Norm Writes
  • Home
  • Who in the World
  • Blog
  • Postcards
  • Why I write

50 Bizarre and crazy facts about India.

1/13/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
1. The air quality is so bad in the mega city of Mumbai in India that just one day outdoors is the equivalent of smoking 100 cigarettes.

2. India has far more cell phones than toilets.

3. Sex toys are still illegal in India.

4. The world's largest family unit – a man and his 39 wives and 94 children – live together in India.

5.    In one state in India, police officers are given a pay upgrade if they have moustaches. 

6.    The highest temperature ever recorded in India was 123.1 °F in Alwar, Rajasthan, while the lowest was -49 °F in Dras, Ladakh. 

Picture
7.    It rained fish from the sky one day in Jamnagar, India. No one still can knows why or understands how that’s possible

8. Elections are a massive production in India, so rife with corruption and controversy, drama and political theater that people actually come to the country to experience it, the only place in the world with an Election Tourism industry.

9. In big elections, voters' fingers are marked with a special ink to make sure they vote only once. 

10. In the parliamentary election in 2009 there it was mandated that there should be a place to vote within 2km of every single person in the country. It ended up there were 830,866 polling stations in all. According to the rule there was a polling station in the remote part of the western state of Gujarat that had a single voter, a temple caretaker.

11. There were 1,032 candidates or the Modakurichi assembly seat in the Tamil Nadu state elections in 1996, a world record for most candidates for a single constituency. 88 of those candidates did not get a single vote.

Picture
12. An Indian man claims he hasn't had anything to eat or drink in 70 years. No one has seen him do either and after running many tests doctors still can’t disprove him or figure out how it’s possible.

13. The stats about roadway fatalities in India are even more grim: 37% of all road deaths are pedestrians who were hit, 28% cyclists and motorcyclists, and 55% of all deaths occur within five minutes of the accident.

14. There’s a village in India, called Shani Shingnapur, where no houses or structures have doors and nothing is locked up. Even shops are left wide open and nothing of value is kept secured. However, there has never been a reported theft in the history of the village, and they believe they’re protected by God.

15. India actually developed a rocket and launched it into outer space. So how did the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) transport the rocket to the launch site? With a series of bicycles. 

Picture
16. Call it K9 karma, because in an act of atonement, an Indian man recently got married to a dog.

17. At least 50% of the outsourced IT services in the world come from India. 

18. They wear white at funerals in India instead of black, most common in other countries.

19. India has a national obsession with breaking records. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, India ranks third behind the USA and the UK in the number of records claimed each year, though they have many other record books they fill up.

20. Cherrapunji in India is the wettest spot on earth, receiving 425 inches of rain every year, more than 5 times as much as the tropical rain forests in South America.

Picture
21. Some of the recent world records include the largest gathering of people (891) dressed like Mahatma Gandhi, the longest garland made of cakes of cattle dung (2 km), the longest time performing yoga on horseback (10 hours), a man who typed 103 words in 47 seconds with his nose, and the record for lighting electric bulbs by passing a wire through the nose and out of the mouth: 30 sixty-watt bulbs.
 
22. The largest current slave population in the world resides in India, with over 14 million people forced to work for no wages or against their will every day.

23. The city of Mumbai is so overpopulated and congested, that the government set out to solve the problem by building a second, parallel city right next to it. Navi Mumbai was developed in 1972 and remains the largest planned township in the history of the world.

24. One Indian family has 31 doctors in in it. Known as “the doctor family”, they have 7 physicians, 5 gynecologists, 3 ophthalmologists, 3 ENT specialists, psychiatrists, pathologists, neurologists, an orthopedist and one urologist.

Picture
25. A 13-year old boy named Arshid Ali Khan from the Punjab state in India is worshiped as a god, probably because he has a 7-inch long tail, resembling a Hindu God. Local people revere him as holy and take come to him for blessings to cure their ailments.

26. The Indian roadways are notorious for being crazy and dangerous. In fact, there are an average of 2000,000 reported road deaths every year in India, the most in the world.

27. India has the most vegetarians of anywhere in the world.

28. Most Indians still eat the traditional way, with their fingers and the help of bread-like rotis or chapattis to scoop the food up.

29. India has the world’s largest Montessori school, with over 26,000 students in one location.

30. 61% of school children in India have germs or bacteria on their hands that can cause serious diseases.

Picture
31. In a part of India called West Bengal, cows are required to have their own photo ID cards.

32. It's illegal to carry Indian currency (Rupees) out of the country.

33. The Kumbh Mela Festival is the world's biggest gathering, with over 100 million people in attendance every time it commences.

34. The typical person in India would have to work at least 6 hours just to buy a McDonalds Big Mac.

35. India is home to the most languages in the world. The 1961 census of India documented 1,652 languages in use in the country at that time.

36. There are more than one million Indian millionaires, behind only the U.S., Japan, and about tied with China.

Picture
37. Indian Railways is a massive operation, with at least 1.4 million employees, more than the population of many small countries like Trinidad and Tobago, Estonia, Luxembourg, Iceland, Monaco, and several others.

38. India is home to the largest film production industry in the world, with more than 1,100 movies made each year. That’s slightly ahead of Nigeria, twice as many as the U.S., and ten times the amount of films made in Britain.

39. You’ve heard of the Great Wall of China, but did you know there is a Great Wall of India? Kumbhalgarh Fort in Rajasthan has a wall that goes on for 36 km, the second longest in the world behind only the one in China.

40. There is a special post office in India where you can send letters to God, open for business only three months during pilgrimages and religious festivals. Most of the letters they receive ask for blessings for weddings or business openings, though they do receive a large amount of wallets that thieves lift, remove the cash, and return the wallet to the "God post office" as atonement.

Picture
41. Legend has it that the famous Levitating Stone of Qamar Ali Darvesh in Shivapur, India can be lifted with only 11 fingertips if you shout the name “Qamar Ali Darvesh!” as you lift. By the way, the stone weighs 200 kg.

42. India was the only place on earth diamonds were officially found until 1986, when they were discovered in Africa and several other countries. 

43. Despite it’s huge landmass, all of India is in one time zone. But it does differ from a ½ hour from neighboring countries and international time standards, making things complicated. So when it’s 6:30pm in India it’s 8am in New York.

44. Complicated surgeries and operations were performed over 2,600 years ago in India.

Picture
45. A village in northern India is called Snapdeal.com Nagar. The village, previously named Shiv Nagar, officially changed its name to Snapdeal.com Nagar in exchange for the e-commerce website installing 15 hand water pumps for the villagers.

46. The Kodinhi village in the southern state of Kerala is known internationally as “Twin Town” because it produces such an alarming rate of twins.

47. We know that Indian people love animals, but taking it one step further, there’s an elephant spa, the Punnathoor Cotta Elephant Yard Rejuvenation Centre in Kerala, where the majestic animals receive the royal treatment.

48. The Indian prime minister elect, Narendra Modi, went to the U.S. to take a three-month course on public relations and image management. It must have worked, because he was one of the most popular Indian leaders in memory.

49. An elaborate wedding in Bengaluru was called off when the bride’s family served the groom’s family chicken biryani instead of mutton biryani. Although biryani is the typical wedding dish, the lack of the correct meat source was seen as an offensive slight that led to a big fight, and the cancellation of the nuptials.

50. Since so many Indians speak English as their second language, India now has the most English speakers in the world, ahead of even the U.S. or the U.K. 


0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    RSS Feed


      Receive a digital postcard from Norm every month:

    Yes, I want a postcard!

    Don't miss Norm's new book,
    The Queens of Dragon Town!

    See More

    Norm Schriever

    Norm Schriever is a best-selling author, expat, cultural mad scientist, and enemy of the comfort zone. He travels the globe, telling the stories of the people he finds, and hopes to make the world a little bit better place with his words.   

    Norm is a professional blogger, digital marketer for smart brands around the world,  and writes for the Huffington Post, Hotels.com, and others.

    Check out South of Normal his Amazon.com best-selling book about life as an expat in Tamarindo, Costa Rica.

    Cambodia's School of Hope explores education and empowerment in impoverished Cambodia, with 100% of sales going to that school.

    The Book Marketing Bible provides 99 essential strategies for authors and marketers.

    Pushups in the Prayer Room, is a wild, irreverent memoir about a year backpacking around the world.  

    Follow Norm on Twitter @NormSchriever or email any time to say hi!

    Categories

    All
    Advice For Writers
    Amazon
    American Exceptionalism
    Anthropology
    Asia
    Backpack
    Basketball
    Best Seller Lists
    Blogging
    Book-marketing
    Book Review
    Book Reviews
    Cambodia
    Charity
    Child-poverty
    Cloud 9
    Communications
    Costa Rica
    Crazy-asia
    Culture
    Dumaguete
    Education
    Environment
    Ethics In Writing
    Expatriate
    Favorite Song
    Festivals
    Fraternity
    Funny
    Future
    Geography
    Give A Photo
    Giveaway
    Giving Back
    Health
    Heroes
    History
    Hugo Chavez
    Human Rights
    Humor
    India
    Islands
    Itunes
    Laugh
    Maps
    Marijuana
    Martial Arts
    Memoir
    Music
    Nature
    Nicaragua
    Non Violence
    Non-violence
    Ocean
    One Love
    One-love
    Our World
    Philanthropy
    Philippines
    Population
    Positive
    Positivity
    Postcard
    Poverty
    Pura Vida
    Pushups In The Prayer Room
    Race
    Reviews
    Safety
    San Juan Del Sur
    Science
    Screenplay
    Self Publish
    Siargao
    Social Media
    Southeast-asia
    South Of Normal
    Speech
    Sri Lanka
    Story
    Surf
    Surfing
    Tamarindo
    Thailand
    The Philippines
    The-queens-of-dragon-town
    Tourism
    Travel
    United Nations
    Venezuela
    Work From The Beach
    World Health
    Writers Forum
    Writing
    Writing Forum
    Writing Your First Book

    Archives

    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    November 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013

Norm Schriever

Email:     hi@NormSchriever.com