50 Curiosities of India, an enigmatic country | With Images

India or India, both variants are admitted by the RAE , is one of the most populated countries on the planet. Its geography, its fauna and flora, its history, its people and its customs have fascinated the West for millennia. Join us to discover some curiosities of India , an enigmatic country that you will surely love.

Mark Twain traveled following the equator at the end of the 19th century and left his experience embodied in three travel books. One of them is titled "India" and summarized his experience saying that: "India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend and the great-grandmother of tradition. ." What more could you want?

50 Curiosities of India

1. The Republic of India is the second most populous country in the world as it has more than 1240 million inhabitants and yet it is the seventh largest.

2. Although the capital is New Delhi, the most populous city in the country is Bombay.

50 Curiosities of India, an enigmatic country

New Delhi

3. It is one of the ten countries in the world that possesses a nuclear arsenal.

4. The name "India" comes from Indus which in turn comes from the Persian word "Hindu" derived from the Sanskrit name for the Indus River which was "Sindhu". In short, it derives from the name of the Indus River.

5. The ancient Greeks called the inhabitants of India "Indoi" which means "the people of the Indus" by those who inhabited the Indus Valley. In this place one of the oldest, largest and most continuous civilizations of the planet was developed.

6. Archaeologists have found remains of some of the first rules used by man in the Indus Valley. They were ivory and had decimal subdivisions. It is estimated that they were made 1,500 years a.C.

7. Among the curiosities of India There are the Bhimbetka cave paintings, declared by UNESCO as world heritage sites, they are approximately 9000 years old and are the oldest remains of human life in India.

25 Curiosities of India, an enigmatic country, food of India, Customs of India, sacred cow, language of India

8. In August 1947, India obtained the independence of Great Britain, for whose achievement the figure of Mahatma Gandhi .

9. The flag of India has 3 colors distributed in horizontal bands: the first, colored saffron symbolizes courage and sacrifice, the second, white, peace and truth and the third green, fertility and chivalry

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10. Rabindranath Tagore was the author of the lyrics of the Indian hymn, "Jana Gana Mana".

11. Rabindranath Tagore, the poet, novelist, dramatist, musician and Bengali philosopher, born in Calcutta in 1861, was the first "non-European" to obtain the Nobel Prize for Literature. He won it in 1913.

12. India has more than 150,000 post offices, which represents the largest postal network in the world. However, it is not strange that a letter takes almost two weeks to travel less than 50 km.

13. Among the curiosities of India There is the floating post office of Srinagar in Kashmir. It was inaugurated in 2011.

50 Curiosities of India, an enigmatic country

14. In Kashmir there is a community that attracts a lot of tourism, it is the floating community of Srinagar to which the aforementioned post office belongs. There are almost 1,000 houseboats on the margins of the agos Dal and Nagin and Jhelum river .

15. The language of India official is double: Hindi and English. The constitution also recognizes another 22 languages ​​spoken in the country.

16. As we have seen, English is not the only language of India However, it is the second country in number of speakers or people who understand it after the USA. and that despite the fact that only 11.38% of people in India know about it.

17. Among the traditions of India we found an extremely curious one: they never use their left hand to eat. This procedure comes from the habit ancestral to use that hand to cleanse after defecating.

18. The Sati ritual or immolation of the widows in the funeral pyre of her husband is one of the customs of India which, fortunately, was banned in 1829 by the British. Since then, the news of an isolated case occasionally leaps out.

19. In some of the poorest areas of the country there is a tradition of handing over daughters at the service of the goddess Yellamma , this really means to turn them into sexual slaves of the people. They are known as the Devadasi of Yellamma. Despite being banned since 1988 in some places it is still done.

20. Another of the curiosities of India It's the cows. The sacred cow It is a symbol in India, but it represents a very serious real problem that affects health and traffic especially.

25 Curiosities of India, an enigmatic country, food of India, Customs of India, sacred cow, language of India

21. The Sacred cows on many occasions he has a "tilaka" on his forehead that is a Hindu symbol related to good fortune.

22. With so many cows, it is not surprising that India was the world's leading milk producer in 2017, ahead of the European Union and the US. They produce around 18% of the world's total milk according to the FAO.

23. The Indian food It is based mainly on wheat, rice and lentils. Although each region has its specialties.

24. The typical dishes of the Indian food They usually contain abundant herbs and spices and it is easy to find in many dishes up to a dozen of them.

25. The gastronomy of the country stands out for being cooked in a typical oven called tandoor that has been used for more than 5000 years. In it is cooked a particularly succulent meat and flat and bloated bread called naan.

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26. India, because of its beliefs, is the country with the most vegetarians in the world. Between Lactovegetarians and Ovovegetarians reach almost 40% of the population, according to a consultation carried out in 2006.

Between the curiosities of India there are endless monuments and curious places, for example:

27. The Temple of the rats or Karni Mata temple is more than 600 years old and is in Deshnoke a city in the state of Rajasthan. In it live more than 30,000 rats and is considered to be a reincarnation of Karni Mata.

28. The Taj Mahal is another of the curiosities of India that you can not stop seeing if you visit the country. It was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

25 Curiosities of India, an enigmatic country, food of India, Customs of India, sacred cow, language of India 3

Taj Mahal

29. Among the infinity of temples that you can visit in India, the most Erotic temples Declared World Heritage Sites are located in the city of Khajuraho. Its reliefs are a sample of erotic art and sexual content.

30. Among the curiosities of India not only you will find temples and ancient monuments, but also modern constructions like the " Bandra Worli Sealink ", a steel and concrete viaduct linking two areas of Mumbai. For its construction steel wire was used as well as to circle the Earth.

50 Curiosities of India, an enigmatic country

Bandra Worli Sealink

31. The Ganges It is the sacred river of India and in it we can find a kind of freshwater dolphin known as "Ganges dolphin".

25 Curiosities of India, an enigmatic country, food of India, Customs of India, sacred cow, language of India

Delfin of the Ganges

32. In India it is prohibited to have dolphins in captivity for public entertainment, with the aim of showing them performing tricks. They consider it a violation of their rights.

33. The citizens of the India they are the biggest consumers of cinema in the world. They buy more than 2,700 million tickets per year. "Bollywod" It is the mecca of the Indian film industry.

34. In India, it is the eighth company with the most employees in the world. It is the "Indian Railways", the main Indian railway company. It employs 1.3 million people and is the fourth largest rail network on the planet.

50 Curiosities of India, an enigmatic country

35. In India, cricket is the most popular sport, although hockey is considered to be the national sport.

36. Another of the curiosities of India is that it has the highest cricket field in the world. It is located in Himachal Pradesh and is known as the "Chail Cricket Ground" since it belongs to the Military School of Chail. It is at an altitude of 2,440 m. above sea level.

37. Another strange sport that is practiced in the country is the "Kabaddi". It is very popular in Bangladesh and other Asian countries. Simplifying, is to capture players of the other team in successive attacks during which the attacker can not breathe. To prove that he does not, he sings uninterruptedly. That's where the name of the game comes from: Kabaddi means singing. There are references to this game for 4,000 years.

38. India has been 5 times Kabaddi World Champion in the men's section and has won all the Women's Kabaddi World Cups.

50 Curiosities of India, an enigmatic country 4

Kabaddi

39. Shampoo was invented in India. We are not referring to the soapy liquids we use today, but to an herbal liquid that was used to perform hair massages, not in vain the word "shampoo" comes from Sanskrit and means "massage".

40. In India tea is the most popular drink, which is not surprising since they are the main producers of the world.

41. In India, what is considered to be the largest family in the world lives. The patriarch is called Ziona and is the leader of a Christian sect that lives in the mountains of the Indian state of Mizoran and preaches polygamy as a divine obligation. In 2016 he turned 72 years old and at that time he had 38 wives who had given him 89 children who in turn had made him grandfather more than 30 times.

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42. It is the second country in the world in number of engineers and scientists. Many of them are established in other countries, especially in the USA.

43. The "zero", the numeric sign of zero value, although it already existed as a concept in previous civilizations it was invented by a mathematician from India as possible adding up for negative and positive numbers forming part of the numbering system of positional notation (each figure has a value depending on where it is located) that we use today and that came to us through the Arabs.

44. Yoga, the tradition of physical and mental discipline, also originated in India.

45. Two icons of Western music and film are descendants of Indians and you may not have known them. They are Freddie Mercury, the ill-fated and legendary singer of the rock band "Queen" and Oscar winner Ben Kingsley. Their birth names were, respectively, Farrokh Bulsara and Krishna Pandit Bhanji.

46. ​​One of the most popular board games in history is the well-known one " Snakes and Ladders " Surely you have played in your childhood. It was invented in India under the name of "Moksha Patamu" and initially intended to teach children a moral lesson related to karma.

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47. One of the most important Indian cities is Benares, also known as Varanasi and is considered the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world . Even Buddha visited it at the time and is considered one of the sacred cities by both Hinduism and Buddhism and Jainism.

48. The sacred lotus is the national flower of India.

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49. Other emblems of India are its national animal, the peacock, and its national fruit: mango.

50. The last of these curiosities of India It makes reference to another popular game that although it came to us from the hands of the Arabs, it has its origin in India: chess. The predecessor of all the games of the chess family was known in Persia as "chaturanga", came from India and was originally a game for four people. When the Arabs conquered Persia they made it theirs, developed it and accompanied it in its expansion.

Other Curiosities of Asia | By Countries

Have you been interested in these curiosities of India, an enigmatic and surprising place ? If you're fascinated by Asian countries, you can not miss the following curiosities of Asia in general, distributed by countries. Surely you will be interested and surprised as much as the previous ones! Discover them!

  • Curiosities of the Philippines
  • Curiosities of Georgia
  • Curiosities of Thailand
  • Curiosities of Turkey
  • Curiosities of China
  • Curiosities of Japan
  • Curiosities of North Korea
  • Curiosities of South Korea
  • Curiosities of Russia
  • Curiosities of Mongolia
  • Curiosities of Jordan
  • Curiosities of Nepal

Did you know these curiosities of India ? Have you been surprised to learn that games like chess, parchis or "snakes and ladders" originated in that country? We really want to visit the country! If you know some interesting data from India that we have not mentioned, share it with us and we can expand the list!

Image: Bernard Gagnon , Mintu500px , Doha 2006 , Nikhilb239 ,


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