Not everyone can afford a GPS device, so here's a more affordable alternative -- Travel search engine Zoomtra.com has partnered with Route Guru to offer lost souls in Delhi and NCR some direction.

Together, they are offering driving directions, which includes landmark-based route instructions, route map, as well as an auto-rickshaw fare finder service.

The service helps tourists by guiding them through the shortest route between any two locations in Delhi/NCR. It also prompts the distance and an approximate auto rickshaw fare for that route.

While you can avail of this guidance from Route Guru's website, Zoomtra makes access to this service even more convenient. The latter auto-prompts this service when a user searches for a flight or a train 'from or to' to the Delhi region on Zoomtra.com.

Additionally, the service will help people in Delhi discover different routes to reach Indira Gandhi International Airport and railway stations from their location.

Real-time Testing
We subjected the service to a quick test and searched for the cheapest flights from Mumbai to Delhi on Zoomtra.com (It is quite refreshing to find 'Bombay' and not 'Mumbai' in the city search drop-down menu).

While the search request was being processed (a few seconds), the directions tool popped-up, prompted us to avail of the facility of finding our way from the domestic airport to a destination of our choice. We searched for directions from the 'domestic airport' (default, but can be changed) to 'Gole market.' There's a drop-down menu that helps you fill in the 'to' and 'from' section, which is great.

Finally, the search results let you view the distance between the two places you've entered on the menu, along with an approximate rickshaw fare. This is followed by the 'RouteHint' comprising of major landmarks on your route, which can be messaged to your ordinary mobile phone - this is quite cool; not everyone has a smartphone!

However, if you do have a WAP-enabled phone, you could view a Google-powered route-map along with more detailed directions to your destination.

Though the service offered by Zoomtra-Route Guru is indeed a smart one, it is limited to Delhi/NCR. We really hope that this service is expanded to Mumbai and other cities in the near future. The website says that it will be.

Have any of you Dilli-wallas/ Delhi-visitors experimented with this offering yet? Do let us know about your experience in the comments section below.