During the cooler and drier season of January 2005, we traveled to different parts of India to learn about its complex and diverse cultural geography. Some reasons for studying and visiting India:

  1. the most culturally diverse country in the world: 17 major regional languages alone
  2. origin of four major religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism
  3. second largest Islamic population in the world, after Indonesia
  4. over 5,000 years of  history, starting in the Indus Valley
  5. almost 1 billion people
  6. a great world culture of foods, crafts, and arts
  7. 70 percent of India's population lives in villages
  8. one of the largest railroad system with the largest number of employees in the world
  9. largest film industry (Bollywood): films and movie goers
  10. elected Communist parties, particularly in Kerala and Bengal

Click on each of the highlighted cities.
On average, one person in the USA uses the same amount of resources (food, water, energy, etc) as 25 people in India.

Ingolf Vogeler took 1,602 photos; created web pages on 15 February 2005, last revised on 12 December 2006.