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A GREAT DESTINATION
ETERNAL
INDIA
encyclopedia
Sanskrit saying which says "a hundred divine epochs would not
suffice to describe all the marvels of the Himalayas." For trekking
or mountaineering there is nothing to match the Himalayan region in
the whole world. .
QUOTES
The short - term visitor is almost bound to be disappointed if he
attempts to see too much, learn too much or build a whole picture
out of the few pieces of the jigsaw... Go out, but let India come to
you. She comes slowly. Trek in the foothills of the Himalayas,
climb a mountain, photograph wildlife.... observe a holy festival....
concentrate exclusively on what you have gone to India to do...
-Paul Scott,
The Raj Quartet.
There is only one India... The land of dreams and romance... of
fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendour and rags .....................
The one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imper-
ishable interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and
ignorant, bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see, and
having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse
for all the shows of all the rest of the globe combined.
-Mark Twain, after visiting India in 1901
The geographical feature which dominates India most is the
Himalayas. There are no mountain ranges anywhere in the world
which have contributed so much to shape the life of a country as the
Himalayas have in respect of India. It is not only the political life of
the people of Hindustan, but the religion, mythology, art and litera-
ture of the Hindu that bear the imprint of the great mountain barrier.
To the Hindus the Himalayas have been a perpetual source of
wonder and veneration.
To the peoples of the south, a thousand and five hundred miles
away, to the men of the sea coast, to the dwellers of the desert land
of Rajputana no less than to the inhabitants of the Gangetic valley,
the Himalayas have been the symbol of India. The majesty of the
snowfed peaks, visible from afar, the inaccessibility of even the
lesser ranges, the mysteries of the gigantic glaciers and the mag-
nificence of the great rivers that emerge from its gorges have
combined to give to the Himalayas a majesty which no other
mountain range anywhere can claim.
-K.M. Panikkar.
You ask me, my dear sir, for a description of India, and suppose
that this must be an easy task for one who has now spent almost
ten years in the country. If you will be content with a mere sketch
I shall seek to meet your request, but I must beg you at the start to
change your present opinion into one quite the contrary....The cus-
toms of the different peoples, their manners, their opinions, their
religion, their rites and ceremonies, their vices and virtues in short
the whole character and behaviour of the various nations — can be
depicted only with the aid of a shrewd and understanding eye, one
accustomed to minute and calculating observation, so that from the
varied points of view thus offered we can select those which enable
us most readily to comprehend the whole subject.
— Lassaro Papi, 19th century Italian man of letters
There is not one Indian people, but many. There are slant-eyed
Tibetans up in Ladakh, light-skinned Kashmiris of Central Asian
stock in the far north, heavy-set and stocky Bengalis in the east,
negroid aboriginals in the north-east, dark-skinned Tamils in the
south, and all manner of Aryan, European, Arab, Semitic and
Mongol permutations throughout the north and down the western
coast. The amazing thing is that this wide-ranging amalgam of
races, religions and cultures — dissimilar in hundreds of ways —
have succeeded in becoming a single nation
— Frank Kusy