Due to its vibrant culture, diverse terrain, and vast history, India has always made a special place on every traveler’s bucket list. While Mughal architecture, the Statue of Unity, and Indian cuisine are world-famous, it becomes extremely crucial to move away from the usual to know more about the lesser-known facts that have rarely been covered by any textbooks and tourist guides:
A floating post office
After owning the largest postal network in the world, India is the only country across the globe to have a floating post office, which existed since British times and is two centuries old. It is situated in Srinagar’s Dal Lake and was inaugurated in August 2011. Before this, it was called the Nehru Park post office.
India was once an Island
Over 100 million years ago, about the time when dinosaurs roamed around the earth, most of what is now India was an island. India was part of a supercontinent Gondwanaland and 50 million years later it collided with Asia, which buckled the coastal areas of the continents and created the Himalayas.
Many borders of Uttar Pradesh
Rarely any geography textbooks will point out that the most populated state in the country, Uttar Pradesh shares its borders with nine different states and one country too. Those states include Rajasthan, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh. Moreover, Uttar Pradesh is a neighbour of Nepal also.
Adopt a hornbill nest in Pakke, Arunachal Pradesh
At Arunachal Pradesh’s Papum Reserve Forest and Pakke Tiger Reserve, Hornbill Nest Adoption Program (HNAP) has been initiated, which is a community-based initiative working towards the conservation of tropical birds—hornbills and their habitat in the state. This initiative allows you to adopt the hornbill nest in the area, which eventually saves a tree. In a bid to make sure that the birds and the nest are safe, the village appoints a caretaker for the adopted nest.
Dhekiakhowa Bornamghar in Jorhat, Assam
Established by saint reformer Madhavdeva, Dhekiakhowa Bornamghor is a Vaishanvite place of worship in Assam’s Jorhat district. It is believed that back in 1528, Madhavdeva lit an earthen lamp at the time of a ceremony and it has been burning continuously since then. The priest in the Dhekiakhowa village regularly refills the lamp with mustard oil to keep it burning.
