India – the land to travel to, a haven of tourism
delights, a civilization to tour through. Tourists come to India for
its wealth of sights, cultural exuberance, diversity of terrain and
in search of that special something, an extra punch that only India
promises and delivers. Teeming with over a billion people who voice
over a million concerns in fifteen hundred different languages,
India is where people live with variety, thrive on diversity and are
too familiar with largeness to let it boggle them. Mud huts and
mansions face off across city streets. Lurid luxury and limp living
are inhabitants of the same lane.
From the smoky mangroves of the Sunderbans to the steaming Thar
Desert, sizzling cities like Mumbai and Delhi to the scintillating
villages of Khajuraho and Hampi, from the heights of the Himalayas
to the deep blue waters around the Andamans, India is a travel
haven – a tour package that frustrates and delights, as
demanding as it is rewarding.
It demands that the traveler be prepared for its own strange forms
of tourism offerings - the crowds at Pushkar, for pushy mendicants
at Haridwar, for high commercialism at spiritual retreats. But
equally, it means that he be prepared for an overwhelming warmth
in the people, ease of conversation, and to be stunned into speechlessness
by the beauty, sometimes the manmade and often the natural.
