wave of visitors to stand and marvel. This is a civilisation that has suffered and absorbed innumerable foreign conquests, creating a a richly variegated tapestry of peoples and traditions, yet it is today facing perhaps the greatest threat to its survival. For traditionally India—and this is part of her fascination—has stood for values that are very different to those of the modern, secular West. She has believed that humanity is inextricably part of nature, not merely its exploiter; that human communities—family, tribe, caste—have enduring value, not just their individual members; that the worlds of the imagination, the hidden realms of gods, myths and magic, are just as real as the daylight world of history and science. Above all she has taught that we should lead a tolerant and balanced life in rhythms well-established, the goal of which is not merely to accumulate money, power and things, but to find God. In the brave new world of globalisation and the Internet, what is unique in India may not survive for long, yet it may be that she has things to teach us.
Scenes from the annual parade of painted elephants, just before the festival of Holi in the city of Jaipur.
Man Mandir Palace, Gwalior. Built between 1486 and 1517 by Raja Mansingh, the palace dominates Gwalior Fort, which stands on a steep mass of sandstone overlooking the city.
Cut into the sandstone cliffs below Gwalior Fort are a series of Jain statues. These are in the best-preserved southeast group.
The backwaters of Kerala, a labyrinth of canals surrounding Lake Vembanand. Many of the original rice barges known as kettuvallams (top) have been converted into houseboats.Village life (above) nevertheless continues, despite the growth of tourism.
A misty sunrise over harvested rice fields in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.
Farmers winnowing rice during the harvest following the monsoon rains in a village near Mamallapuram, south of Chennai.
Fatehpur Sikri, ‘the City of Victory,’ was built by the Mughal emperor Akbar in 15 years, starting in about 1569. Sheikh Salim Chishti’s white marble mausoleum is the jewel of the courtyard of the Friday Mosque.
The tomb of Itmad-ud-Daulah was built on the banks of the Yamuna River in Agra between 1622 and 1625. It includes many design features that were later used in the construction of the nearby Taj Mahal.
The Taj Hotel in Mumbai is one of the city’s enduring landmarks. Built in 1903, it was the first modern hotel in the city, then known as Bombay.
The Gateway of India, seen from the upper floors of the Taj Hotel, was completed in 1928 to celebrate the arrival of King George V and Queen Mary.
Land and People
“Though outwardly there was diversity and infinite variety among our people, everywhere there was that tremendous impress of oneness, which had held all of us together for ages…some kind of a dream of unity has occupied the mind of India since the dawn of civilisation.”
—Jawaharlal Nehru, first prime minister of independent India.
Mehrangarh Fort, founded in 1459, stands on a 150-metre (165-foot) hill overlooking and dominating the Rajasthani city of Jodhpur. In the foreground is the Jaswant Thada, a cluster of royal cenotaphs in white marble built in 1899 in memory of Maharaja Jaswant Singh I.
India is vast. The world’s seventh largest country, her landmass is over 3.28 million square kilometres (1.26 million square miles), an area as large and varied as Europe. Her coastlines run 5,650 kilometres (3,533 miles) and her frontiers with neighbours extend an astonishing 15,168 kilometres (9,425 miles). From the state of Jammu and Kashmir, her northern border with China, to her southern tip at Kanniyakumari (‘the Abode of the Virgin Goddess’), the subcontinent stretches from 38 degrees north latitude, well above the Tropic of Cancer, to just 7 degrees above the equator.
Within this span lies every type of physical terrain. To the north rise the mighty Himalayas (hima meaning ‘snow’; laya meaning ‘abode’), the world’s highest mountain range and the largest area covered by snow and ice outside of the poles. The many Himalayan valleys flow with sparkling rivers and are clothed with flowers and forests of pine, juniper, deodar and silver birch, while lush thickets of banana and rustling bamboo cover the foothills, where temperate zones are swathed in rhododendron, sal, oak, maple and birch. The western foothills trail off into the well-irrigated and prosperous Punjab, India’s wheat basket and where the ‘green revolution’ took off in the 1960s. Further south stretches the Great Thar desert, covering the states of Western Rajasthan and Kutch—and 8 per cent of the country’s surface—in sand dunes and rocky outcrops. To the east unfolds the lush alluvial plain of the River Ganges, the most densely populated area on earth. The Ganges meets her sister the Brahmaputra to enter the Bay of Bengal in a marshy delta lying below sea level, where mangrove forests spawn a wide variety of exotic flora and fauna.
A group of tribal women from a village on the edge of the Thar desert in Rajasthan walk to the local well in the late afternoon to draw water.
A Sikh temple guardian, or nihang, at the Golden Temple, Amritsar.
A young Sikh girl during the annual procession of the Granth Sahib (the Sikh sacred book kept in the Golden Temple) around Amritsar.
A Rajasthani woman drawing water from a desert well close to Khuri village, near Jaisalmer.
Village life in Rajasthan.
A painted doorway to a farm in Khuri.
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