What things cost

A glass of chai at a stall on the Jodhpur road costs ten rupees. Your ticket into the Taj Mahal costs a hundred and thirty times that. Both numbers are right, and the distance between them explains most of what you will see through a car window. Prices here are what to expect in Rajasthan in November 2026, checked in August. Anything with a ticket counter attached is worth a second look on the day.

The anchor

Learn one conversion and you can stop doing arithmetic. Rates as of August 2026.

In the head: divide rupees by 25 for złoty, by 110 for euro. A four-figure rupee price is rarely a large sum, and a two-figure one is almost nothing to you — which is exactly the trap. The gap between "almost nothing to me" and "a morning's pay to him" is where haggling stops being a game.

What things cost

What people earn

The first row is the floor: the state guarantees rural households unskilled work at that rate, so private employers must beat it or find nobody. The last row is why a government job with a pension is the most sought-after thing in a small Rajasthani town, and why the teacher's family owns a scooter and the labourer's does not. Your ticket into the Taj Mahal costs what four days of guaranteed rural work pays.

Tickets

Two practical notes. The Archaeological Survey, which runs the Agra sites and Kumbhalgarh, has pushed its ticketing online and its counters increasingly refuse cash — book on the official portal the night before and carry the QR code on a phone. Palaces run by family trusts rather than the state, such as the City Palace in Udaipur, set their own prices and change them without warning; check those at the gate.

Why foreigners pay more

The ratio runs from five to one at Amber to twenty-two to one at the Taj, and it is deliberate policy, not a scam. Set one price high enough to maintain the buildings and you shut out the Indian families the monuments belong to; set it low enough for them and the upkeep is unfunded. Two prices solve it. Measured against income the Indian rate is the harder one: ₹50 is a sixth of a day's guaranteed wage, while ₹1,100 is a decent lunch in Warsaw. The tourist ticket is the cheapest part of your day, and it is subsidising the queue in front of you.

Cash, QR codes and cards

Every stall in India has a printed QR code taped to the counter because instant bank-to-bank payment is free here and works for a ten-rupee tea. Riding it needs an Indian bank account and an Indian phone number, which you will not have. There is one workaround: a prepaid tourist wallet, set up with a passport and visa through an app, topped up from a foreign card and refunded when you leave, with a cap around ₹25,000 a load and ₹50,000 a month. It is sold at Delhi airport. Set it up only if the idea of carrying cash bothers you; otherwise skip it.

Cash is simpler. ATMs are everywhere and take foreign cards. State-owned banks — State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Bank of Baroda — usually add nothing at their end, while the private ones charge ₹200–300 a withdrawal, so take the machine's maximum each time, often ₹10,000. Tell your bank you are travelling first.

Then there is the note problem. Since the ₹2,000 note was withdrawn in 2023 the largest note is ₹500, and that is what every ATM hands out. Nobody selling chai can break one, and being asked to wait while a shopkeeper runs down the street to find change is a daily event. Break your ₹500s where it is painless — hotels, restaurants, petrol pumps, ticket counters — and hoard the small notes. Cards work at hotels and chain restaurants and almost nowhere else you will want to buy something.

Tipping

Tip in rupee notes, not coins and not foreign currency, which nobody can change. And keep it in proportion: the driver's tip is real money to him, and it arrives on top of a wage the agency already pays.