The India guide
Everything you need to know about India, all in one place
India is a country you arrive in rather than visit: 28 states drawn along the lines of the languages spoken in them, a monsoon that sets the year, and a train network that will carry you between the two. Learn the shape of it, the facts that make daily life legible, and the first hundred words of whichever of its ten languages you are going to be living in.
India · Facts
Read it, then make it stick
Selected topic
Geography of India
The Himalayas wall off the north, the rivers below them feed one of the most crowded plains on Earth, and the old Deccan Plateau fills the peninsula. Across all three, the southwest monsoon arriving in June decides the agricultural year.
India · Maps
Know the shape of the country
Three maps of India itself, drawn from the same files the rounds are played on. The states are the frame everything else sits in; the cities and the rivers that put most of them where they are go inside it.
Pick a map. It opens and plays right here.
India · Words
Take Hindi with you
Lesson 1 of 10
Greetings and politeness
Hello, thanks, please: the ten openers everything else builds on.
Explore more country maps
Keep going one country deeper
When you have had your fill of India, every country here has maps of its own.