It really depends on what state you're travelling. India is a very diverse country. Every state has its own regional language, culture and customs. Since you mentioned what places you desire to travel I would like to mention some languages spoken in those states: Down South you've got 5 states(I've mentioned the languages as well) Andhra Pradesh: Telugu Telangana: Telugu Tamil Nadu: Tamil Kerala: Malayalam Karnataka: Kannada In the above mentioned states, hardly any people will understand Hindi but they'll for sure understand English (not all obviously). Alongwith that some people are even bilinguals/trilinguals. What I mean is alongwith Tamil a person can perfectly speak Telugu/Malayalam as well but as I said, not all do but few. Since all south Indian languages are Dravidian languages, a lot of people do understand 30-40% of every language except their native language. Hope this makes sense. The Northeast has eight states: Assam: Assamese, Bengali Sikkim: Nepali Nagaland: A bunch of languages grouped under the Naga languages. Manipur: Manipuri Mizoram: Mizo Tripura: Bengali, Kokborok Arunachal Pradesh: Nishi Meghalaya: Kashi A significant amount of people do speak English here and some speak Bengali too. In areas like Mumbai and Gujarat, languages like Marathi and Gujarati are spoken but you should be perfectly fine with Hindi there and almost everyone speaks English and Hindi in Mumbai since it's where Bollywood movies are made. Up North, almost everyone understands Hindi and that's why Hindi is spoken by a majority of 40% Indians. But some states like Punjab, Gujarat have there own regional languages(Punjabi, Gujarati respectively) alongwith the fact that there are various dialects of Hindi spoken all across North India. Of course, this isn't an answer to your question but the final call is yours. The word limit is almost over but I'll continue writing my answer.

P.S. Many people who visit India prefer learning Hindi but at the same time many learn no languages at all. They're fine with English probably. Even Indians while traveling don't learn the regional language of the state they plan to travel. That being said, some people do learn a bit of regional language of whatever state they're visiting and no wonder the locals will always appreciate their efforts of learning their local language. Have a nice day! Good luck for your trip to India. 😊

hindi

Hello, I'm an Indian native HIndi speaker. I would love to help you improve your fluency and develop your communication skills in Hindi so that you can reach your goal. I am willing to meet your needs and help you in every possible way. Feel free to message me back and check out my profile. Cheers:)

Here we say very often कोश कोश पर पानी बदले, हर कोश पर वाणी। Its mean in India after traveling a few miles the water taste and the language both changed. So you can start from anywhere which makes you comfortable as you are interested in nature, indian folk culture, literature and cinema it can be found in mostly language. So start the language journey a lot of interesting things will come on your way. Shukriya 🌻