Adventure Travel in India: Group Tour Packages, Himalayan Trekking Tours, Tiger & Wildlife Safaris, and more!

Ancient temples, fascinating festivals, world-class trekking, and forests teeming with tigers and other wildlife — just a few of the things that make adventure travel in India a magical experience.

India is a complicated place. It holds the dramatic peaks of the Himalayas, yet harbors broad stretches of tropical beaches. It has plenty of opulent palaces, such as the Taj Mahal — a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the “New” Seven Wonders of the World — yet, you are just as likely to come across mud huts in tiny villages. You may land in a bustling, modern city where the press of humanity is very real; but just around the next corner, you could wander into a fourteenth-century Jain temple where a feeling of inner peace is surreal. As the possibly fictional, early world traveler and guidebook author John Mandeville wrote in 1360, India is a land of “many diverse countries.”

If the country is a kaleidoscope, so should your India tour take you to its changing scenes. Bike rural India, past friendly locals, hamlets, temples, peacocks, cows, and goats. Then stay in a lakeside, luxury tented camp or in a palace owned by Jodhpur city’s royal family. Ride a camel across desert sand; then board the Royal Rajasthan on Wheels, a train that is a throwback to the elegant coaches once used to transport the state’s royal families.

If you want to travel to India for its natural realm, go deep into its fabled jungles and forests in search of the rare, elusive, and exquisite Bengal tiger, Panthera tigris tigris. Or visit the wildlife sanctuary in Kanha that provided the inspiration for Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book. Tigers, antelopes, bears, crocodiles, panthers, snakes, and wolves are also protected in national parks such as Panna and Bandhavgarh.

On the other end of the spectrum from the jungles and forests is the Kumaon and Eastern Garhwal regions of the Indian Himalayas, the rugged, glacially carved ranges that are world famous for climbing and trekking. If you sign on for a Himalayan tour, you’ll make your way up high mountain passes — some reaching fifteen thousand feet above sea level — and travel through river valleys lush with foliage that once were trade routes between India and Tibet.

It may be difficult to get your head around all that India is, but you know you need to try.

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