Every few weeks someone asks us whether they could just rent a car and drive themselves around Rajasthan. It is a fair question, and the honest answer has two halves: yes it is legal, and no you should not.
We are drivers, so of course we have an interest in the answer. Read the reasons rather than the conclusion and decide for yourself.
A visitor can drive in India on an International Driving Permit issued in their home country, carried alongside their own licence. Self-drive rental exists in the cities. Nothing is stopping you.
Lane markings are advisory. Traffic uses the full width of the road and fills any gap. Overtaking happens on both sides.
The horn is a signal, not an insult. It means “I am here, beside you, do not move left.” Not using it makes you unpredictable, which is more dangerous than using it.
Everything shares the road. On a single stretch of NH48 you can meet a tractor, a camel cart, a cycle rickshaw, a bus overtaking into your lane, and cattle standing still in the fast lane at dusk.
Night driving is a different risk entirely. Unlit trucks parked on the carriageway, oncoming headlights on full beam, and unmarked roadworks. Our own drivers avoid long night stretches wherever the itinerary allows.
Signage assumes you already know the way. Motorway junctions around Delhi are signed late, in two scripts, and satnav routinely sends you down a road that is closed.
If you are driving, you are not looking. The road to Jaipur through Shekhawati, the stepwell at Abhaneri, the Aravalli hills coming into view — you will spend all of it watching the vehicle in front. Most visitors have two or three weeks in India. Spending them concentrating on traffic is an expensive way to see a country.
There is also the practical side. Someone has to find parking at Amber Fort, argue about it, wait with the car, refill in a country where fuel stations do not always take foreign cards, and know which lane at the state border is for the tax counter.
A breakdown or a scrape is where the real difference shows. A local driver knows who to call, what a repair should cost, and how to handle the crowd that gathers. A foreign visitor in the same position, without the language, is in a much harder situation. Insurance excesses on self-drive rentals are also high, and the paperwork after any incident is slow.
Self-drive rental in India runs roughly USD 25 to 45 a day for a small car, before fuel, tolls, interstate taxes and the insurance excess. Add fuel and tolls for a Golden Triangle week and you are not far off USD 60 a day.
A car with a driver, for two people, is USD 49 each per day and includes fuel, every toll, all state taxes, parking and the driver’s own costs. For two travellers the gap is small. For four it is cheaper to have the driver.
That is the part that surprises people. In most countries hiring a driver is a luxury. In India it is roughly the same money and a completely different trip.
We would not argue with you in two situations. Goa and the far south, where the traffic is calmer and distances are short. And if you have lived or driven extensively in South Asia before, in which case none of the above will be news.
For a first visit to north India, over long distances, with limited time, we think it is the wrong call.
Take the car and the driver, sit in the back, and use the driving hours. Sleep, read, watch the country change from wheat to desert. Our rates and what they include are published in full, and you can tell us the route rather than the other way round.
Babu has driven these roads since 1996. Tell us where you want to go and how long you have, and we will send a route with one price covering the car, the driver and the fuel.
