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Introduction: India has a unique and multi-cultural yet harmonious society, a kind of its own in the world. Home to an over 5,000 years old culture & civilization, India is the birthplace of some of the world's major religions including Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism and Jainism. People of almost all faiths of the world such as Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Jain, Buddhists, Zoroastrianism are living harmoniously in India for many centuries and have their own pilgrimage sites. The peaceful existence of people of India belonging to different faiths is an excellent demonstration of its communal harmony. The beautiful and artistically designed Hindu and Jain temples, mosques, churches, gurudwaras of India are not only places of worship but also show the architectural richness of the country.
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Being a country of the pious, India is dotted with pilgrimages. Thus, Pilgrimage tourism in India is extremely popular. Great religions like Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism have originated on the Indian soil. The unity in diversity is the keyword for the grand country. The Hindus flock to take a dip in the holy rivers, the Sikhs walk up to a height of 4329 meters through the difficult terrain to reach the Hemkund Sahib. The cradle of Buddhism, devotees from the world over frequent the holy city of Sarnath. In the North India,some of the holiest places to visit are Varanasi,Prayag (Allahabad),where the Kumbh Mela is held,and Mathura,the birthplace of Lord Krishna. Sikh pilgrimage sites in India include the Golden Temple founded by Guru Ram Das,the fourth Sikh Guru.
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History of Pilgrimages: The process of racial and cultural mixture that began in India 5000-10,000 years ago has been continuous into historical times. Although isolated from the rest of Asia by oceans on three sides and impassable mountain ranges to the north, India has experienced a near-constant influx of differing cultural influences, coming by way of the northwest and the southeast (including extremely ancient migrations from the drowned continent of Sundaland, which had been in the general region of contemporary Indonesia). India in the third millennium BC was inhabited in the tropical south by a people called the Dravidians, in the central and northeastern regions by aboriginal hill and forest tribes, and in the northwest by the highly advanced Indus Valley civilization known as the Harappan culture.
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The process of racial and cultural mixture that began in India 5000-10,000 years ago has been continuous into historical times. Although isolated from the rest of Asia by oceans on three sides and impassable mountain ranges to the north, India has experienced a near-constant influx of differing cultural influences, coming by way of the northwest and the southeast (including extremely ancient migrations from the drowned continent of Sundaland, which had been in the general region of contemporary Indonesia).
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In India we find the oldest continually operating pilgrimage tradition in the entire world. The practice of pilgrimage in India is so deeply embedded in the cultural psyche and the number of pilgrimage sites is so large that the entire subcontinent may actually be regarded as one grand and continuous sacred space. Our earliest sources of information on the matter of sacred space come from the Rig Veda and the Atharva Veda. While the act of pilgrimage is not specifically discussed in these texts, mountain valleys and the confluences of rivers are spoken of with reverence, and the merits of travel to such places are mentioned. Following the Vedic period the practice of pilgrimage seems to have become quite common, as is evident from sections of the great epic, the Mahabharata (350 BC), which mentions more than 300 sacred sites spanning the sub-continent. It is probable that most of these sites had long been considered sacred by the aboriginal inhabitants of the region and only later came to be listed in the Mahabharata as different regions came under the influence of Hinduism
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