Figure this: a month after it launched a rather uninspiring “Incredible India” app, India’s ministry of tourism has launched yet another travel application. Thankfully, though, its latest baby is smarter (and prettier) than the older sibling. This app actually works. Meet Tripigator:

Background

Tripigator, an itinerary-planning web application, was set up by IIT-Kharagpur alumni Mukul Garg, Karteek Narumanchi and Piyush Grover. Earlier this year, it was chosen as the official travel planner by the Ministry of Tourism, Government of India. In its web avatar, Tripigator claims to have assisted over 1 lakh users from 40 countries plan their holidays in India.

What it does

Helps you plan your itinerary. You can customise your trip by adding multiple destinations, dates of travel, number of persons, cost (budget to luxury), interests (adventure, culture, family, romance, etc), and ‘energy level’ (relaxed to active).

These preferences are then used by Tripigator’s heuristic engine to create an itinerary, complete with flight and stay options and recommendations on what to do. Most importantly, the engine also computes the cost for the trip.

You can always go back and modify your preferences, choose a different flight or pick a better hotel. You can also sift through a fairly comprehensive list of things to do, which come with helpful nuggets of information (timings, navigation).

You can then save the trip or invite your friends to collaborate and modify the itinerary.

A few other highlights:

The option to look up travel ideas near towns and cities. Perfect for planning day trips.

Impressive coverage of the north-east

App size: 9.9MB only.

What it does not

Let you book the trip: Either this feature will be rolled out at a later date or it has been hidden very carefully. After investing so much time tinkering with the filters, picking flights and choosing hotels, not being able to book the trip through the app seems like a colossal waste of time.

Take you from tourist to traveller: Despite that trite claim on the home screen, the hotel and activity recommendations are mostly mainstream. If you’re looking for offbeat experiences, or something unique for your return visit, there isn’t much yet.

Experience

Visually, the mobile app is head and shoulders above the flotsam of Incredible India apps on the Android Play Store. The user interface is beautiful, the navigation smooth, though some screens can be more intuitive. Certain features such as “Collaborate” seem buggy, but these are minor chinks.

Do you need it?

Tripigator is more robust than most other apps available on the Android store. The itinerary-recommendation engine works convincingly, and its sizeable cache of content helps if you want to know more than just flight and hotel costs. It is far from an end-to-end travel solution that it can be, but it’s a good place to start your planning from.

Tripigator is available for free on the Android Play store.