The best travel hack? Stop planning around sights. Start planning around your appetite.
The following is a representative story based on experiences commonly shared by Indian travellers.
Priya, a Mumbai-based marketing professional, had been saving up for Paris for three years. She had the mood board ready for the Eiffel Tower at golden hour, a café au lait on a cobbled street, a croissant from a boulangerie. Then she landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport, checked into her hotel, and went looking for dinner.
What followed was 45 minutes of standing outside restaurants, squinting at menus, trying to figure out what was vegetarian. She eventually ate a sad Caesar salad without anchovies, she hoped for ₹2,500.
“I spent more time worrying about food than enjoying the city,” she laughs now. “The monuments were beautiful. But I was hungry the entire trip.”
Two years later, she booked a trip to Osaka on a whim. Within four hours of landing, she was sitting at a street stall eating crispy takoyaki, surrounded by the noise and smoke of Dotonbori, spending less than ₹200 per plate. “I cried a little,” she admits. “Not because it was sad. Because it was so, so good.”
The real reason India is turning to Asia
By now, you’ve probably read the numbers. Airbnb data shows that searches for Osaka and Tokyo among Indian travellers have shot up over 85% and 90% respectively. Busan in South Korea is growing at a staggering 95%. Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur continue to pull massive crowds. And this isn’t just young solo backpackers nearly 60% of these bookings are for group and family travel.
Everyone is talking about K-pop, cheap flights, and easy visas. All of that is real. But there’s a quieter, more personal reason driving this shift, one that travel data can’t fully capture.
Indian travellers are tired of being hungry abroad.
And Asia, almost uniquely in the world, fixes that problem without you even trying.
Rice, spice, and everything nice
Here’s something Europeans have never quite understood about Indian travellers: food is not a side quest for us. It is a trip.
An Indian family doesn’t just visit a place. They eat their way through it. The first question after landing isn’t “which museum are we going to?” It’s “where are we eating tonight?” Food is how we celebrate, how we bond, how we measure whether a trip was worth it. Come home from Paris with a photo of the Louvre? Nice. Come home from Bangkok with a story about the best green curry of your life? Now that’s a holiday.
And this is where Asia has a geographic and cultural advantage that no visa reform or airline deal can replicate.
The food cultures of Southeast Asia and East Asia are built on the same foundations that Indian food is rice, lentils, vegetables, bold spice, and the philosophy that a full stomach is a happy one. When an Indian sits down to a bowl of Vietnamese pho, the warm broth and herbs feel oddly familiar. Thai curries, with their layered heat and coconut richness, feel like a cousin of the curries back home. Japanese ramen, a slow-cooked, deeply seasoned broth hits the same emotional spot as a Sunday dal at home.
There is no translation problem. The stomach understands immediately.
Europe’s vegetarian problem (That nobody wants to say out loud)
Let’s be honest about something. By various estimates, India is home to somewhere between 300 and 500 million vegetarians widely considered the largest vegetarian population on earth. And European cuisine, for all its sophistication, was largely not built with them in mind.
A vegetarian in Paris faces menus where even the salads have lardons. In Rome, pasta sauces are often finished with meat stock. In Spain, ham is a food group. Getting a filling, satisfying meal as a vegetarian in Europe requires effort, research, and often paying a premium for what ends up being a plate of grilled vegetables with a name that means “rustic.”
Asia is a revelation by comparison. In Bangkok and Phuket, vegetarian food is widely available thanks to Buddhist culture and a growing vegan movement. Look for restaurants flying a yellow flag with red characters; these are “Jay” restaurants, following Chinese Buddhist vegetarian traditions, which means no meat, no fish, no eggs, and often no garlic or onion either. Sound familiar to anyone following Jain dietary practices? It should.
In Vietnam’s major cities like Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh, and Hoi An, vegetarian joints are found with no difficulty, thanks to deeply rooted Buddhist dietary principles. Japan has tofu culture, temple food, and vegetable-forward cuisine going back centuries. Even street food stalls across Southeast Asia are typically more willing to customize a dish than a Michelin-starred European restaurant.
And the prices? In Bangkok, a full vegetarian plate at a Jay restaurant costs approximately ₹100 to ₹150. In Paris, that Caesar salad without anchovies was ₹2,500.
Your food map: Asian cities for the Indian palate
Bangkok, Thailand: Start at Yaowarat (Chinatown) for vegetarian stalls, then work through Pad Thai, mango sticky rice, and green curry. Spice levels are adjustable. Budget: ₹800–1,200 per day on street food.
Osaka, Japan: The street food capital of Japan. Takoyaki, okonomiyaki, fresh sushi, and tofu in every form. Dotonbori street alone could keep you fed for a week. Osaka also has a saying: kuidaore “eat till you drop.” Budget: ₹1,500–2,500 per day.
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: The most naturally “Indian-friendly” food city outside India. Banana leaf rice, roti canai, dhal curry, and biryani are staples, not novelties. The Little India district in Brickfields feels like stepping into Chennai. Budget: ₹700–1,200 per day.
Busan, South Korea: Famous for its Jagalchi fish market and street food markets like Gukje. For vegetarians, Korean temple food (사찰음식) is an extraordinary and deeply spiritual culinary tradition entirely plant-based, subtle, and beautiful. Budget: ₹1,200–2,000 per day.
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam: Fresh spring rolls, pho (vegetarian versions available), banh mi stuffed with vegetables and herbs. Everything is served with mint, coriander, and lime flavours that feel like home. Budget: ₹600–1,000 per day.
The new travel itinerary starts with a menu, not a map
Gen Z Indian travellers are increasingly clear about what they want for a cooking class in Bangkok, a food festival in Japan. It’s not about ticking a place off a list. It’s about creating memories through experiences.
That shift is profound. For decades, Indian travel was monument-driven: see the Eiffel Tower, photograph the Colosseum, stand in front of Big Ben. Proof of presence. But a new generation of travellers is asking a different question: What did I taste there?
And when you ask that question, Asia wins by a landslide every single time.
So go ahead. Open Google Flights. But before you search for destinations, open a food delivery app first. Look at what cuisines make you happiest. Then find the city that invented those flavours. Book your flight to that kitchen.
The monuments can wait. Dinner is served.
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