic tips would surely be handy. Agree public transport in Europe is awesome and they make it lot easy to travel across Europe. You have covered some of the best destination we missed looks like we need another trip planned π
Itβs a dream for most Indians to go a Europe trip. But, money isnβt the only problem, the biggest challenge is to plan and execute the trip. You have just given the most amazing way to fulfill this Indian dream. We consider ourselves privileged to have been able to visit the lovely continent on a couple of occasions.
Totally loved your article. My Europe trip is planned in a month, and most of the planning part is done, still I am going to bookmark it for further reference w.r.t forex, google maps etc. It will help if you can add some info on some apps that might have come handy during this trip. We are also people in job, and we didn’t have time to go on a long backpacking trip. So, we are going on a two weeks holiday. Some things like booking your flight in advance, booking your hotel options in advance and making the right choice totally makes sense no matter for how many days you travel.
Great tips for travelling Europe from India. I really like the itineraries that you made. Those are some great cities with tons of stuff to see.
Great tips of planning Euro trips from India! I’ve never been to Europe but hope to visit soon. I also liked your visa tips!
I’ve lived in Europe for 4 years and travelled so much but this was still informative. I did look at your first itinerary and was like hmm that seems pretty erratic but then your second one made so much more sense haha. I agree with you on the wifi thing. I never had a functioning sim card outside of Denmark and I never needed it because wifi was everywhere!
It is a well written post with all little details. An Indian really need to plan well a budgeted trip to Europe otherwise the expenses will go beyond anything. Apart geography what else you considered for selecting the location for one week. Skyscanner is a real good option for flights and Rome2rio is new for me. Will bookmark this for my future reference.
Great post. Thanks a lot for taking so much effort to explain the things. Indians planning their first foreign trps always go through a lot of uncertanties and hesitations. As for myself, I am yet to even start planning but this should help!
Such a comprehensive guide this is. Thank you for sharing the tips. It will definitely help everyone who is planning a Europe Trip in coming days. I wish to go on a long trip like this someday
This is a very good guide not only for Indians who want to travel to Europe but for everybody. We should all spend time to careful plan our vacations in order to get the best deals and see as much as possible while also having fun. For me personally, when I backpacked Europe, the Interrail was very useful because I chose to travel a lot by train in Scandinavia. Just 2 train tickets in Norway would have made up the entire cost of the Interrail so for me it was a no brainer to buy the pass instead.
Such a long trip requires massive planning and you have good pointers to that.
I usually do in smaller installments that is little easy on the pocket too and can balance with office and school schedules. But then your pointers are helpful for shorter vacations too.
Thanks for sharing this information.Europe is a dream destination of so many people to spend their Vacations. While visiting Europe we have to be careful about choosing best deals.
Wow! Amazing post for someone from india to plan a Euro trip from India. Bookmarked this post for my future travel plans.
Hope you get to visit Europe one day.
Thank you for making our knowledge more because it is most important to know about place we would like to visit once and we will see all location with is describe by you your blogs are very nice
Hi Soumya,
Is Dec a good time to venture western European counties for an Indian couple?
Christmas markets and other winter activities are definitely a must in December. If you don’t mind the cold.
Many of us have a dream of travelling to euro countries from India. Thanks for this awesome post. This will definitely help many of our people and guide them.
Great tips you got there! Do Africans fit into the visa ideas?
Your blog is very informative thank you. Itβs really helped me.
Thank you
I have read your blog post and i found it is quite absolutely interesting.
Keep up the good work!
Fantastic article, but you’re missing Europe’s most beautiful and inexpensive destination, Albania! No Schengen. easy visa
Hi
A well written article
How about a bus trip across europe, like landong in budapest and return from some other destinations?
Good luck π
Good luck π
Thanks for sharing your detailed info. I love traveling very much. and I want to know which website is sharing cheap flight tickets.
Such a informative content! I hope everyone loves to travel for mental freshness. With the help of travel, we can improve health and immunity.