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Day -19: It’s always been a dream of mine to travel in India. It’s the sort of thing that I should have done years ago, back when I was a student and money was particularly scarce. I’ve always loved travelling in countries where $10 goes a long way.

Even though countless of my friends came and went to India, I never made it myself. The closest I came was the trip that Kate and I took to Sri Lanka – “India Lite” – in January 2004.

We’ve allowed somewhere between four and six weeks for India. Because it is such a huge country, we’ve decided not to do too much. We’ll fly into New Delhi around the middle of September and then spend most of our time in Rajasthan known for its famous and colourful cities such as Jaipur, Jodphur and Udaipur. Then there is the Taj Mahal in Agra and strange attractions like the Holy Rat Temple of Bikaner, something that I am immensely looking forward to, but Kate most certainly is not.

Unlike parts of Asia where air travel is relatively cheap and we’ve caught the odd flight to link destinations that might take a day or more to travel between, flights in India seem to be prohibitively expensive if we’re trying to stretch out our savings. So I expect that most of our travel will be overland by train (where possible) and then bus.

As Kate and I are both vegetarian, India’s other great attraction is that our favourite food will be mouth-watering and plentiful. After a month or two surviving on felafel, we will certainly be ready for a country where the menus are divided into “vegetarian” and “non-vegetarian” – if the latter is offered at all.

India, here we come!