Travel Virus

India

Facts and curiosities

We all know that China is the most populated country on earth, with over 1 billion people (1.3 billion).But maybe we are less aware that also India is over 1 billion!! (1.09 billion)

Most incredible is that India is much smaller than China, around 1/3, that means the population density is higher: 324 h/km². Sounds a lot? Well actually it is not even twice the density of Italy.
The capital is New Delhi, with 13 million people.
Well, this huge population makes India the largest democracy on earth (based on population).

In India we also find the world’s largest employer. You guess which is this company?!

Some notes on Indian Universities and Colleges:
In India there are 18,000 colleges and universities (in Italy around 60) and 11 million college students (Source NYT), that is twice the population of whole Switzerland! There are Over 950 Business School (Source: Business Today) and 3 universities are in the top200 university of the world (Italy has only 1!)

I found this odd map (green one) about the population density of India. Not surprisingly, the Gange valley is the area of the world with the highest population density.

The red map referes to literacy level. We see it’s a quite tragic situation, as almost half of the population are unlitterate. I am going to volunteer in Andrha Pradesh, this state in dark-red color in the south-east: one of the areas of India with the lowest literacy rate. I hope I can make my little contribution to improve the situation.

Time: India is ahead 4 hours and 30 minutes of central Europe.
Language: English is supposed to be spoken in major cities and tourist places, and acts as the lingua franca among all educated Indians. The main language spoken is Hindi (however spoken just by 30% of the population), together with other 14 official languages, and thousands of dialects. This is not surprising since India is about as big and as populated as Europe.
Interestingly we adopted some of those Indian words, especially religious ones: Guru (teacher), Nirvana (extinction of the separative ego) and avatar (reincarnation).

India is the land of spirituality and pholosphy, and it the birhplace of two of the greatest religions of the wold: buddhism and Hinduism. Actually the majority of people ar Hindu (81%), while there are basically no buddhists left (in India).
You know those indian people waring colorful turbants? They are Sikh, another indian religion, just 2% of the polulation, that is 20 million people however!

Currency is the rupee: 1€ = 56 rupees. Average income is about 16 € per month (832 INR).
India fast economic development is well know and people are betting if and when India will overtake China’s economic growth. What do you think?!

Tourism

India has many outstanding landmarks, of which the most famous is certainly the spectacular Taj Mahal, ranked 10^th on BBC’s “50 place to see before you die”. The most popular region for tourists is Rajastan (so I’m not going there 😉 ). I will rather prefer to take a river boat on the Ganges river. Kerala is supposed to be one of the still quite undiscovered beauties of India.

My tips: buying internal flights from a travel agency in Europe can be expensive, while it’s actually cheap to fly within India. I suggest: www.makemytrip.com
Many airline companies exists, such as Indian Airlines (former government-owned), Jet Airways , Air Sahara and AirDeccan, which is similar to Ryanair (also blue and yellow corporate colors) but I paid around 5 euros for 7 kilos of extrawight 😉

Of what I have seen in my trip, I would strongly recommand you to visit Varanasi, the Tajmahal (in Agra) and the backwaters in Kerala: I was told to rent a houseboat there – okay, next time…