No matter how willing you are to step outside cultural bias and give up the joys of using toilet paper, India will still manage to sideswipe you with it's size, clamour and diversity. Nothing in the country is ever quite the way you expect it to be, and the only thing to expect is that the unexpected comes in many forms and it will always want to sit next to you. India is a litmus test for many travelers and some visitors are only too happy to get on an aircraft and fly away, but if you enjoy delving into convoluted cosmologies, thrive on sensual overload, and have a firm grasp of the absurd, then India is one of the most intricate and rewarding dramas unfolding on earth.

India is a large, triangular-shaped country in southern Asia, buttressed by the long sweep of the Himalaya in the north and protruding into the Indian Ocean in the south. It's bordered by Pakistan to the northwest, China, Nepal and Bhutan to the north, and Bangladesh and Myanmarto the east. Sri Lanka is the teardrop-shaped island hanging off its southern tip. India covers a land area of some 3,287,000 sq. km (1,281,930sq MI) though disputed borders with Pakistan and China make this figure somewhat arbitrary. It is the seventh largest country in the world.

Religion seeps into every facet of Indian Life. Despite being a secular democracy, India is one of the few countries on earth in which the social and religious structures which define the nation's identity remain intact, and have continued to do so for at least 4000 years despite invasions, persecution, European colonialism and political upheaval. Change is inevitably taking place as modern technology reaches further and further into the fabric of society but essentially rural India remains much the same as it has for thousands of years. So resilient are its social and religious institutions that it has absorbed, ignored or thrown off all attempts to radically change or destroy them.