India has a long history of welcoming new peoples, accommodating and absorbing them into its existing structures, which in time adapt and change to express the ideas and practices of the new arrivals. The contemporary visitor will encounter the same open-minded and welcoming attitude, and a fascinating complex of cultures and beliefs. Home to political ideologies from peasant liberation-supporting communists to Hindu nationalists, and landscapes that range from the world's highest mountain ranges to tropical coasts, India has an almost endless variety of peoples and places to explore.

With various peoples and religions came a variety of ethnicities, their art, architecture, culture, languages, customs, literature, styles of music and dance, administrative structures, systems of thought, science, technology and medicine. Few of these have entirely lost their identity, all have had their influence, and many have found a permanent place in India's intricate mosaic.

While it is India's variety and complexity that gives the country its identity, and makes it attractive to the traveller, negotiating this heterogeneity can at times be a difficult task. But despite the problems that can arise, India retains its allure for visitors eager to spend time in understanding what confronts them rather than judging it on first acquaintance. Everyone's perception is different. The English journalist James Cameron, one of India's greatest advocates, summed up its appeal when he wrote: "I like the evening in India, the one magic moment when the sun balances on the rim of the world, and the hush descends, and 10,000 civil servants drift homeward on a river of bicycles, brooding on the Lord Krishna and the cost of living."