Tweet

Share

After avoiding it for some time, I’ve finally washed up in India. I’m not exactly sure why I’ve been avoiding India. Perhaps because the country is so big, I didn’t want to come here unless I had a good deal of time to explore. Perhaps I was scared off from travelers’ tales of Delhi belly. Or perhaps, I was scared of being trampled by the 1.1 billion people who call India their home.

Regardless of the reason I avoided it, I am here now and the fear has been put aside in pursuit of a story and some photographs.

My first week in India has forced me to make a lot of comparisons to China. My initial thought — these places are nothing alike. They might both be developing rapidly and they might both be sub-continents, but after that — they are two different worlds.

And India is far, far more dirty. Far more religious. Far more impoverished. Far more colorful. And although China’s population soars above India’s, from what I’ve seen thus far — the massive population is much more obvious in India. With a little research — the reason for this becomes clear. According to the CIA World Fact Book:

• POPULATION: China 1,330,141,295 (July 2010 est.). India 1,173,108,018 (July 2010 est.).
• PHYSICAL SIZE: China 9,596,961 sq km. India 3,287,263 sq km.

So although the populations are comparable, India is almost 3 times smaller (in physical space) than China. Therefor if you represented the population of China in Indian population density terms, the entire Chinese population would have to fit in the red area above. Scary, right? This is reality in India. The densitiy of the population is both visible and physical. Walking, driving and on public transportation this is obvious.

Also, while China’s population’s growth is slowing due to the One Child Policy (apparently that statement is debated), India’s growth is still booming:

The demographics of India are remarkably diverse. India is the second most populous country in the world, with over 1.18 billion people (estimate for April, 2010), more than a sixth of the world’s population. Already containing 17.31% of the world’s population, India is projected to be the world’s most populous country by 2025, surpassing China, its population exceeding 1.6 billion people by 2050.

So — for the next month I will be dodging rickshaws, squirming through crowds and trying my best not to get food poisening. And thus begins, the next travel photo series from this blog.