About SmartTripPlan

Why this site exists

Planning a trip in India means opening about twenty tabs. One for a blog post that turns out to be a list of stock photos, one for a booking site, one for a forum thread from 2016, one for a weather service, one for a map, and one for whichever aggregator ranked highest that week. By the end you have a rough idea of where to go and no clear idea of what it will cost or how many days you actually need.

SmartTripPlan was built to collapse that into two things. The trip planner assembles a day-by-day itinerary, accommodation and food options, weather and a cost estimate for any destination in one pass. The destination guides are the part a tool cannot do — written by hand, opinionated where it matters, and willing to say when something is not worth your time.

Who runs it

The site is built, written and maintained by Kishlay Kumar Kashyap, a software engineer based in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. It is an independent project, not a company, not venture funded, and not part of any travel group or booking network.

That has an obvious limitation worth stating plainly: it is one person's work, so it covers a limited number of destinations well rather than everywhere shallowly. There are currently 12 full guides, and they grow slowly because each one takes real time to write.

How the guides are written

Every destination guide is original prose. None of them are assembled from listings, spun from another site's content, or generated in bulk. Each one is structured around the questions that actually decide whether a trip works:

• When to go, and when not to. Including the months we would tell you to avoid, and why — monsoon road closures in Himachal, rafting suspension at Rishikesh, fog hiding the Taj in January.
• What it costs. Given as ranges at three budget levels, because a single average figure is misleading when the same room triples in price between October and Christmas.
• How many days you need. A direct answer, not a hedge.
• What to skip. Some well-promoted attractions are not worth the half day. We say which.
• Safety, stated plainly. Altitude in Ladakh, currents in the Ganga, landslides in the Ghats. These go in the guide rather than being left out to keep the tone cheerful.

Where the data comes from

The trip planner draws on Google Places, LocationIQ and OpenStreetMap for place data, Open-Meteo for weather, web search for descriptions, and an AI language model to assemble itinerary text. That last part means planner output can occasionally be wrong — a closed restaurant, a seasonal activity listed out of season — and our disclaimer says so directly.

The written guides are a separate thing. They are reviewed by a person and carry the date they were last checked. They are not generated.

How the site is funded

Two ways, both disclosed. We show advertising on the guide pages, served by Google AdSense. And some outbound links to hotel and flight booking sites are affiliate links, meaning we may earn a commission if you book through them — at no extra cost to you.

What that does not buy: we do not accept payment for a favourable mention, we do not rank recommendations by commission rate, and we do not soften a guide because a destination has better affiliate terms. The planner is free and does not require an account. There is no paid tier.

Corrections

Travel information decays. Prices rise, monuments change closure days, permit rules shift, roads wash out. If you find something wrong here we would genuinely rather hear about it than leave it sitting on the page — email kishlaykumarkashyap@gmail.com with the guide and section, or use the contact page.

Get in touch

Corrections, questions, a destination you want covered, or a business enquiry — all welcome at kishlaykumarkashyap@gmail.com. Full details on the contact page.