| This is indeed India! The land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendor and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great grandmother of tradition... the one land that all men desire to see, and having once seen, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the globe combined. -Mark Twain (More Tramps Abroad 1897) |
