If you fly home once a year, make it this month
The rain has gone, the heat has not come back, and the air over most of the country is as clear as it gets before the winter inversion sets in over the north. Navratri has just finished, Diwali is on 21 October, and wedding season starts immediately behind it.
October is the best four weeks in the Indian calendar and the one month where the weather is genuinely pleasant in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Goa at the same time. It is also the month that gets expensive fastest if you book late.
If a meal is going to be the centrepiece of a trip, October is when everyone else has the same idea. Indian Accent at The Lodhi in Delhi remains the country's most internationally recognised table. Masque in Mumbai, in the old Shakti Mills compound, runs a tasting menu built on Indian ingredient sourcing. Avartana at ITC Grand Chola in Chennai does a south Indian tasting menu that is among the most quietly inventive cooking in India. Farmlore outside Bangalore is a farm restaurant with a handful of seats a night.
All four take bookings well ahead and all four fill in festival season. If you want one of them in October, that reservation is a now problem, not a when-I-land problem.
If you are not flying in, the gifting runs on a deadline that most people miss. Anything posted from the US, the UK or Canada needs to leave roughly three weeks ahead to clear customs and reach a house in India before the day. Ordering within India for delivery within India removes the problem entirely and is almost always the better answer — mithai, hampers and flowers all deliver nationally.
The thing worth saying plainly: a gift ordered from an Indian site and paid for on a foreign card typically carries about 3% of forex spread you will never see itemised. On festival-sized orders that adds up.
Money. Move what you need ahead of the trip rather than at the airport. Airport forex counters are the worst rate in the country by a wide margin. On a $10,000 transfer the gap between a specialist and a bank wire runs to around ₹14,000.
Cards. Carry something that charges in rupees. Every Indian terminal will offer to bill a foreign card in your home currency and that option costs roughly 3% every time.
Paperwork. October is thick with public holidays. If the trip involves banking, PAN, Aadhaar or anything at a registrar's office, check the calendar before you book the flights — Diwali week is effectively a write-off for anything official.