Places to visit in India

Teeming with over a billion people, India is where people live with variety and thrive on diversity. From the mangroves of the Sunderbans to the 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 the world's second most populous nation (after China ).Its ethnic composition is complex, but two major strains predominate: the Aryan, in the North, and the Dravidian, in the south. India is a land of great cultural diversity, as is evidenced by the enormous number of different languages spoken. About 80% of the population is Hindu, and 14% is Muslim. Other significant religions include Christians, Sikhs, and Buddhists.

With its long and rich history, India retains many outstanding archeological Landmarks; preeminent of these are the Buddhist remains at Sarnath, Sanchi, and Bodh Gaya; the cave temples at Ajanta, Ellora, and Elephanta; and the temple Sites at Madurai, Thanjavur, Abu, Bhubaneswar, Konarak, and Mahabalipuram.

The southern half of India is a largely upland area that thrusts a triangular Peninsula into the Indian ocean between the Bay of Bengal on the east and the Arabian Sea on the west. At its southern tip is Kanniyakumri and in the north, is the Himalayan Mountain wall, where rise the three great rivers of the Indian subcontinent: the Indus, the Ganges, and the Brahmaputra.

The Gangetic alluvial plain, which has much of India's arable land, lies between the Himalayas and the dissected plateau occupying most of peninsular India. The Aravalli range, a ragged hill belt, extends from the borders of Gujarat in the southwest to the fringes of Delhi in the northeast. The plain is limited in the west by the Thar (Great Indian ) Desert of Rajasthan, which merges with the swampy Rann of Kachchh to the south. The southern boundary of the plain lies close to the yamuna and ganges rivers, where the broken hils of the Chambal, Betwa, and Sonrivers rise to the low plateaus of Malwa in the west and Chota Nagpur in the east.

The Narmada River, south of the Vindhya hills, marks the beginning of the Deccan. The triangular plateau, scarped by the mountains of the Eastern Ghats and Western Ghats, is drained by the Godavari, Krishna, and Kaveri rivers; they break through the Eastern Ghats~flowing east into the Bay of Bengal, form broad deltas on the wide Coromandel Coast. Further north, the Mahanadi River drains India into the Bay of Bengal. The much narrower western coast of peninsular India, comprising chiefly the Malabar Coast and the fertile Gujarat plain, bends around the Gulf of Khambat in the north to the Kathiawar and Kachchh peninsulas. The coastal plains of peninsular India have a tropical, humid climate.

The Deccan interior is partly semiarid on the west and wet on the east. The Indo-Gangetic plain is subtropical, with the western interior areas experiencing frost in winter and very hot summers. India's rainfall, which depends upon monsoon, is variable; it is heavy in Assam and West Bengal and along the southern coasts, moderate in the regions, and scanty in the arid northwest, especially in Rajasthan and Punjab. India is the land to tourism delights, a civilization to tour through. This is a tour package with overwhelming ease of conversation, and to be stunned into speechlessness by the beauty of nature.