Rough Guides - The Rough Guide to India

This Rough Guide is one of a new generation of informative and easy-to-use travel-guide ebooks that guarantees you make the most of your trip. An essential tool for pre-trip planning, it also makes a great travel companion when youre on the road.

From the section.

Detailed area maps feature in the guide chapters and are also listed in the , accessible from the table of contents. Depending on your hardware, you can double-tap on the maps to see larger-scale versions, or select different scales. There are also thumbnails below more detailed maps in these cases, you can opt to zoom left/top or zoom right/bottom or view the full map. The screen-lock function on your device is recommended when viewing enlarged maps. Make sure you have the latest software updates, too.

Throughout the guide, weve flagged up our favourite places a perfectly sited hotel, an atmospheric caf, a special restaurant with the author pick icon . You can select your own favourites and create a personalized itinerary by bookmarking the sights, venues and activities that are of interest, giving you the quickest possible access to everything youll need for your time away.

India, it is often said, is not a country, but a continent. Stretching from the frozen summits of the Himalayas to the tropical greenery of Kerala, its expansive borders encompass an incomparable range of landscapes, cultures and people. Walk the streets of any Indian city and youll rub shoulders with representatives of several of the worlds great faiths, encounter temple rituals performed since the time of the Egyptian Pharaohs and spot onion-domed mosques erected centuries before the Taj Mahal and quirky echoes of the British Raj on virtually every corner.

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That so much of Indias past remains discernible today is all the more astonishing given the pace of change since Independence in 1947. Spurred by the free-market reforms of the early 1990s, the economic revolution started by Rajiv Gandhi has transformed the country with new consumer goods, technologies and ways of life. Infrastructure has improved, too, making visiting the country easier than ever before. A growing number of cities boast gleaming new metro systems, and are linked by faster highways and speedier, more comfortable trains. The accommodation sector is blossoming, too, with homestays mushrooming in popularity and new breed of hostels opening up. Even your Indian visa can now be obtained online.

However, the presence in even the most far-flung market towns of ubiquitous wi-fi, the latest smartphones and Mahindra SUVs has thrown into sharp relief the problems that have bedevilled India since long before it became the worlds largest secular democracy. More than twenty percent of Indias inhabitants remain below the poverty line; no other nation on earth has slum settlements on the scale of those in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata, nor so many malnourished children, uneducated women and homes without access to clean water and waste disposal.

Many first-time visitors find themselves unable to see past such glaring disparities. Others come expecting a timeless ascetic wonderland and are surprised to encounter one of the most materialistic societies on the planet. Still more find themselves intimidated by what may seem, initially, an incomprehensible and bewildering continent. But for all its jarring juxtapositions, intractable paradoxes and frustrations, India remains an utterly compelling destination. Intricate and worn, its distinctive patina the stream of life in its crowded bazaars, the ubiquitous filmi music, the pungent melange of diesel fumes, cooking spices, dust and dung smoke casts a spell that few forget from the moment they step off a plane. Love it or hate it and most travellers oscillate between the two India will shift the way you see the world.