For some the choice is easy, but for me I always struggle to decide whether to go for a decent hotel or to rough it out in a hostel. I’m in India at the moment and last week I spent three nights in a five star hotel in Udaipur (Rajasthan) followed by three nights in a fiver a night hostel in Udaipur… “what you doing staying here?” One of the girls in my 6 bed dorm asked me when I revealed where I’d been staying. Well, here’s why:

1. Interesting people In the hostel I met someone from Bhutan for the first time ever and heard all about the world’s only carbon negative country. (I say heard, I listened in from my bunk bed while running back and forth to the toilet to vomit up the latest dodgy curry). In contrast the conversation I overheard at the hotel poolside was about a recent work email the English man next to me had received and the detail around the two typos it contained … he told me that he found the hotel “highly agreeable” when I asked how his holiday was going…

2. Best location Hostels are always slap bang in the middle of all the chaos; you can’t step out the front door without someone trying to sell you a fake silk painting while you negotiate your way round a herd of cows sleeping on the front step. I love it.

3. Travel tips Some, if not all of my best travel tips have come from a conversation with someone in a hostel. People who stay in hostels are generally well travelled and always keen to pass on their latest hot tip. It saves doing my own research (which I hate) and trawling the mainstream pages of the latest Lonely Planet magazine.

4. Instant friends This is unusual actually because at the palace I did actually meet a wonderful Indian couple and spent two evenings with them eating and drinking… and also an Indian took me out on the back of his bike for a couple hours… but generally hostels are far better places to meet people and I met a lovely girl within a couple of hours of arriving in the hostel who I then travelled onto Jodhpur with 2 days later.

5. Price I figure every night spent in a hostel dorm gives me one more night in a lovely hotel right? I’m currently in a fabulous beach hut in Goa – not five star but definitely my happy place 🙂