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I will be travelling to Europe (Amsterdam, Prague and Berlin) from India for 7 days.
I was wondering is it worthwhile buying a SIM card?
I only need to make phone calls in case of emergencies and to bus providers. Also, I need access to data for navigation.
Should I buy a matrix SIM card from India or would buying a local SIM there make more sense?
Much cheaper to buy local card.
Indians usually buy Lycamobile or Lebara sim cards, prices are very low even if you want to call back to India (1-3 cents). Mobile internet is also quite cheap, and you usually don't need documents to buy this cards. They even support roaming, so you can use them in other EU and non-EU countries.
If you going to some Indian stores, you can get them with 1-2 eur, also sometimes you can order them online for free.
Find out the sell points on the official websites:
For those traveling to Schengen countries from India in 2019, with Amsterdam as the first stop, my advice is to take a prepaid sim. I took a 3GB data plan with a 30-day validity from Lebara that came for within 15 Euros (less than 1200Rs in todays forex rate) and I used it for a lot of Whatsapp. Link: https://mobile.lebara.com/nl/en/unlimited/c/prepaid-internationaal-bellen-unlimited
You can use a Lebara App to check on data usage There maybe other options but I didn't bother exploring as the friend who I was traveling with took the same plan a day before I did as the plan came with a liberal Lebara - Lebara plan 500 free mins + 500 free SMS).
About whether 3GB is sufficient: I'd say yes After 14 days of travel across 3 schengen countries (Netherlands, France, Italy) , my friend was left with 0.5 GB and I was left with 2.6GB - I used offline google maps, Uber, basic google and Whatsapp, while my friend was far more liberal in his usage.
PS: Don't forget to disable or take out your indian SIM ASAP, else pay up like I did on international roaming charges.
If you plan to use the indian SIM< bear in mind that just 2 days of using Whatsapp on my generous Vodafone RED postpaid connection plan, cost me close to Rs 5000. (~65 EUR). I am just planning to remove my SIM next time, lesson learnt.
