It’s only natural that when foreign nationals visit India either for business or for leisure, they’re going to arm themselves with utility oriented information that they need to travel within the country. This would include apps for finding taxis in India, maps of India, metro train apps, ATM locators, currency converters and the likes.
But in order to go one step ahead and travel within India with complete ease and panache, foreigners coming to India should download the following 5 iPhone apps.
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5 iPhone apps to better familiarize foreigners with India
India Menu Interpreter
Although most Indian menus are available in English with details of ingredients listed below, there are many remote, rural and roadside shacks in India that still can’t boast of such tourist friendliness. For foreign nationals, ingredients of Indian menus can be quite intimidating. Get the India Menu Interpreter app to do the job for you. Previously titled Hurry with the Curry, this app presents an exhaustive guide to Indian restaurant dining, tells you what goes into your favorite Indian dishes and helps you sort out the tikka’s from the tandoori’s.
You can search food items though this app through image references and alphabetical indexing. The India Menu Interpreter app will also help you with eating etiquette in India, covering topics like Eating with Your Fingers, How to Order, Kid Friendly Foods and Healthy Choices amongst many others.
Lingolook India
Forget typing in Google Translate and getting your Hindi pronunciations right. Lingolook India is especially useful because of its powerful audio element with an Indian female voice translating your requirements into Hindi. It hasn’t been called the Best iPhone app for Travelers in 2009 by the Travel + Leisure Magazine for nothing.
Through more than 300 essential audio translations and more than 500 essential phrase and word flashcards, you can speak Hindi with perfect pronunciations and pull out the Hindi equivalents of the exact words that you need. Phrases segregated in categories like Essentials, Food & Drink, Shopping, Travel and Services make it very easy for the user to look up the right word at the right time.
India Culture Guide
As a foreign national, imagine if you are home staying with an Indian family or if you are attending a private dinner. How will you react if the Indian hostess keeps on insisting you to take a second helping even if you can’t eat a single morsel? Answering many such awkward, tacky yet practical questions about Indian social and business etiquette, the India Culture Guide is a must have for all foreigners traveling to India. Whether you need to be well informed about the way greetings and business cards are exchanged in India, how to sit appropriately for Indian business dinners, the unsaid rules of gift giving or how to handle cutlery with Indian food at a private home, this app will answer every question.
This app has more than 150 usable reference terms greetings and conversations, names of people and occupations, holidays and celebrations, religious protocols, common expressions, communication styles, standard business terms and much more. This app being produced by Dean Foster Associates makes it even more useful because they have been a premier cross-cultural training organization for international businesses from several decades now.
My City My Way
Equally useful for locals and foreign travelers alike, My City My Way India provides information for 11 Indian cities in 50 essential categories that include dining, popular attractions and tourism, shopping, nightlife, best events around town, transportation, local secrets and much more.
This app claims to update itself by using real time data and flouts its USP of being a hub of information instead of having to download separate apps for each category.
You can use the built in GPS of your device to allow this app to throw up insights of what’s the best thing you can do nearby in a particular city.
The best part about it? It’s free!
TripAdvisor
Once you have an app like My City My Way which gives you exhaustive details about travel within India, a more generic app like TripAdvisor will be useful to get reviews of millions of other foreign tourists for a certain hotel, spa or an entertainment destination in India. Not much needs to be said about TripAdvisor, a brand synonymous with a complete travel portal.
From getting the best information about flights, to photographs of specific areas to the ‘Near Me Know’ feature to discover options according to your geographical location, the iPhone app for TripAdvisor will act like a good old familiar back up for all foreign nationals travelling to India.
So if you are foreigner traveling in India, and are not much aware of Indian way of doing things, do arm your iPhone with these apps and we are sure you will have a much smoother and better Indian experience!
very well made, Thank you very much for the information.
I will be really useful for all the work we are developing.