The People

One way to begin to appreciate this incredible diversity of ethnicity and culture is through language. India has fourteen major languages and more than a hundred others. Nepal, a country roughly the same size as the state of Iowa, has more than fifty different languages. Over time, each deep Himalayan valley gave rise to a distinct culture, each relatively isolated from the next. The same is true in the mountainous regions of northern Pakistan. Perhaps the greatest cultural diversity anywhere in the Subcontinent is in the extreme northeastern part of India, in the states of Assam, Nagaland, Arunchal Pradesh, and Manipur. Here, as in the nearby Himalayan foothills of southwestern China and the neighboring areas of northern Myanmar, tribal groups make up a majority of the population.