All About India

India is a large, rectangular-shaped country in southern Asia, buttressed by the long sweep of the Himalayas in the north and protruding into the Indian Ocean in the south. ItÕs bordered by Pakistan to the north-west, China, Nepal and Bhutan to the north, and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. Sri Lanka is the teardrop-shaped island hanging off its southern tip. India covers a land area of some 3,287,000 sq km (1,281,930sq mi), though disputed borders with Pakistan and China make this figure somewhat arbitrary. It is the seventh largest country in the world.

Wildlife in India is often purported to have enjoyed a privileged and protected position thanks to the religious ideals and sentiments of Hindus, Jains and Buddhists, but much of this tradition has been lost. Extensive hunting by the British and the Indian rajahs, large-scale clearing of forests for agriculture, poaching, pesticides and the ever-increasing population have had disastrous effects on India's environment. Only around 10 per cent of the country still has forest cover, and only 4 per cent is protected within national parks and reserves. In the past few decades the government has taken serious steps to improve environmental management and has established over 350 parks, sanctuaries and reserves.

Climate varies greatly, from the arid deserts of Rajasthan to the cool highlands of Assam, allegedly the wettest place on earth. But basically India has a three-season year - the hot, the wet and the cool. The heat starts to build up on the northern plains around February and by April it becomes unbearable. The first signs of the monsoon appear in May with high humidity, short rainstorms and violent electrical storms. The monsoon rains begin around 1 June in the extreme south and sweep north to cover the whole country by early July.
The monsoon doesn't really cool things off, but it's a great relief - especially to farmers. The main monsoon comes from the south-west, but the south-eastern coast is affected by the short and surprisingly wet north-eastern monsoon, which brings rain from mid-October to the end of December. The main monsoon ends around October, and India's northern cities become crisp at night in December. In the far south, where it never gets cool, the temperatures are comfortably warm rather than hot.

There are 18 main Laugages in India - Hindi, English, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Kashmiri, Malayalam, Marathi, Manipuri, Konkani, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit,Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.
There is no one Indian language as such. This is part of the reason why English is still widely spoken and is the official language of the judiciary. But Hindi is the most popular language in India, although it is only spoken as the mother tongue by only 20% of the population-mainly in the area known as the Hindi belt, the cow belt or Bimaru, which includes Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. This Indic language is the official language of the Indian government, the states already mentioned above, as well as Haryana and Himachal Pradesh.

In India, religion is a way of life. It is an integral part of the entire Indian tradition. For the majority of Indians, religion permeates every aspect of life, from common-place daily chores to education and politics. Secular India is home to Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism and other innumerable religious traditions. Hinduism is the dominant faith, practised by over 80% of the population. Besides Hindus, Muslims are the most prominent religious group and are an integral part of Indian society. In fact India has the second largest population of Muslims in the world after Indonesia.

Tour Packages to India