IPL/India once in a lifetime trip

[IPL]

To think this is possible?

My husband has wanted to visit India and watch the IPL for a long time. We are not higher earners. He has a milestone birthday coming up in 2 years, and basically I was wondering if I was mad to try and save up to go to India for a week (or would we need two weeks?) and watch the IPL. I know nothing about cricket, I don’t even know where the IPL is, and no idea on costs to fly and stay in India! Im guessing we would need visas, hotel costs, flights, tickets and transport. Can anyone give me a rough ballpark figure of how much this would be? I’m assuming it will be well out of budget but worth a try!

Thank you

There are specialist travel companies that can plan a trip for you. Even if that is too expensive, it gives you some ideas of where to go, what you need etc? Fantastic idea for a present !

The matches are currently held in many cities so maybe Google that and chose a city as a starting point.

There are tailor made tours but they are going to cost more than a DIY option. I would probably do a tour though and spend more for a special birthday. It means they can sort out buying tickets and transport to the grounds etc for you. Less work for you and they might have access to better seats?

You can do it all yourself but it depends on how confident you are. I don't know what the booking system is like for IPL? You have a couple of years to research though so that's a bonus.

As for costs again chose one of the cities and look at average hotel costs of something you like the look of. Chances are in two years the costs will be very different.

It totally depends on how you want to travel. No idea at all about IPL, but flights would be your main costs. Transport, hotel and food costs could be cheap. Dh and I used to live in India and have travelled there many times since.

A taxi journey is quite cheap (couple quid) unless you’re going far. Rail travel is affordable, maybe £20 for a cross country overnight train, but you would be wise to pre-book and pay more for the better classes of accommodation. Inter-county flights also relatively cheap (think EasyJet or Ryanair). Hotel could be extravagant if you want it to be. The sorts of places we stay are usually around £20-30 per night. You can eat quite cheaply. There are also western fast food places, like Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, etc, which are affordable.

It’s really not expensive unless you want it to be. Dh and I were poor 20 something students when we were there and we lived quite well.

*intra-country flights - as in, if you flew into Delhi but needed to fly on to Bangalore.

Find out which team he supports & plan around their home games!

I'd also find out which bit he likes most as it is a 6/7 week tournament.

Flights to India can be fairly reasonable (I know this is relative), depending on when you fly. I've regularly flown via Emirates for about £430-450 return. Based on the 2022 venues, 3 out of the 5 IPL venues are based around Mumbai so that's where you'll want to fly to (thought this would be subject to change for 2024). The benefit of Mumbai is that it is direct flights and you'll be able to go to a number of matches during your one/two week stint.

Visas are about £100 per person and can be quite a journey to get - when my friends had to get visas for my wedding there were instances of application forms and passport photos going missing!

Once in India, food, accommodation, travel etc is very cheap. In Mumbai you'll be able to get around by Uber if you don't want to chance rickshaws. Indian travel agents will be able to create quite nice packages which would include a car and driver if you wanted to do some sightseeing during your time there as well.

IPL tickets are also not too bad - looking at the website, they range from 500 rupees to 10000 rupees (£5 - £100) with the latter being 'luxury' tickets.

Very rough estimate but I think you could quite easily do two weeks in India for about £2,500 including 2 IPL matches and flights.