The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, nicknamed ‘the toy train’, is a narrow-gauge line serving the famous hill station in West Bengal from the town of Siliguri.
India’s great triangular central plateau, known as the Deccan, descends to the sea through low hills known as the Western and Eastern Ghats, which give way to thin coastal strips bordering the Arabian Sea to the west and the Bay of Bengal to the east. The Deccan, with geological strata several hundred million years old, is considered the oldest part of the country; coal, diamonds and gold are mined here. Finally converging towards the subcontinent’s tip, the Ghats form the Nilgiri Hills, where much tea is grown. Below are India’s two southernmost states, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, distant in everything but location. Kerala, on the western seaboard, is the verdant spice garden that first lured traders to India and has a polyglot culture shaped by Arab, Roman, Chinese, Dutch, British and Marxist influences. A relatively modernised state, her Christian community, a fourth of her population, is the oldest outside of Israel and her 99 per cent literacy rate is five per cent higher than America’s. To the east, Tamil Nadu is a bastion of traditional Hindu civilisation, boasting magnificent medieval temple-cities—treasure houses of art, culture and arcane ritual—rising like exotic carved islands from glittering emerald seas of paddy.
Leaves being picked on the terraces of a tea plantation near Coonoor in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.
A small traditional boat known as a shikara floats on Lake Dal in Kashmir, close to the capital Srinagar.
India’s climate is as varied at her topography. A spectacular example: in 1969 most of Rajasthan had been without rain for 13 years, while parts of Assam, about 1,609 kilometres (1,000 miles) to the east, had no less than 21 metres (69 feet). The north and central regions enjoy four seasons. Winter (December–March), with sunny days and cool nights, is the best time to travel; spring (April–June), when the pre-monsoon tension builds up oppressively and temperatures can reach a gasping 50˚C (122˚F); Summer (June–September), when the monsoons finally break and the parched country enjoys an obligatory bath, followed by a brief autumn (September–November) sprinkled with fresh green shoots fanned by warm breezes. At this time a second monsoon begins to blow across southern India from the northeast, bringing rains that make this the greenest part of the subcontinent. Nowadays, however, global climatic changes make the monsoon increasingly unpredictable. This irregularity, coupled with the effects of widespread deforestation in most of the hill areas, leads to swings of drought and flood that can devastate the lives of millions. India is no stranger to Mother Nature’s fickleness, and the resultant fragility of life has been deeply etched onto the Indian psyche during the nation’s long history.
An Indian farmer near Mysore leads his cow down to the river to bathe on a misty morning.
A Bengali priest, centre, instructs the garlanded couple at a wedding ceremony in Kolkata.
Male guests wearing distinctive local costumes that include a sash and decorative dagger at another wedding, this time in Coorg (Kodagu) in Karnataka’s Western Ghats.
Throughout this enormous terrain is spread the world’s second largest population, over one billion people and increasing by more than 14 million each year. They come in every conceivable hue of skin and cut of feature, and between them speak no less than 17 major languages (each as different as the major European languages), 18 minor ones (each with its own script, grammar and cultural associations) and over 20,000 distinct dialects. Such linguistic variety poses daunting problems: even Hindi, the national language, is understood by less than half the country.
This richly differentiated people—which includes almost 70 million tribals, some of whom still live at Stone-Age level—is distributed between 26 semi-autonomous states and seven union territories. While each has its distinct traditions, dress, customs and cuisine, all owe allegiance to the central government at Delhi.
Ramshackle as this super-pluralist democracy may be as it lurches periodically from crisis to crisis, it continues on, sometimes surprising in a typically Indian way. Kerala, for example, was the first place in the world to freely elect a communist government, throw it out, and then re-elect it—all by fair ballot. Though the strains at the edges threaten to erupt, somehow the centre does hold, and ‘Unity in diversity’ has long been India’s proud motto.
A woman at the Mysore temple of Venugopalaswamy dons a sari.
Marigolds, used extensively for garlands throughout India, for sale at a flower market in Jaipur.
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