mobile phone use in India

suse142

Hi,
I wondered if anyone can help with this? I'm going to India in 2 weeks and i would like, if possible, to use my mobile to phone friends who i'm going with (whilst we're in India) and my family back here. I phoned Orange and spoke to a woman in Delhi (where i'm flying to!) and she quoted me £1.75/minute (i presume) for making a call and various other prices for receiving calls, texts etc. all of which were very expensive. Does anyone know how I could make this cheaper? Buy a SIM over there or even a phone? I'm on pay-as-you-go and i'll be travelling about a bit through Punjab, Ragasthan and Delhi. When phoning to/from Uk are there other cheaper ways such as phoning from our hotel to the UK or phoning from UK to our hotel? We use 18185 at home and their rate is 4p/min to India for mobile and landline.
thanks for any help, Sue