If you thought France was confusing, wait until you get to India.
For the full explanation, go to Indian numbering system. Even though I knew something was awry, it never really fully hit me until I thought I had caught a typo in the newspaper where the commas were totally misplaced. Then it registered - Indians use a grouping of two decimals instead of our familiar three.
In speech and when writing, it starts on familiar territory - rupees are broken into cents, and count to hundreds and thousands, but any higher, and the talk turns to lakhs, and then crores.
In writing, this means that 100,000 (one hundred thousand) or a lakh is written as 1,00,000. The next highest denomination a crore or 10,000,000 (ten million) is written as 1,00,00,000 and so on. After which, you will hear talk of 10 lakhs or projects of 5 crore. I have never heard any of the higher denominations mentioned in Wiki - Arawb, Kharawb, Neel, Padma.
For me, it's easier to remember that a lakh equals around 2,450.00 USD, (used to be an easier 2,500 USD) while a crore equals around 245,000.00 USD (this at the current all-time low of just over 40 rps to the USD).
Don't panic. Although prices sound high as they dizzily jump into the thousands, a rupee isn't worth much and once the initial shock wears off as you convert to your currency, it will seem quite reasonable. Although this is no longer entirely true, as India is quickly joining the global community with escalating prices that make you feel just like you could be anywhere.
