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India, is more like a continent than a country. From north to south and east to
west the people are different, the languages are different, the customs are different,
the country is different. There are few countries on earth with the enormous variety
that India has to offer.
It all comes back to that amazing variety it's as vast as it is crowded, as luxurious
as it is squalid, the plains are as flat and featureless as the Himalayas are high
and spectacular, the food is as terrible as it can be magnificent, the transport
as exhilarating as it can be boring and uncomfortable. Nothing is ever quite the
way you expect it to be.
India is far from the easiest country in the world to travel around. It can be hard
going, the poverty will get you down, Indian bureaucracy would try the patience
of even a Hindu saint and the most experienced travelers find themselves at the
end of their tempers at some point in India. Yet it's all worth it.
Very briefly India is a triangle with the top formed by the mighty Himalayan mountain
chain. Here you will find the intriguing Tibetan region of Ladakh and the astonishingly
beautiful Himalayan areas of Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, the Garwhal Himachal of
Uttar Pradesh and the Darjeeling and Sikkim regions. South of this stretch the flat
Ganges basin with the colorful and comparatively affluent Punjab to the north-west,
the capital city New Delhi and important tourist attractions like Agra (with the
Taj Mahal), Khajuraho, Varanasi and the holy Ganges itself.
South of this northern plain the Deccan plateau rises. Here you will find cities
that tell of the rise and fall of the Hindu and Moslem kingdoms and the modern metropolis
that their successors, the British, built at Bombay. India's story is one of many
different kingdoms competing with each other and this is never more clear than in
places like Bijapur, Mandu, Golconda and other places of central India. Finally
there is the steamy south where Moslem influence only reached fleetingly. Here Hinduism
was least altered by outside influences and is at its most exuberant. The temple
towns of the south are quite unlike those of the north and superbly colorful.
Basically, India is what you make of it and what you want it to be. If you want
temples there are temples in profusion and with enough styles and types to confuse
anybody. If it's history you want India has plenty of it and the forts, abandoned
cities, ruins, battlefields and monuments all have their tales to tell. For travelers,
a visit to India is just that, it's not a place to simply and clinically 'see'.
India is a total experience, an assault on all the senses, a place you'll never
forget
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