The Rough Guide to India

1859 Pages·2016·242.35 MB·English

by  Rough Guides

CONTENTS
HOW TO USE
INTRODUCTION
Where to go
When to go
Author picks
Things not to miss
Itineraries
BASICS
Getting there
Entry requirements
Getting around
Accommodation
Eating and drinking
Health
The media
Festivals and holidays
Sports
Trekking and outdoor activities
Yoga, meditation and ashrams
Culture and etiquette
Shopping
Travelling with children
Travel essentials
THE GUIDE
1. Delhi
2. Rajasthan
3. Uttar Pradesh
4. Uttarakhand
5. Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh
6. Himachal Pradesh
7. Jammu and Kashmir
8. Haryana and Punjab
9. Gujarat
10. Mumbai
11. Maharashtra
12. Goa
13. Kolkata and West Bengal
14. Bihar and Jharkhand
15. Sikkim
16. The Northeast
17. Odisha
18. Andhra Pradesh and Telangana
19. The Andaman Islands
20. Tamil Nadu
21. Kerala
22. Karnataka
CONTEXTS
History
Religion
Wildlife
Music
Books
Language
Glossary
MAPS AND SMALL PRINT
HOW TO USE THIS ROUGH
GUIDE EBOOK
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 you’re on
the road.
From the table of contents, you can click straight to the main sections of the
ebook. Start with the Introduction, which gives you a flavour of India, with
details of what to see, what not to miss, itineraries and more – everything you
need to get started. This is followed by Basics, with pre-departure tips and
practical information, such as flight details and health advice. The Guide
chapters offer comprehensive and in-depth coverage of the whole of India,
including area highlights and full-colour maps featuring all the sights and
listings. Finally, Contexts fills you in on history, religion, wildlife, music and
books and includes a handy Language section.
Detailed area maps feature in the guide chapters and are also listed in the
dedicated map section, 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, we’ve flagged up our favourite places – a perfectly sited
hotel, an atmospheric café, 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 you’ll need for your time away.

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 you’ll rub
shoulders with representatives of several of the world’s 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.
ZOOM TOP ZOOM BOTTOM
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.
It’s 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 1.25 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 India’s largest employer, with around 1.4 million
workers.
Producing over 1900 movies each year and turning over US$4 billion,
India’s film industry is the largest in the world, in terms of ticket
numbers if not box office receipts.
That so much of India’s 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 world’s
largest secular democracy. More than twenty percent of India’s 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 isn’t 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.
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 India’s 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 India’s
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 India’s most pressing problems.
INDIA’S SACRED GEOGRAPHY
It’s 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 country’s 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.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT FISHERMAN, RADHNAGAR BEACH, HAVELOCK ISLAND;
LAMAYURU GOMPA; FISHING VILLAGE NEAR KOVALAM
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 Asia’s 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 India’s biodiversity.
Heading south from Kolkata along the coast, your first likely stop is Konark in