Mark Twain, on India

... the land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth, and fabulous poverty, of splendor and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition, whose yesterdays bear date with the mouldering antiquities of the rest of the nations- the sole country under the sun that is endowed with imperishable interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest if the globe combined.

Mark Twain