India travel guide — India tourism and travel information 6

India

The Republic of India is a country rich in ethnic and cultural diversity and is the world's largest liberal democracy. India is also the second most populated country in the world with over one billion people speaking about four hundred languages. The Indian economy is the fourth largest in the world, in terms of purchasing power parity, and is the world's second-fastest growing economy. India has grown significantly, in terms of both population and strategic importance, in the last twenty years, attributed to economic reforms.

Strategically located in Asia, constituting most of the Indian subcontinent, India straddles many busy trade routes. It shares its borders with Pakistan, the People's Republic of China, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Afghanistan.¹ Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Indonesia are the nearby island nations in the Indian Ocean. Home to some of the most ancient civilisations in the world, India was formally ruled by the British for almost ninety years before gaining independence in 1947.

India geography

A land of varied landscape that occupies most of the Indian subcontinent, India has snow-capped peaks, tropical islands, fertile plains and a sandy desert to offer. India's entire north and northeast states are made up of the Himalayan Range. The rest of northern, central and eastern India consists of the fertile Indo-Gangetic plain. Towards western India, bordering southeast Pakistan, lies the Thar Desert. The southern Indian peninsula is almost entirely composed of the Deccan plateau. The plateau is flanked by two hilly coastal ranges, the Western Ghats and Eastern Ghats.

India is home to several major rivers such as the Ganga (Ganges), the Brahmaputra, the Yamuna, the Godavari and the Krishna.

The Indian climate varies from a tropical climate in the south to a more temperate climate in the north. India gets its rains through the monsoons.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "India".