1000 Awesome Things About India

As the sun takes its last bow for the day, the joint checkpost at Wagah-the only road link between India and Pakistan-turns into a port of high-voltage patriotic fervour. The checkpost, roughly 23 km from Amritsar, comes alive with the beating retreat-a carefully choreographed drill by India's Border Security Force (BSF) on one side and the Pakistan Rangers on the other to mark the lowering of their national flags. The ceremony, since Partition, has over the years turned ostensibly hostile. A kilometre short of Wagah, roadside hawkers sell small national flags and sunshades in tricolour to the crowds heading for the visitors' gallery to watch the spectacle. When it's time, a battery of high-megawatt speakers facing the Pakistan side blare out patriotic film songs. And then amid loud cheers of "Hindustan Zindabad" and "Vande Mataram", the BSF personnel, matched in ferocity by the Rangers, march menacingly towards each other stomping feet high and hard on the road. The cacophony on the Indian side is matched in volume and spirit on the Pakistani side. The iron gates are shut for the night. But soon after the ceremony, called "Victory Parade", the crowds surge near the zero line smiling, waving and clicking pictures. The loud patriotic rivalry melts away, making Wagah a port of silent cross-border bonhomie.

This carefully choreographed display of hostility takes place every evening at a flag-lowering ceremony on both sides of the rivals' only border crossing.Loudspeakers blare out patriotic Indian songs and soon the crowds at the Wagah border crossing, 500 km northwest of New Delhi, begin to chant.

"Hail mother India!" is the cry from 8,000 Indians in a grandstand built beside the border gate, set amid green wheat fields. "We salute you mother!" they roar.

"Long live Pakistan!" several thousand Pakistanis shout back from the other side of tall iron gates guarded by soldiers with assault rifles. "God is greatest."

"OUR FLAG FLIES HIGHER"

Groups of Indian school girls break into dance in the stands and in the middle of the road as the music switches to a 1960s patriotic Bollywood song set to a modern tune.

Suddenly, a turbaned Sikh waving a large Indian flag charges towards the border gate, cheered on loudly by the thousands on the Indian side who have come to witness the daily spectacle, as if he was set to plant the flag on enemy territory.

"We have to tell them that our flag flies higher than theirs," said the man, Tejinder Singh, a trader from the nearby city of Jalandhar."We have to live in peace but I don't think that side wants peace,"

The Pakistani crowd is not to be outdone. A young bearded man, wearing a Muslim prayer cap, runs towards the Indian side waving the green national flag.

"Pakistan, Pakistan, Pakistan," the crowd roars.

The chanting reaches a crescendo as border guards dressed in ceremonial uniforms with tufted headgear begin a goose-step march to lower flags at the gate, stomping their boots with enough force to kick up dust on the asphalted road.

"The line between tourism and nationalism does not exist here," says a senior Indian officer.

A serene, idyllic spot with only nature for company and that too in the middle of a bustling city. Sounds too good to be true? Not if you have been to the Osho Teerth also called the Nallah park set in the lush environs between lane number two and three of Koregaon Park. An inviting tranquillity envelopes the park spread over 12 acres of greenery and is divided into two inter-connected section by a bridge.

The gravelly garden path in one section leads one on to a finely chiselled statue of Osho, the inspiration behind the project, with the words Osho Teerth written alongside. An undulating greenscape dotted with a variety of plants on both sides unfolds before the eyes of the visitor.

It may seem a little difficult to believe that this park was once a mosquito-infested wasteland
or that the gurgling brook that runs through the park was a nallah into which the effluents of the Pulgate sewerage were emptied. The park, which seems to have risen Phoenix-like from the dirt, owes its creation to the Shunyo Foundation, friends of the Osho Commune International who in 1990 took up the greening of the nallah. Members of the Shunyo Foundation approached the collector of Pune to seek permission to acquire land around the nallah for a public park.

Any place that can inspire you to meditate when it is not a part of your daily routine has to be truly special.And So is the Zen Garden In Pune.

Ratha Jatra, the Festival of Chariots of Lord Jagannatha is celebrated every year at Puri, the temple town in Orissa, on the east coast of India. The presiding deities of the main temple, Sri Mandira, Lord Jagannatha, Lord Balabhadra and Goddess Subhadra, with the celestial wheel Sudarshana are taken out from the temple precincts in an elaborate ritual procession to their respective chariots. The huge, colourfully decorated chariots, are drawn by hundreds and thousands of devotees on the bada danda, the grand avenue to the Gundicha temple, some two miles away to the North. After a stay for seven days, the deities return to their abode in Srimandira. Ratha Jatra is perhaps the grandest festival on earth. Everything is on a scale befitting the great Lord. Full of spectacle, drama and colour, the festival is a typical Indian fair of huge proportions. It is also the living embodiment of the synthesis of the tribal, the folk, and the autochthonous with the classical, the elaborately formal and the sophisticated elements of the socio-cultural-religious ethos of the Indian civilization.

The main journey of the "Chariot Festival" involves the large Deities of Lord Jagannath, Baladev and Subhadra to be transported from the temple, each on their own chariot, every year, where:

A glimpse of Lord Jagannatha on the chariot is considered to be very auspicious and saints, poets and scriptures have repeatedly glorified the sanctity of this special festival.
The sanctity of the festival is such that even a touch of the chariot or even the ropes with which these are pulled is considered enough to confer the results of several pious deeds or penance for ages. In fact, there is a famous Oriya song which says that on this occasion, the chariot, the wheels, the grand avenue all become one with Lord Jagannatha himself.

The concept of the chariot has been explained in the Kathopanishada in the following words-

Atmanam rathinam viddhi sareeram rathamevatu 

Buddhim tu saarathim viddhi marah pragrahameva cha.

Those who are fortunate to see the deities of the Srimandira in the Gundicha Temple, the final destination of the procession of the chariots, derive the benefits of a thousand horse sacrifices, an immensely pious deed. Kabi Samrat Upendra Bhanja in his famous Vaidehisa Vilasa mentions that the Lord comes out from his sanctum for participating in the Gundicha Jatra, another name of the Festival of Chariots, only for redeeming the fallen, the patita jana who get the opportunity to behold their dearest god at close quarters on this occasion. Similarly, saint poet Salabega waxes eloquent in praise of his dearest dark darling and says that the Lord swaying and moving like a wild elephant arrives at the Grand Avenue and rides his chariot and destroys in a flash all the sins of his devotees, even if these may be grave or unpardonable.

If you are in India and not afraid of crowd , then Puri Rath Yatra fulfills both spiritual and religious needs. Rath Yatra will give you a glimpse of India - An India that is known for its vedic culture and religious beliefs.

Go barefoot to the Andamans. This is a place of pilgrimage. You need to have the faith, you need to believe: there are no deities, no shrines, no monuments. But yes, if you are pagan and would genuflect to a spiny thorny woody leafy decades old tree, if you would stop to hear birdsong, if you would pray that there always be a sea and a forest, if you would revere the place enough to collect all your plastic and take it back with you, and promise never to return, and never to tell anyone about this place, so that it remains there, suspended on its latitude and longitude, alone, unspoilt, self absorbed and ever growing, then and only then must you go to the Andamans.

Havelock Island is largely untouched by humankind too—visited by a mere 10,000 tourists a year (compared with the millions swarming Phuket across the water). That means plenty of room on the beach for everyone. Beach No. 7 is the prettiest (sand flies aside), but there's Ayurvedic massage and the island's best restaurant on No. 5. Either way, with a coconut-shell sundowner in hand, you'll realize that nondescript names don't mean a thing. Because Beaches No. 5 and No. 7, like the perfumes by Chanel, are heady, lingering and utterly timeless.  

The Andaman Islands, in the Bay of Bengal, are really India's secret paradise.Stunning beaches, pristine coral reefs, tropical jungle, a rich wildlife, active volcanoes, the possibility to meet swimming elephants and colourful big fishes- all in one place!

I don't need to say more as the images are self-explaining. With this project of listing '1000 Awesome Things About India' , I am discovering many places/food/cultures/people in India that seem unimaginable.. However,Not all make it to this list but they all are worth a try.