Telephones
Privately run phone services with international direct dialling facilities are very widespread. Advertising themselves with the acronyms STD/ISD (standard trunk dialling/international subscriber dialling), they are extremely quick and easy to use; some stay open 24 hours. Both national and international calls are dialled direct. To call abroad, dial the international access code (00), the code for the country you want - 44 for the UK, for example - the appropriate area code (leaving out any initial zeros), and the number you want; then you speak, pay your bill, which is calculated in seconds, and leave. Prices vary between private places and are slightly cheaper at official telecommunications offices; many have fax machines too. Calling from hotels is usually more expensive. "Call back" (or "back call", as it is often known) is possible at most phone booths and hotels, although check before you call and be aware that, in the case of booths, this facility rarely comes without a charge of Rs3-10 per minute.

Direct dialling rates are very expensive during the day - Monday to Saturday 8am to 7pm - but this falls to half rate on Sundays, national holidays, and daily from 7am to 8am and 7pm to 8.30pm, after which the charge is reduced further.

Home country direct services are now available from any phone to the UK, the USA, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and a growing number of other countries. These allow you to make a collect or telephone credit card call to that country via an operator there. If you can't find a phone with home country direct buttons, you can use any phone toll-free, by dialling 000, your country code, and 17 (except Canada which is 000-127).

To call India from abroad, dial the international access code, followed by 91 for India, the local code minus the initial zero, then the number you want.

When you land and switch on your mobile phone , your network will search for a local partner, you confirm that you want to use them, then you can use the phone as usual. It's worth investigating costs before deciding to take your mobile to India, but bear in mind that it may be useful in an emergency. Prepaid cards for pay-as-you-go phones are handy and available in most of the major cities and towns; prices start from Rs1000 and as low as Rs500 for a top-up card.

Mail services
Mail can take anything from three days to four weeks to get to or from India, depending largely on where you are; ten days is about the norm. Stamps are not expensive, and aerogrammes and postcards cost the same to anywhere in the world. Ideally, you should have mail franked in front of you. Most post offices keep the same opening hours (Mon-Fri 10am-5pm & Sat 10am-noon), but big city GPOs, where the Poste Restante is usually located, are open longer (Mon-Fri 9.30am-6pm, Sat 9.30am-1pm). You can also buy stamps at big hotels.

Poste Restante (General Delivery) services throughout the country are pretty reliable, though exactly how long individual offices hang on to letters is more or less at their own discretion; for periods of longer than a month, it makes sense to mark mail with your expected date of arrival. Letters are filed alphabetically; in larger offices, you sort through them yourself. To avoid misfiling, your name should be printed clearly, with the surname in large capitals and underlined, but it is still a good idea to check under your first name too, just in case. Have letters addressed to you c/o Poste Restante, GPO (if it's the main post office you want), and the name of the town and state. In Delhi, you will probably want to specify "GPO, New Delhi", since "GPO, Delhi" means Old Delhi GPO, a lot less convenient for most tourists. Sometimes too, as in Calcutta and Chennai, local tourist offices might be more convenient than the GPO. Don't forget to take ID with you to claim your mail. American Express offices also keep mail for holders of their charge card or travellers' cheques.

Having parcels sent out to you in India is not such a good idea - chances are they'll go astray. If you do have a parcel sent, have it registered.

Sending a parcel out of India can be quite a performance. First you have to get it cleared by customs at the post office (they often don't bother, but check), then you take it to a tailor and agree a price to have it wrapped in cheap cotton cloth (which you may have to go and buy yourself), stitched up and sealed with wax. In big city GPOs, people offering this service will be at hand. Next, take it to the post office, fill in and attach the relevant customs forms (it's best to tick the box marked "gift" and give its value as less than Rs1000 or "no commercial value", to avoid bureaucratic entanglements), buy your stamps, see them franked, and dispatch it. Parcels should not be more than 1m long, nor weigh more than 20kg. Surface mail is incredibly cheap, and takes an average of six months to arrive - it may take half, or four times that, however. It's a good way to dump excess baggage and souvenirs, but don't send anything fragile this way.

As in Britain, North America and Australia and New Zealand, books and magazines can be sent more cheaply, unsealed or wrapped around the middle, as printed papers ("book post"). Alternatively, there are numerous courier services but it is safest to stick to known international companies such as DHL. Packages sent by air are expensive. Couriers are not as reliable as they should be and there have been complaints of packages going astray. Remember that all packages from India are likely to be suspect at home, and searched or X-rayed: don't send anything dodgy.

Internet and email
In all the large cities and in many tourist towns there are internet and email facilities accessible to the general public, usually at cybercafés , though many hotels and STD booths offer this service as well. Charges for internet use range from Rs10 to Rs80 per hour for reading mail and browsing, and extra for printing; most centres offer membership deals which can cut costs. You should make constant checks to see whether your connection is still alive; in the main cities faster connections through ISDN are now common: check this before you start using the service. The shops that advertise email alongside unrelated business concerns are cheaper, but you have to send and receive mail through their own private account, which means your messages are open to public scrutiny, and the service is invariably slow.