India Travel eSIM

India is the hardest country in this catalogue to get a local line in, and the difficulty is documentary, not technical. Every SIM is issued against a customer file: your passport, a valid Indian visa, a photograph taken live at the counter, and in practice an address in India, for which a hotel booking normally does. The number carries a validity tied to your visa.

Activation is not the moment you hand the documents over. The file goes for verification and the line comes up afterwards, usually within hours rather than minutes, a real problem if you were counting on data for the taxi out of the airport. A government scheme at the big airports, run with the state operator for e-visa arrivals, issued a card valid for 30 days or until the e-visa expired, whichever came first. Whatever counter you use, plan a gap between buying and using.

A register sits behind it all. India caps mobile connections at nine per person, and six in Jammu and Kashmir, Assam and the north-eastern states, and from 24 August 2026 operators must check a central platform before issuing another. None of that is aimed at tourists, but it is the system your file joins, and it explains why the counter is slower than in most of Asia.

Coverage across the plains and the cities is dense, and Indian mobile data is cheap by any international standard - the real argument for buying locally if you stay a while. It thins where you expect: the Himalayan valleys, the desert stretches of Rajasthan and Kutch, the interior of the north-east, and long runs of rail where a train loses signal for an hour.

Data on these plans breaks out in the United Kingdom, so an Indian service sees a British connection. That matters for anything geofenced to India, and it is where the honest limit of this product sits: India runs daily life on an instant payment system built around an Indian bank account and the mobile number registered against it. No roaming eSIM gives you that. If your trip depends on paying like a resident, buy a local number and take the paperwork. If it depends on maps and messaging working the second you clear immigration, install ours before you fly.