You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
Mrs Scape and I are off to India in a week or so. Surprised his week to learn we can't exchange GBP to Rupees before we travel.
We can use our bank's Mastercards to spend and to withdraw cash when we get there but there'll be fees to pay for every transaction.
So we looked at preloading travel money cards, and whaddaya know, you can't preload a card with Rupees either! Which presumably means that, for example, the Post Office card will charge us 1.5% to start with (loading fee) , and then a further conversion charge each time we use it (something like 3%)
SO we're tempted to suck up the fees our own bank will charge.
Are there any alternatives?
cash is king..
its a good few years since i went, but plenty of places to change money (clean sterling bills £10s/£20s, ensure no tears or damage as they wont take them), just ensure you calculate the sums and know the denominations, as some places will attempt to rip you off, you'll get worse rates in hotels and banks, but they are less likely to scam you..
get cash at an atm in the airport to start you off
need to declare US$ 5k+ cash , so hould be fine for a week,
Not India, but we went to Sri Lanka for half of our honeymoon & it was the same there.
We just did it at the airport when we got there, and got a mix of rupees & USD.
Our guide reckoned that the rates were about as good there as we'd get anywhere else, although we had no way to see if this was actually the case.
He didn't push us towards a particular exchange though, so have no real reason to think he was lying.
We also ended up changing some USD to rupees in a bank & it was a great experience. A real old-school bank with lots of dark wood everywhere, traditional counters & lots of people writing stuff down in massive ledgers.
There was a security guard in there with a rifle that looked very much like a Lee Enfield.
might be too late, but there's a few cards (first direct, halifax credit, etc) that don't charge for foreign exchange
Failing that, just take a wedge of GBP cash and exchange it at the booth at the airport. More developing countries tend to have much more competitive rates everywhere (so you don't get as scrwwwd doing it at the airport as you would in the UK) - check the difference between the buy/sell rates to make sure you're not being ripped
What I did, probably too late for you now, is to get Halifax and Barclaycard which charge no fee on foreign spend or cash withdrawals. This is the best way to avoid fees when travelling abroad.
In India I used them at ATMs to withdraw cash, and would pay off my credit card balance to avoid interest payments. Only thing is being India some ATMs may be off line or not work with your card, so you have to keep a good float of cash just in case.
Unless you're shopping just in Western style shops, definitely take GBP (or USD) cash for local exchange in India.
We took sterling, in clean BoE notes, as mentioned above.
It's an amazing country, enjoy!
You'll need lots of paper 🙂
I've worked there a few times and in many other 'less-developed' places too plus normally have a strong constitution, except in India...
I was in India in 2016 just after they'd withdrawn loads of notes from the currency, and all the cashppoint machines had run out. I couldn't get any money in Delhi airport, and couldn't get any in Goa airport. There were queues and queues outside the banks, people waiting for them to open so they could get cash. Fortunately I was able to pay by card at most places.
Hopefully that won't happen to you though!
You can exchange at Indian Airports or get a Starling/Monza card and use that for spending (and select to pay in local currency)...I've been lucky enough to go to India a few times, everywhere I went took plastic so I just loaded my Starling card and used that.
Monzo/Starling/Chase/Revolut should work. Sign up will give you and instant virtual card for some of them, so you should have time before you go.
Hiya,
I'll add that a Wise account works really well. The exchange rates good and easy to mve money around between the pots you have.
BR
Jerry
15 years travelling to places where this would be a concern.
I never came across an issue clean new issue dollars couldnt solve - and usually very economically ....
i carried card for a back up.
Thanks all. Plenty to go at there.
Mrs Scape has been in touch with the travel company and their suggestion is that the guides will point us at the best way to draw cash etc.
Haha, this takes me back to travelling in India in 1997 and being given literally bricks of rupees stapled together when changing money.
We tried to unstaple them to get smaller notes! Little did we know that you were supposed to hand the bricks over at hotels or banks for smaller denominations.
The innocence of youth pre credit cards.