The Rough Guide to India (Travel Guide eBook)

Rough Guides

Description

The Rough Guide to India

Make the most of your time on Earth with the ultimate travel guides.
World-renowned 'tell it like it is' travel guide, now with free eBook.

Discover India with this comprehensive and entertaining travel guide, packed with practical information and honest recommendations by our independent experts. Whether you plan to look for leopards in Kanha National Park, visit the world's greatest building, the Taj Mahal, or explore the immaculately preserved temples of Khajuraho, The Rough Guide to India will help you discover the best places to explore, eat, drink, shop and sleep along the way.

Features of this travel guide to India:
- Detailed regional coverage: provides practical information for every kind of trip, from off-the-beaten-track adventures to chilled-out breaks in popular tourist areas
- Honest and independent reviews: written with Rough Guides' trademark blend of humour, honesty and expertise, our writers will help you make the most from your trip to India
- Meticulous mapping: practical full-colour maps, with clearly numbered, colour-coded keys. Find your way around Delhi, Mumbai and many more locations without needing to get online
- Fabulous full-colour photography: features inspirational colour photography, including the phenomenal Lotus Temple and the vibrant Pichola Lake
- Time-saving itineraries: carefully planned routes will help inspire and inform your on-the-road experiences
- Things not to miss: Rough Guides' rundown of Gokarna, Udaipur and Madurai's best sights and top experiences
- Travel tips and info: packed with essential pre-departure information including getting around, accommodation, food and drink, health, the media, festivals, sports and outdoor activities, culture and etiquette, shopping and more
- Background information: comprehensive 'Contexts' chapter provides fascinating insights into India, with coverage of history, religion, ethnic groups, environment, wildlife and books, plus a handy language section and glossary
- The ultimate travel tool: download the free eBook to access all this from your phone or tablet
- Covers: Delhi; Rajasthan; Uttar Pradesh; Uttarakhand; Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh; Himachal Pradesh; Jammu and Kashmir; Punjab and Haryana; Gujarat; Mumbai; Maharashtra; Goa; Kolkata and West Bengal; Bihar and Jharkhand; Sikkim; The Northeast; Odisha; Andhra Pradesh and Telangana; The Andaman Islands; Tamil Nadu; Kerala; Kamataka

You may also be interested in: The Rough Guide to Nepal, The Rough Guide to Sri Lanka, The Rough Guide to Myanmar (Burma)

About Rough Guides: Rough Guides have been inspiring travellers for over 35 years, with over 30 million copies sold globally. Synonymous with practical travel tips, quality writing and a trustworthy 'tell it like it is' ethos, the Rough Guides list includes more than 260 travel guides to 120+ destinations, gift-books and phrasebooks.

Sujets

• Hindi
• Nueva Delhi
• South Asia
• Bradt
• Travel
• Mumbai
• Standard Hindi
• 2020
• 2021
• Eyewitness
• Asia
• India
• Agra
• Marco Polo
• Jaipur
• Delhi
• Bombay
• New Delhi

Informations

• Publié par: Apa Publications
• Date de parution: 01 novembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 6
• EAN13: 9781789196399
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 26 Mo

Extrait

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Contents
INTRODUCTION
Where to go
When to go
Author picks
Things not to miss
Tailor-made trips
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 Punjab and Haryana
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
SMALL PRINT
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 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, as well as quirky echoes of the British Raj on virtually every corner.
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.

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 1.3 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 India’s largest employer, with around 1.4 million workers. Producing up to 2000 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.
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.

Getty Images
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.

Simon Bracken/Rough Guides
BREWING OPIUM TEA IN A BISHNOI VILLAGE IN RAJASTHAN

INDIAN RAILWAYS
India’s railways , which daily transport millions of commuters, pilgrims, animals and hessian-wrapped packages between the four corners of the Subcontinent, are often cited as the best thing the British Raj bequeathed to its former colony. And yet, with its hierarchical legion of clerks, cooks, coolies, bearers, ticket inspectors, station managers and ministers, the network has become a quintessentially Indian institution.
Travelling across India by rail – whether you rou