With it's diversity and the wide range of it's
cultural and other attractions, India offers itself as a fascinating tourist
destination. Millions of tourists travel throughout India every year for it's
cultural and archeological attraction, it's leisure, wildlife, adventure &
porting plea-sures, religious shrines, attractive convention facilities and
for a host of other reasons.
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.
Bounded by the majestic Himalayan ranges in the north and edged by an endless
stretch of golden beaches, India is a vivid kaleidoscope of landscapes, magnificent
historical sites and royal cities, misty mountain retreats, colourful people,
rich cultures and festivities. 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 traveller 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.
But what exactly is it that gets two and a half million people to pack their
bags, book their tickets, buy industrial size cans of suntan lotion and enough
toilet paper to supply the entire population of Liechtenstein for a month, and
wing their way to India? Given that this is the land of the Taj, granted too
that tea, tobacco, tempestuous democracy and terrific travel are a great combination
but surely that's not reason enough.
There must be more because between truisms and half-truths, India has inspired
more than any one place's fair share of travel lore. And, perhaps that's what
it is - the legends of India - that's what inspires people from far and near
to travel here, to sort out for themselves what's true and what's just a whole
lot of tourism pamphlet hype.
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