India, also known as Bharat in Indian languages, is in South Asia. The Indian Republic is the seventh largest and the second most populous country in the world. It is about the same size of Europe and it presents even greater extremes of nature and differences in lifestyles than Europe.
It covers an area of 3,287,782 square kilometers with a land frontier of 9425 miles and a coastline of 3535 miles. India’s neighbors to the north are the Chinese: Tibetan region, Nepal and Bhutan. To the northwest, India shares a boundary with Pakistan. India is flanked by Burma (Myanmar) on the eastern border. The country of Bangladesh forms an enclave within India, and is bounded by the Indian states of west Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya and Tripura and Mizoram. Geologically, Sri Lanka is a continuation of the Indian peninsula, separated by 30 km wide shallows known as Adam’s Bridge. In contrast, the island chains of the Laccadives and Minicoy off the west coast of India and the Maldives to the southwest are coral atolls. The Andaman and Nicobar islands in the Bay of Bengal are part of Indian Territory. |
