What to Bring From India and What to Buy After You Land

This is written to be used rather than admired. Each section below is a decision about the gap between an Indian household and an American one, and each one has a default.

The voltage problem people discover too late

Indian mains supply runs at roughly double the American voltage, so a plug adapter alone will not make an Indian appliance work safely. A plug adapter changes the shape of the pins while a transformer changes the voltage, and confusing the two is how imported mixers and heaters die on first use. Modern laptop and phone chargers are usually dual voltage and only need a pin adapter, and the small print on the brick tells you which you have.

Anything with a heating element or a motor, which covers kettles, irons, hairdryers and grinders, is the category that genuinely will not survive. Buying these locally is cheap and avoids carrying weight across an ocean to produce a burning smell in a rented kitchen.

Clothing, sizing and the climate you are actually moving to

American clothing sizing follows a different convention from Indian sizing, and the mapping is inconsistent enough between brands that trying things on is unavoidable. Bring a fortnight of clothes and buy the rest after you have experienced the local weather, because winter in the northeast and winter in the southwest share only a name. Formal Indian clothing for weddings and festivals is the exception, because it is expensive and hard to source well outside the largest diaspora cities.

Proper cold-weather gear is best bought locally, where it is designed for the actual conditions and sold in far greater variety than anywhere in India. Shoes in unusual sizes are worth bringing, since the local size range is wide but the stock in any given shop is not.

Medicines and anything a doctor prescribed

Prescription medication should travel in its original labelled packaging together with the prescription or a letter from the prescribing doctor. There are rules about bringing medication across borders and they differ by substance, so check the current official guidance rather than assuming a personal supply is exempt. Familiar Indian over-the-counter brands often have local equivalents under different names, and a pharmacist here will help you identify them.

Once the paperwork clears, anything you take regularly should be discussed with a doctor once you arrive, because continuity of supply is a medical question rather than a packing one. This article cannot advise on any individual medicine, and a clinician is the right person to ask about your own.

The kitchen argument

Pressure cookers, spice grinders and specific cookware feel essential but are widely sold in American cities with any Indian population, often at reasonable prices. Spices themselves are heavy relative to their value and are available in Indian grocery shops in most metropolitan areas, though rural areas are genuinely harder. The exceptions worth carrying are the irreplaceable ones: a particular family masala blend, a grandmother's brass vessel, anything with meaning attached.

Ovens are standard in American kitchens and pressure cookers are not, which quietly changes how you will cook within a few months.

Pack for the first fortnight of eating rather than the first year, because the year sorts itself out once you find the shops.

Documents and the things that cannot be reissued

Educational certificates, transcripts, professional registrations, medical records and vaccination histories are difficult to obtain from another continent and should travel with you. Take certified copies where the issuing body will provide them, and scan every page before you fly so a lost bag is not a lost career. Bank statements and employment records from India help establish a history when American institutions can see nothing about you at all.

Photographs, letters and small objects with sentimental weight do more for the first difficult winter than most people anticipate before they leave. Weight spent on genuinely irreplaceable items is always better spent than weight on anything with a barcode.

The economics of the allowance

Excess baggage charges are steep enough that shipping a box by sea freight is sometimes cheaper for anything you can wait several weeks to receive. Work out the cost per kilogram of your allowance and compare it against local retail prices, and a surprising number of items fail the test. The items that pass are the ones that are expensive here, unavailable here, or carry meaning that no shop stocks.

Arriving light also makes the first two moves easier, and most new arrivals move at least twice in the first year. You are not packing for a holiday but for the first six weeks of a life that will supply itself thereafter.

The takeaway

Carry what cannot be replaced and buy what merely needs buying. This article is general information, not legal or medical advice.

The first year is administration. The second one is where the life starts.