India is a paradox difficult to understand. It is ultra modern and very rural. It is a place where the journey will make a more interesting anecdote than the arrival.

This country hosts mountains and deserts, plains and plateaus, beaches and back water. It changes in appearance every few hundred kilometers that you travel, not just in the scenery but also in the local population. If you put a Tamil Iyengar Brahmin alongside a Khalsa Sardar from Punjab and say they are from the same country you will probably not believe it. The differences between north and south are as stark as those between the east and west. Yet it is a cultural melting pot. A place where invaders came to loot and settled down to live; a wonderful blend of old world charm and new world power which you can experience if you have the inclination and the time.