Page 7 - India Destination Guide - Alluring Asia

ENVIRONMENT THE LAND India today is one of the most richly rewarding regions of the world to visit. Is scenery is amongst the xxx most varied and exciting anywhere, its history and culture are not just packaged and brought out on show for the tourist, but lived, and its openness, friendliness and freedom from personal threat make it increasingly rare among major travel destinations. The heart of India beats in the densely populated plains of the River Ganges, settled and cultivated for POPULATION millennia, and the home of great civilizations which shape the lives of 940 million people today. To the Approximately 28,670,677 (2011), South lies the Peninsula, politically always more fragmented than the Plains and agriculturally less growing from just 9 million in 1950. fertile, but with mineral resources which have supplied empires from the Indus Valley Civilization over 4,000 years ago to the present. Beyond lies once of India's great natural frontiers, the India Ocean, CLIMATE stretching from the Arabian Sea in the West to the Bay of Bangal in the East, and offering nothing but Nepal has a typical monsoonal, two season year. scattered island chains between Kanniyakumari and Antarctica. Dry Season: October - May Wet Season: June - September To the North of the plains stand the Himalaya, what a 19th Surveyor General of India described as "the finest natural combinations of boundary and barrier that exists in the world. It stands alone. For the CURRENCY greater part of its length only the Himalayan eagle can trace it. It lies amidst the eternal silence of vast The monetary unbit of Nepal is the Nepali ruppe (R's) which is divided snowfield and icebound peaks. Could you stand alone on one of the outer ranges in Kashmir, or in into 100 paisa (p) Garhwal, or at Darjiling, and watch on some clear day the white outline of the distant snowy range, you would then realize that never was there such a God-given boundary set to such a vast and impressive TIME frontier". Nepal is five hours, 45 minutes ahead of GMT. 30 Minutes ahead of Indian Time. Yet each of these three major physical regions - the Himalaya, the Gangetic Plains and the Peninsula - have their own great diversity. In the eastern foothills of the Himalaya, for example, are some of the VISAS wettest regions in the world, still covered in dense rainforest, while in their western ranges are the high Visas are required for Nepal. altitude deserts of Ladakh. Similarly the Gangetic plains stretch from the fertile and wet delta of Bengal to the deserts of North Rajasthan. Even the Peninsula ranges from the tropical humid climate of the western coast across the beautiful high ranges of the Western Ghats to the dry plateaus inland.