Rough Guides - The Rough Guide to India (Travel Guide eBook) (Rough Guides)

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Contents

Tim Draper/Rough Guides

Introduction to

India

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, as well as quirky echoes of the British Raj on virtually every corner.

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.

Where to go

The best Indian itineraries are the simplest. It just isnt possible to see everything in a single expedition, even if you spent a year trying. Far better, then, to concentrate on one or two specific regions and, above all, to be flexible. Although it requires a deliberate change of pace to venture away from the urban centres, rural India has its own very distinct pleasures. In fact, while Indian cities are undoubtedly adrenalin-fuelled, upbeat places, it is possible and certainly less stressful to travel for months around the Subcontinent and rarely have to set foot in one.

FACT FILE

• The Republic of India, whose capital is Delhi , is bordered by Afghanistan, China, Nepal and Bhutan to the north, Bangladesh and Myanmar (Burma) to the east and Pakistan to the west.
• Its the seventh largest country in the world, covering more than three million square kilometres, and is second only to China in terms of population, at more than 1.3 billion . Hindus comprise eighty percent of the population, Muslims 14 percent, and there are millions of Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains. Twenty-three official languages are spoken, along with more than a thousand minor languages and dialects. Hindi is the language of more than forty percent of the population; English is also widely spoken.
• The caste system is pervasive and, although integral to Hindu belief, it also encompasses non-Hindus. It holds special sway in rural areas and may dictate where a person lives and what their occupation is.
• Eighty-one percent of males over 15 are literate , compared to 61 percent of females: 71 percent of the total adult population.
• Mawsynram, in the northeastern state of Meghalaya, is the wettest place on Earth , with an average annual deluge of 11,871mm.
• Indian Railways is Indias largest employer, with around 1.4 million workers.
• Producing up to 2000 movies each year and turning over US$4 billion, Indias film industry is the largest in the world, in terms of ticket numbers if not box office receipts.

The most-travelled circuit in the country, combining spectacular monuments with the flat, fertile landscape that for many people is archetypally Indian, is the so-called Golden Triangle in the north: Delhi itself, the colonial capital; Agra, home of the Taj Mahal; and the Pink City of Jaipur in Rajasthan . Rajasthan is probably the single most popular state with travellers, who are drawn by its desert scenery, the imposing medieval forts and palaces of Jaisalmer, Jodhpur, Udaipur and Bundi, and by the colourful traditional dress.

East of Delhi, the River Ganges meanders through some of Indias most densely populated regions to reach the extraordinary holy Hindu city of Varanasi , where to witness the daily rituals of life and death focused around the waterfront ghats (bathing places) is to glimpse the continuing practice of Indias most ancient religious traditions. Further east still is the great city of Kolkata , the capital until early last century of the British Raj and now a teeming metropolis that epitomizes contemporary Indias most pressing problems.

INDIAS SACRED GEOGRAPHY

Its hard to think of a more visibly religious country than India. The very landscape of the Subcontinent its rivers, waterfalls, trees, hilltops, mountains and rocks comprises a vast sacred geography for adherents of the dozen or more faiths rooted here. Connecting the countrys countless holy places is a network of pilgrimage routes along which tens of thousands of worshippers may be moving at any one time on regular trains, specially decorated buses, tinsel-covered bicycles, barefoot, alone or in noisy family groups. For the visitor, joining devotees in the teeming temple precincts of the south, on the ghats at Varanasi, at the Sufi shrines of Ajmer and Delhi, before the naked Jain colossi of Sravanabelagola, or at any one of the innumerable religious festivals that punctuate the astrological calendar is to experience India at its most intense.

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The majority of travellers follow the well-trodden Ganges route to reach Nepal, perhaps unaware that the Indian Himalayas offer superlative trekking and mountain scenery to rival any in the range. With travel in Kashmir still largely limited to its capital, Srinagar, and central valley area, Himachal Pradesh where Dharamsala is the home of a Tibetan community that includes the Dalai Lama himself and the remote province of Ladakh , with its mysterious lunar landscape and cloud-swept monasteries, have become the major targets for journeys into the mountains. Less visited, but possessing some of Asias highest peaks, is the niche of Uttarakhand bordering Nepal, where the glacial source of the sacred River Ganges has attracted pilgrims for more than a thousand years. At the opposite end of the chain, Sikkim , north of Bengal, is another low-key trekking destination, harbouring scenery and a Buddhist culture similar to that of neighbouring Bhutan. The hill states of the Northeast , connected to eastern India by a slender neck of land, boast remarkably diverse landscapes and an incredible fifty percent of Indias biodiversity.