By boat
India has several international ports on its peninsula. Mumbai and Chennai are the main ones handling passenger traffic, while the rest mainly handle cargo.
The major points of entry are Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata. If you are flying in from a Western country, chances are that you will get in through one of these cities. However in recent years, to accommodate the increasing traffic, many other airports have been upgraded to take in international flights. Among these are Amritsar, Ahmedabad, Calicut, Cochin, Coimbatore, Guwahati, Bangalore, Jaipur, Mangalore, Pune, Thiruvananthapuram and Varanasi.
Clearing customs can be a bit of a hassle, though it has improved vastly over the the last decade. In general, avoid the touts who will offer to ease your baggage through customs. There are various rules regarding duty-free allowances — there are differing rules for Indian citizens, foreign "tourists", citizens of Nepal, Bhutan and Pakistan, non-citizens of Indian origin and people moving to India.
Citizens of most countries with a few exceptions like Bhutan and Nepal need a visa to get in. Depending on your purpose of visit, you can get a tourist visa (six months ~US $60, one year ~US $75), a business visa (6 months, one year or more, multiple entries) or a student visa (up to 5 years). A special 10 year visa (US $150, business and tourist) is available to US citizens only. Note that some Indian embassies only offers visas to residents of that country: this means you should get your visa before you leave home, instead of trying to get in a neighboring country.
Holidays: There are three national holidays: Republic Day (January 26), Independence Day (August 15), and Gandhi Jayanti (October 2) which occur on the same day every year. In addition, there are three major nationwide festivals with shifting dates to be aware of:
In India, it rains only during a specific time of the year. The season as well as the phenomenon that causes it is called the monsoon. There are two of them, the Southwest and the Northeast, both named after the directions the winds come from. The Southwest monsoon is the more important one, as it causes rains over most parts of the country, and is the crucial variable that decides how the crops (and therefore the economy) will do. It lasts from June to September. It hits the west coast the most, as crossing the western ghats and reaching the rest of India is an uphill task for the winds. The western coastline is therefore much greener than the interior. The Northeast monsoon hits the east coast between October and February, mostly in the form of occasional cyclones which cause much devastation every year. The only region that gets rains from both monsoons is Northeastern India, which consequently experiences the highest rainfall in the world.
India (Hindi: भारत) is the largest country in the Indian Subcontinent and shares borders with Pakistan to the west, China and Nepal to the north, Bhutan to the north-east, and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Indonesia lie to the south-east in the Indian Ocean. It is the seventh largest country in the world by area and, with over a billion people, is second only to China in population. It’s an extremely diverse country, with vast differences in geography, climate, culture, language and ethnicity across its expanse, and prides itself on being the largest democracy on Earth.
India’s official national sport is field hockey, administered by the Indian Hockey Federation. The Indian field hockey team has won the 1975 Men’s Hockey World Cup and Olympic gold medals. However, cricket is the most popular sport; the India national cricket team has won the 1983 Cricket World Cup and the 2007 ICC World Twenty20. Cricket in India is administered by the Board of Control for Cricket in India and domestic competitions include the Ranji Trophy, the Duleep Trophy, the Deodhar Trophy, the Irani Trophy and the Challenger Series. Indian national team cricketers enjoy widespread popularity and hold several world records.
India’s culture is marked by a high degree of syncretism and cultural pluralism. It has managed to preserve established traditions while absorbing new customs, traditions, and ideas from invaders and immigrants and spreading its cultural influence to other parts of Asia.
Indian cuisine is characterized by a wide variety of regional styles and sophisticated use of herbs and spices. The staple foods in the region are rice (especially in the south and the east) and wheat (predominantly in the north). Spices originally native to the Indian subcontinent that are now consumed world wide include black pepper; in contrast, hot chili peppers, popular across India, were introduced by the Portuguese.
With an estimated population of 1.15 billion, representing 17% of the world population, India is the world’s second most populous country. The last 50 years have seen a rapid increase in population due to medical advances and massive increase in agricultural productivity made by the green revolution. Almost 70% of Indians reside in rural areas, although in recent decades migration to larger cities has led to a dramatic increase in the country’s urban population. India’s largest cities are Mumbai (formerly Bombay), Delhi, Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), Chennai (formerly Madras), Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore), Hyderabad and Ahmedabad.
