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India: Travel & Tourism
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Periyar also supports a population of over 40 tigers, as well as approximately 15 leopards, numerous sloth bears and 50 packs of wild dogs. Several troops of monkey species reside in the park, too: bonnet macaque, the endangered lion-tailed macaque, the common langur and the Nilgiri langur, whose deeply booming voice echoes hauntingly across the misted lake at dawn and dusk.
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India: Travel & Tourism
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The 300-square-mile Periyar Sanctuary in #Kerala is nestled in the high ranges of the Western Ghats. Nearly 200 land and water bird varieties flourish within the sanctuary, as do the ever-visible herds of #elephant, wild boar, chital and gaur. The park is also a haven for garden and monitor lizards, king cobra, python and the flying species of lizard, snake and frog. #wildlife
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India: Housing, Lodging & Rentals
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Though traveler resthouses are available in Masinagudi, a small impoverished village on the periphery of the park, they are generally noisy and dirty. The best accommodations to be had near Mudumalai (none are allowed within the park's borders) are Jungle Hut, Bamboo Banks and Jungle Trails.
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India: Travel & Tourism
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Bird life in all three parks is abundant. There are more than 216 bird species in Mudumalai, and over a period of several hours I spotted a wealth of fowl, including hoopoes, magpie and Indian robins, sunbirds, brainfever birds, cuckoos; jungle, hill and brahminy mynahs; jungle bush-quail, gray partridge, coucals, white-backed vultures, peafowl and rufous-backed shrikes. #wildlife
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India: Travel & Tourism
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Equally common a sight, in the most deciduous forests of Mudumalai, are herds of chital, or spotted deer, gaur (largest of the wild bovids), wild boar and congregations of long-limbed, elegant langurs. These arboreal monkeys will scamper to a safe distance when disturbed, then archly turn their inquisitive black faces to scrutinize the intruder. #wildlife
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India: Travel & Tourism
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All Mudumalai resorts are open year-round, though the best time for viewing game is during the summer months (March to June), when the tropical deciduous forests are leafless and when animals congregate around dwindling water holes. In all seasons, however, wild elephants exist in such plentitude in these sanctuaries that sightings are common. #wildlife
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India: Travel & Tourism
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During my stay at Mudumalai I saw bison, spotted deer, antelopes, elephants, hyenas and jackals, to name just a few animals; at Periyar I saw large herds of elephants as well as other mammals and waterfowl; at Nagarahole I saw most of the animals I had seen at Mudumalai as well as a #tiger and a leopard. #wildlife
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India: Travel & Tourism
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The southern tip of the Indian subcontinent possesses an abundance of wildlife sanctuaries supporting some of the most colorful, exotic and awe-inspiring wildlife in the world. Three preserves in particular - Mudumalai in Tamil Nadu, Nagarahole in Karnataka and Periyar in Kerala.
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India: Communication & Transportation
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bear in mind when planning side trips that it is rarely possible to cover more than 30 miles in an hour on Indian roads. Journeys that look short on the map can be impossibly long. Driving at night is not a good idea in a land where bullock carts and stray animals amble around in the dark among the pedestrians and pavement-dwellers.
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India: Hotels & Resorts
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If you plan to travel on from Madras (Chennai) without an initial stopover, an excellent hotel, The Trident, run by the Oberoi group (1-24 G.S.T. Road, Madras 600027; telephone 434-747; doubles about $60), is a few minutes' drive from the airport.
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India: People & Places
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Old Cochin is a busy, noisy town, but it is possible to walk around parts of it, including the waterfront near St. Francis Church, the oldest church erected by Europeans in India.
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India: People & Places
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South of Madurai, India comes to an end in the raging surf of Kanyakumari, on the tip of Cape Comorin, where the Bay of Bengal meets the Indian Ocean. A place of pilgrimage: on a pile of sea-sprayed rocks offshore, the 19th-century Hindu reformer, Swami Vivekananda, meditated before setting off on his crusade to restore intellectualism and social responsibility to India's major religion.
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India: Travel & Tourism
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Like other #temples in the region, Meenakshi Temple of Madurai is Dravidian in form, a tall, broad but slightly pyramiding tower with dark, dank interiors. The Dravidians, darker-skinned people driven south by invaders from the north, had no arch or dome to lighten their places of worship.
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India: Travel & Tourism
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A visit to the Meenakshi Temple of Madurai is an experience in the ritual of Hindu temple-going, with all its sidelights: the beggars, the merchants, the Brahmin holy men; the blur of colored sculpture that fills every inch of the soaring temple's sides; the intense faces of the devotees; the main-chance pitch of the priests who seem to run lucrative sidelines in enlightening foreigners. #temples
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India: Travel & Tourism
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South of Pondicherry, on the way to Cape Comorin, the southern tip of India, are two great cities of art and architecture, Thanjavur (known more familiarly as Tanjore) and Madurai.
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India: Shopping
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Small studios by artisans from East and West around Pondicherry are producing interesting pottery and leatherwork for shops in cities elsewhere in India. The largest collection for local sale is in the Auroville handicrafts shop, open on weekdays only.
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India: People & Places
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Most people who stop in Pondicherry are looking for the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and the tomb of its founder, Sri Aurobindo, and his disciple, known as The Mother. The ashram, founded in the 1920's, is an internationally known center of yoga.
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India: History & Culture
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At Adyar, one of this tropical city's greenest residential suburbs, the world headquarters of the Theosophical Society is set in extensive grounds, both arboretum and bird sanctuary. The society - founded by an American ex-Civil War officer, Col. H. S. Olcott, and the Russian-born mystic, Helena P. Blavatsky - lures students of New Age religions as well as theosophists from all over the world.
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India: People & Places
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The Madras seafront - the Bay of Bengal is to look at, but unsafe to swim in - is also the setting for Madras University and other educational institutions as well as the splendid icehouse built in 1840 to receive India's first shipment of ice blocks from America.
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India: Travel & Tourism
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Madras also has good bookshops, the best of them a tiny but overflowing treasure house called Giggles, off the lobby of the Connemara Hotel. For listings of cultural events, read the English-language Indian Express or The Hindu.
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India: History & Culture
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The first British (Anglican) church in India was built in Fort St. George in about 1678. Still home to an active congregation, it displays many historical plaques, one commemorating Elihu Yale, the founder of Yale University, who worked in Madras as a clerk and worshiped here.
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India: History & Culture
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Madras (Chennai) may be India's most attractively situated large city, strung along a wide Bay of Bengal beach from Fort St. George at the northern end of town to the estuary of the Adyar River near the south.
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India: History & Culture
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Significantly for the South, where English is still widely spoken, the British Empire in India began here in the 17th century, with the establishment of a trading post at Madras (Chennai).
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India: History & Culture
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Centuries ago, South India was the center of old Hindu empires and a civilization that, in many pockets, never fell under the control or influence of the Islamic conquerers from the Northwest Frontier or their descendants, who conquered most of the rest of India.
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India: History & Culture
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The South was the first corner of India to welcome Muslims from the trading nations across the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. Jewish settlements sprang up too. And, according to history that slips into legend, St. Thomas the Apostle brought Christianity to India in the first century, long before most Europeans practiced the new faith.
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India: Travel & Tourism
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Foreigners make up a small fraction of the visitors to #Kerala. For example, 515,808 foreign tourists visited Kerala last year, compared with about 6.64 million domestic tourists. Yet, foreign visitors are growing fast, up 20 percent from the year before, according to Keralatourism.org, the official Web site of the Kerala Department of Tourism.
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India: History & Culture
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Roza Bal is the name of a shrine located in the Khanyar district of Srinagar, in Kashmir, India, venerated by some Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists. Some people identify the sage buried there with one Yuz Asaf, that is Jesus of Nazareth, whom they allege to have arrived in Kashmir after surviving his crucifixion.
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India: History & Culture
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Together with the simultaneous Battle of Kohima on the road by which the encircled Allied forces at Imphal were relieved, the battle was the turning point of the Burma Campaign, part of the South-East Asian Theatre of World War II. Many historians consider it to be the biggest Japanese defeat of the war.
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India: History & Culture
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The Battle of Imphal took place in the region around the city of Imphal, the capital of the state of Manipur in North-East India from March until July 1944. Japanese armies attempted to destroy the Allied forces at Imphal and invade India, but were driven back into Burma with heavy losses.
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India: History & Culture
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Imphal: Another place of historical interest is the Polo Ground which is the oldest existing polo ground in the world.
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India: People & Places
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Imphal - From another era, there are the famous cemeteries of the British and the Indian armies that commemorate those who died in the Second World War. Well maintained by the Commonwealth Grave Commissions, it has stone markers and stone plaques, each of which has a record of the sacrifice made by the soldiers.
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India: People & Places
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Imphal: you may take a bus from Guwahati. The road journey, though a little tiring and time consuming, brings to you unspoilt scenes, limitless greens, virgin forests and crisp air. However, if you wish to travel by road, keep a passport-size photograph handy because you will required to get an Inner Line Permit - a mere formality for traveling through Nagaland to reach Imphal.
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India: People & Places
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Imphal: You can reach either through Calcutta or Guwahati by any fast train or fly down to either of these places and then to Imphal. The airfare in the northeastern sector is highly subsidized and is just a little more than the first-class railway fare.
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India: History & Culture
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Another special feature of Imphal is the Archery Stakes that are held everyday on various low-lying stretches of ground just below a stand of conifers. Evolved from an ancient tribal sport, it is still very popular in Manipur and one can see archers shooting as many as 500 arrows within a span of a few minutes.
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India: People & Places
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Eight kilometers from Imphal, at the foot of the pine-covered hillocks, you will find a wealth of rare birds, animals and reptiles at the Manipur Zoological Gardens. In the zoo's sylvan surroundings, you will even get a glimpse of one of the rarest species of deer in the world, the graceful brow-antlered thamin deer.
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India: Shopping
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One of the main features of Imphal is the Khwairamband Bazaar. It has tribal women clad in colorful, traditional attire, selling everything from hand-woven shawls, skirts, vessels, mugs and mats to fish, lotus, oranges and orange-flavored honey.
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India: People & Places
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Lying at the center of Manipur valley, Imphal is one of the most ancient towns in the Indian subcontinent and has much to offer to a discerning tourist. Khonghampat Orchidarium that has more than a hundred rare varieties of orchids.
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