Our 2003 Diwali cover

You will find it detailed in this issue where we feature what we at India Today consider to be the Best of India. The Ganga experience, I thought, is one of the typical surprises India offers. Our country is full of similar experiences: some hidden from view or popular notice, others you find around the corner from your home.

As the festive season is generally a feel-good period, we decided to take stock of what we consider the experience of being Indian to be and what our country has to offer. We chose to include an entire range-high-end, commonplace, exotic, everyday. The intention was to lay out a feast for all the senses-from food for the palate, exercise for the mind and nourishment for the soul.

So in our cover story you will find our recommendations for the best trek you could undertake as well as the best bookshop to browse in, the best massage or the best kebabs. It is a purely subjective list, drawn up after long debates with our editors and correspondents which involved arguments over street food that grew more heated than political debates.

To widen the selection, we also took some outside help and invited experts to nominate and write about their favourites. Former India Today Managing Editor and avid mountaineer Suman Dubey was asked to nominate the place from where to get the best view of the Himalayas and the best trek India had to offer. Former BBC correspondent Mark Tully singled out the country's best train journey, designer Tarun Tahiliani named his best wildlife encounter and angling expert Vijay Soni named the best spot for his favourite sport.

We believe you will find our list useful and worthwhile. We realise it is a subjective list and not meant to be a comprehensive one. What we would like is for our readers to send in their recommendations along with photographs to bestofindia@intoday.com. We could possibly think of turning that into a series in our pages.

We hope you enjoy the best that India has to offer today -pun intended.

Have a very Happy Diwali.

Index