Original subtitles

I'm being led somewhere I've never been before,

so I'm completely in the hands of my guide.

But I'm incredibly lucky,

because I think what I'm about to see is miraculous,

and certainly wonderful,

because the village up ahead of me have been preparing

a celebration for over a month,

and if things go well,

then I'm promised that I'll have

the chance to experience the presence of a god.

I'm exploring India's cultural treasures,

guided by its leading experts...

Hello.

There is so much to discover here,

as far as the horizon can see.

...revealing world-class historical riches,

and game-changing human stories...

...a mountain railway that connects ancient and modern...

...unique, enduring wonders

of medieval art and architecture...

So you're at best on the history.

That's an incredibly beautiful thing.

...and a 500-year-old abandoned city.

This is the most extraordinary place.

It would have been fantastic inside there,

it would have been buzzing and thrumming with life.

These are some of the greatest treasures of India.

Southern India,

with its extraordinary cultural and graphical diversity.

Here landscapes have made history.

I've been travelling to India for decades,

on the trail of the inspirational ideas

and the pioneering philosophies

that emerge from the subcontinent.

And now I'm here to try to explore

how this incredible landscape around me

has impacted on the culture of India through time,

and also how that culture has impacted the wider world.

Our first treasure is the lost city of Hampi

in the heart of southern India.

I've been told that at the top of this hill,

1,700 feet above sea level,

IS an awesome experience.

Oh, it's just so majestic.

So what you're looking at down there

is one of the world's greatest abandoned cities.

There are over 1,600 monuments

spread out over 16 square miles,

that's 40 square kilometres,

and loads of it is still waiting to be explored.

Hampi, named after Pampa, a local river goddess,

was re-branded Vijayanagara,

City of Victory, from 1336,

the capital of a powerful new empire.

Visitors have actually been coming here for centuries.

There's a Portuguese horse trader called Domingo Paes,

who climbed up this hill,

but he said that even up here he couldn't see it all,

because bits were hidden behind these ranges of hills.

But despite that,

he said it seemed to him to be as big as Rome,

and a very beautiful site.

By the 1500s,

this was the second largest city in the world,

but within a century

it would be a deserted ruin,

reclaimed by nature.

I want to get to the bottom of its intriguing history.

There's a man called Arjun Bhat,

who's made this place his life's work,

so I'm hoping he's going to decode it a bit for me.

Hey.

Nice to see you.

It is my pleasure.

Oh. Bettany. How lovely to meet you.

My name is Arjun.

This is the most extraordinary place. It's so huge.

Yeah. There is stones everywhere,

granite structures as far as your eyes can see.

Yes. There is so much to discover here.

Every day I get excited,

like I'm listening to

some new information for the very first time.

This was once a culture at the cutting edge

of urbanisation and new technology,

with a diverse population

of over 500,000 people,

making the most of their natural environment.

So, it's a very romantic place here.

I imagine there must be

a very practical reason why they built the city here.

Yeah, for sure. If you look around,

these boulder hills provided a natural line of defence.

And the river itself, you know,

also difficult to cross.

But the river provided for resources to bring

a grand city and sustain a large population.

Its sophisticated water supply,

from dams and aqueducts,

to stepwells and running water,

made Vijayanagara an envy of the world.

It's Abd-al-Razzaq isn't it,

that Persian scholar who writes

so beautifully about this place in the 1400s,

and you can tell he's just

completely blown away by what he finds.

Yeah, he must have walked into a paradise.

We are in a semi-arid dry desert,

and it's been transformed through irrigation,

and that's why, you know,

a city has flourished here in this spot.

Arjun leads me to a hidden corner,

overlooked by hills that are home to sloth bears and leopards,

to give me a sense of the scale of this place.

So, this is a marketplace

that is almost a kilometre long.

And each of these would have been a shop,

so imagine the population that they are catering to.

And there are seven of these

within the city of Vijayanagara.

This is just one.

Do you hear a lot of the things that were traded here still?

Yeah, brocades from China. Yes.

Spices from the Malabar Coast. Yes.

Horses from the port of Hormuz. Yes.

Yeah. There's one account that says that it's really difficult

to get through the streets,

because there are so many people, and so many elephants,

you know, herds of elephants here,

in this absolute throng of a kind of international crowd.

So, who exactly were the people of Vijayanagara?

700 years ago the Hindu rulers of Hampi

extended their kingdom over most of southern India,

combining military might with the patronage of scholars,

poets and artists,

and they did nothing by halves.

That's unbelievably impressive.

This Ganesha is carved just out of one granite boulder.

Yeah, this is the largest monolith of Ganesha.

When you come to India you're struck by the fact that

the gods and goddesses, and spirits and demigods,

a lot of them are half human, half animal.

Does that tell you something about the psyche of belief here?

Yeah. There is divinity in every possible form.

We are all part of the one consciousness, or one nature, yeah.

Why has Ganesha been put right at the entrance to the city here?

So, he's considered as the ruler of obstacles,

so you'll often see Ganesha at entrances of homes.

In this case you're right in the entrance of Hampi.

The first deity you see is Ganesha.

So, there's definitely a message there, isn't it?

It's kind of saying, this is a city where anything is possible.

Yeah, everyone's welcome,

and all things are made possible here.

Inside the 15th-century Vijaya Vitthala Temple complex,

on the northern fringes of the city,

the chariot-shaped shrine

of the demigod Garuda,

finely carved from pure granite,

is a symbol of Hampi's sophistication.

And nearby sculptures offer a vital clue to the kingdom's success.

This is a kind of divine wedding hall,

and it's protected by all these warlords dressed in different dress.

And the fantastic thing is, it shows you just how multicultural,

how multi-international the influences were here.

So, these are locals, and we know they're locals,

cos they've got a man bun,

and they have got fantastic Tamil jewellery on

the bracelets round their arms.

And then here,

he's dressed as a Muslim Turkic warlord,

with that fantastic turban

and the curved, kind of scimitar sword.

Vijayanagara's true eclectic identity is becoming clear,

and then Arjun tips me off about another place to explore,

tucked away in a banana grove,

a tomb to one of Hampi's great generals,

with Islamic features,

like pointed arches,

flanked by something even more revealing.

Now, this looks like a really typical Hindu temple,

but have a look at this.

So, this is a prayer niche,

and it's facing Mecca,

so because we're here in India it's facing west,

and that tells you that the building I'm standing in

is a Mosque.

So, what we're getting is this really detailed,

intriguing picture of a kingdom that's attracting

and harnessing talent and influence

and ideas from right across the subcontinent.

But these cosmopolitan glory days were destined to end.

In 1565, after centuries of turmoil,

Vijayanagara finally succumbed

to a coalition of neighbouring powers invading from the north.

We're told that the atrocities were many and ferocious,

and huge areas of the city were burnt to the ground.

Eventually, when the kingdom fell,

the looting here carried on for six months.

The empire never recovered.

Southern India was torn apart by warring dynasties.

Unity wouldn't be restored for another 400 years.

This was a culture who knew how to work with

the resources of nature,

and also how important it was

to invite in new people across their borders

and boundaries.

It's a reminder of the power and value of harmony.

Harmony's a really interesting word,

because if you look at it in a number of languages,

in Latin and in the kind of

base tongue of many Indian languages,

it's not a soft word,

it's something really active about fitting and fixing,

and mixing together,

and it tells us that we're actually at our strongest,

at our most harmonious,

when we're allowed not to be just the same,

but all to be different.

I've travelled to Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu...

HORN TOOTS LOUDLY

...360 miles south-east of Hampi.

From the 9th to the 13th century,

this was the centre of one of the subcontinent's

greatest ever empires,

ruled by the Chola Dynasty.

Our next treasure is the exceptional art

and architecture they left behind.

I'm making my way somewhere that was built to be

an incarnation of the centre of the world,

a kind of axis of all the earth,

So you can expect it to be pretty imposing.

This entire temple is made of granite,

so it's just extraordinary the detail

that they've managed to coax out of the stone,

and what you've got to think is that this is a thousand years old.

This temple, the Brihadeeswara,

or Great Shiva,

broke all records when it was completed in 1010 CE.

It's vimana, this central tower,

was the tallest structure in India,

and one of the tallest in the world.

We're told that a four-mile-long ramp was built

to raise this 80-tonne capstone.

Worship's continued in this spectacular treasure

for over a millennium.

CONCH SHELL BLOWS

And I find myself here on an auspicious day,

celebrating the fertility of the land.

So I'm made to feel especially welcome.

Hello, lovely to see you.

My name's Bettany. What's your name?

Sathi. Andali. Sathi and Andali.

So, what do you do today?

THEY ALL CHAT AT ONCE

So, what these lovely ladies have told me,

they've come on a special festival day

and these lovely red necklaces are a sign

that they've come here to the temple,

and they're going to go away with better luck.

Everybody's got them, they're beautiful, they're beautiful.

It's so lovely to meet you. GIRLS: Thank you.

Thank you so much. GIRLS: Bye.

About 10,000 pilgrims make their way here every day,

30,000 during festivals.

The builder of the ambitious complex left clues on the walls

in ancient Sanskrit and Middle Tamil.

Thousands of lines

dating from the temple's foundation.

Doctor Bavani, a lifelong champion of Thanjavur,

and one of India's leading inscription experts,

has offered to help me interpret the evidence.

What does it say?

SHE SPEAKS SANSKRIT

And live, she decodes the Sanskrit messages.

Ah, like a lion,

so he was like the king of the jungle?

Oh, yes, yes.

Amazing.

This is not a shy man, so he's saying he's so proud,

or he's so successful,

that he's conquered huge areas in other people's territories

and he's going to wear their crowns

like a garland around his neck.

You get the sense he's quite proud of what he did.

The whole complex,

built to emulate Lord Shiva's mountain home in the Himalayas,

is tribute to its founder,

Rajaraja Chola I,

whose name means King of Kings.

The greatest ruler of the Chola dynasty,

Rajaraja was the first to unite peninsular Southern India,

and to conquer an overseas empire,

extending Chola power and influence

into what's now Sri Lanka

and Southeast Asia.

The natural resources of his vast domain were employed in

the temple's construction,

and recorded on its walls.

So, all of this describes the kind of entertainers

and performers who were here,

so there were sacred parasol holders,

and musicians and drummers,

and we're told that 400 dancing girls

were brought in from another temple.

And then there's a detail I just adore,

so there were 40 female conch shell musicians,

and there are still women blowing conch shells

here in the temple today,

so it's just this kind of direct line of continuity.

It just makes you begin to appreciate

how it just would have been fantastic inside there.

It would have been just buzzing and thrumming

and humming with life.

The temple's huge logistical supply chain is also set out,

including the 54,000 bananas a year

offered to the elephant-headed god Ganesha.

This was a seriously wealthy empire.

This writing here describes pearls that were laced on strings

of pure gold.

"Pum" is the word for gold.

And we also know that the kings taxed their empire,

so there was an enormous tax on the trade of copper

and tin and gold,

from places as far afield as

the Caliphate in Baghdad,

and even China.

Hi, OK? Thank you.

Two of these metals, copper and tin,

were responsible for firing a pinnacle of Chola culture,

iconic sculptures known as Chola bronzes.

Swamimalai, an hour's drive from Thanjavur,

has been producing Chola-style bronzes for centuries,

thanks to alluvial soil from the Kaveri river bed,

an essential ingredient in the bronze casting process.

The original icons,

which once adorned the Chola temples,

can now sell for millions of dollars.

The trail to their living equivalent has led me

to the Stapathy family workshop,

where each wonder is created

as a living, divine one-off.

Do you know how long your family has been making these bronzes,

how many generations back?

So you're a vessel of history,

that's an incredibly beautiful thing.

The three brothers who work here

use the ancient lost wax technique.

They sculpt the model out of wax,

and then encase it in that alluvial river clay

before heating it.

The wax then melts away,

replaced by molten bronze.

That is why we use the phrase,

"breaking the mould"

because by the time he's broken this

there will be a unique statue that will appear,

and there will be no other one in the future

that is exactly the same.

So, I'm witnessing the breaking of the mould.

Once a statue is completed as a work of art,

there's one final step.

The Prana Pratishtha,

a ritual in which the deity is invited

to take up residence within the sculpture.

It's a transcendental moment

when the statue's eyes are

symbolically opened...

...its five senses awakened...

...and the object becomes a living icon.

It's just so incredible to see,

because I know about the statues

from the ancient world that are treated like this,

and they have garlands of flowers put on them,

and so it's incredible to witness this.

Thank you so much for letting me see this.

Chola culture is a fascinating,

captivating treasure of south India,

because it shows how prosperity,

how worldly wealth

and the gifts of nature,

can be used to create art that acts as a gateway

to experience the divine.

And also now, in the 21st century,

it gives us a window onto a rich, sensuous,

confident, celebratory,

medieval world.

It's early morning, and I've come to Mettupalayam,

a small station in Tamil Nadu,

150 miles from Thanjavur.

I'm on my way to our next treasure,

the landscapes and culture

of the Nilgiri Mountains.

Travelling by train is basically my happy place,

so if you combine train travel

with heritage then I am in heaven.

But it's an interesting issue here of course,

because a lot of the trains were built by colonial powers,

so I'm just about to meet somebody who's taking me to

an extraordinary heritage train,

and it'll be really interesting to find out whether,

yeah, whether he thinks it's more than just

a bit of colonial culture and architecture.

Hi, are you Mukund? Yes. How lovely to meet you.

Nice to put a face to the name.

It is, it is. And this must be it.

This is our train. Amazing.

The Mettupalayam, the steam train,

winds up through the Nilgiri,

part of the Western Ghats range,

separating Tamil Nadu from Kerala,

up to the town of Ooty.

It's Asia's steepest rail line,

and, I'm promised, one of its most enchanting sights.

What's your connection to the train?

Well, I went to boarding school in Ooty where I spent nine years,

and we watched it climb up and down,

you know, under this fog of smoke.

So it was very much

a part of our heritage and my childhood.

I have to ask you this, though, because this is a train,

it was a railway that was built by the British,

and the railways were built to extract resources from India,

and to obviously to kind of move that governing class around.

So, is it OK to enjoy it?

Yes, I think that's true generally of the railways

that the British built,

but I still think, by and large,

this is an outlier.

It was built for leisure,

it was built for cutting time down.

I don't think there are too many days when it's not full.

People like the ride up.

TRAIN HORN TOOTS

First dreamt up in 1854,

this line didn't fully open until 1908,

but by the time it was completed

it was a pioneering marvel,

boasting 16 tunnels

and 250 bridges.

I do get the sense though, for you, it's not just

the kind of engineering magnificence of this that you love,

it's something else?

Why is it so special to you?

I mean, it's special for a lot of reasons.

It's the only metre-gauge track in India.

It's the steepest.

It's the only rack railway, for instance.

But to me, apart from all of this,

it's uniqueness is the fact that it is so slow.

You know, it's the closest thing to taking a walk

in the woods while you're sitting down.

And you know, it's really interesting because

neuroscientists say that we love travelling by train,

because we can travel and think at the same time,

so maybe it's a train of ideas this.

Absolutely, and there's a certain intimacy to the journey.

I mean, just look outside.

It's just, you know, trees almost at arms' length.

It's just beautiful.

And we're stopping. Now we're stopping.

The train makes several stops on the journey

at stations with names like Runnymede,

Hillgrove, Lovedale,

where even the local monkeys know the timetable.

That's my lunch.

So we're going to go up.

Fantastic. I think I blagged my way up at the front.

GUARD'S WHISTLE BLOWS

So, this is basically an incredibly important man.

He's the brake man,

because the locomotive's at the back.

So he's the eyes and ears of the train.

Elephant. Elephant.

Ah-ha.

Just here. Oh, there's elephant poo!

There's elephant poo!

THEY LAUGH

Look, can I show the...?

Elephants on the line.

And it's not just elephants.

These hills are part of India's first ever biosphere reserve,

home to dozens of species of protected animals -

even tigers - and endemic plants,

as well as some interlopers.

So, you're starting to see this new kind of

plant on the hillside.

Is that tea?

And there are kind of mixed feelings about it here,

because obviously it brings a huge amount of economy to the area.

But it is an alien species.

You know, it was originally brought from China,

so there's a kind of love-hate relationship with the tea,

and, of course, with the fact that

the tea plantations were imperial projects.

Udhagamandalam, known affectionately here as Ooty,

is the line's final destination.

A hill station developed in the 19th century

to escape the heat of the Indian summer.

TRAIN HORN TOOTS

Thank you. Thank you.

Happy memories, yeah?

Yes, it feels like coming back home.

Ooty is now a popular destination for travellers

and honeymooners from across India,

drawn to the climate,

the scenery and heritage of the Nilgiri,

a heritage which stretches right back.

There's evidence from caves in these mountains that there's been

habitation here since the Neolithic,

and actually early Buddhist communities came

to these slopes in either the 4th or the 3rd century BCE,

and started the practice of adoring,

of kind of worshipping some of these wonderful trees.

But there's also a centuries-old community that's still here.

These forests and grasslands

are the ancestral home of the Toda people,

who traditionally live alongside wild and domestic buffalo

in their hamlets called rounds.

I'm privileged to have been invited to meet

a group of Toda women,

the torchbearers of their society's culture,

at their home just outside Ooty.

How are you? Good day, how are you?

My name's Bettany.

I'm partly welcome because, like them, I'm a lifelong vegetarian,

and I'm immediately envious of their fabulous hairstyles,

twisted, I'm told, with buffalo buttermilk.

The arrival of the train

and the development of the hill station

up-ended the Todas' world,

but interestingly they preserved

an upbeat heirloom that documents that collision.

SINGING

Beautiful, you can hear the rhythm of the train.

Yeah. Yeah.

It sounds very positive,

because the train changed this place.

It brought new people, it brought different ways of life.

But do you still think the train is a good thing?

It feels as though everything that you're putting into the poetry

and into your songs is about how completely a part

of the natural world of the mountains that you are.

Ah, thank you. Shall I take my shoes off?

Thank you.

It's inspiring to find that spirit living on in the next generation.

Yeah, lovely, thank you.

Lovely to meet you, I'm Bettany. What's your name?

Ah, OK. Amazing to hear those songs.

Does your generation sing those as well?

Yeah, but do you think it's something that can carry on in

the future in India, this way of life?

THEY SING

The Nilgiri Mountains are a wonder of India,

not just because of all this extraordinary biodiversity,

and the engineering innovations that they've inspired,

but there does seem to be a kind of positive spirit here,

so everyone I've met and spoken to

is determined not just to live life,

but to respect it

and to love the living of it.

Our final treasure is the ancient culture

of the Malabar Coast and Kerala,

in the country's tropical south-west.

Every year between October and May,

the sacred groves, temples and ancestral homes of north Malabar

play host to extraordinary events.

I've been invited here

to witness something incredibly special,

something that's completely unique to this part of Kerala.

It's not just a performance,

it's a devotional dance

that some anthropologists think have origins

right the way back in the Neolithic,

in the Stone Age.

I've just got to find my friend who's told me to come here.

Reshma, Reshma, Reshma, hello!

Hello. How lovely to see you.

How are you? How was your trip here? Oh, it was good, it was good. Hi.

Reshma has brought me here to experience a Theyyattam,

a ceremony that stretches back to pre-history,

combining potent, ancient traditions

and matriarchal rites,

with contemporary Hinduism.

"They ya" means god in the local language here.

It's the same as our words like Theo, like theology

and atheistic, so it's the same root.

And "attam" means a dance,

so this is a god dance.

DRUMS BEAT

Thanks to Reshma I get to meet one of the dancers

and his guru as he prepares for his journey

from the natural to the supernatural.

So, thank you for letting us come here.

Why is he being made up? What's happening to him?

HE SPEAKS IN LOCAL LANGUAGE

So, after the make-up, when he looks into the mirror

he's seeing God, he's not seeing himself,

and so he feels within his conscious that he's God.

So, what does it feel like when you become a god?

RESHMA TRANSLATES

HE SPEAKS LOCAL LANGUAGE

When he becomes the deity he gets into a trance,

and he doesn't feel like a human being at all,

and then he walks on the fire.

If it's burning him he doesn't feel it,

because he's not there any more, he's not in his body.

Gosh.

So, if they've been happening since before recorded time,

do you think they're going to carry on into the future as well?

RESHMA TRANSLATES

He says, "As long as the world exists."

These dancers aren't playing the role of gods,

they'll be physically inhabited,

possessed by the deities themselves.

In this case a much-loved local goddess.

DRUMBEAT INTENSIFIES

The drummers are unbelievable.

Yeah, the drummers also get into a trance.

Music is supposed to heal people. Yes.

You can feel it, can't you? Yes.

Your heart just goes bump, bump, bump. Definitely.

The ceremony goes on all night,

a staggering feat of endurance for the spectators,

let alone the musicians and dancers.

PEOPLE SCREAM

And when it's finally over,

the entire community is brought together before the goddess,

who sometimes speaks through the body of the dancer.

HE INCANTS

Are you happy? I'm very happy, I'm very happy.

I wasn't expecting a blessing, what a lovely thing.

It's an overwhelming experience.

Reshma, thank you so much for bringing me here. It was fantastic.

An incredible thing to experience this, because it's like the sort of

boundaries between past and present have completely dissolved

the boundaries between the human and the divine.

After the thrill of the night I'm back on the road,

exploring another fragment of living history,

which, like the Theyyattam,

has roots reaching back to the Stone Age.

So, I'm traveling into Kerala's backwaters,

560 miles of lagoons,

lakes, rivers and canals,

which have long drawn traders from around the world.

The most precious commodity traded here was spices,

and we know that that trade stretches back over 5,000 years.

Now, our evidence are tablets from Sumeria

in the Middle East that date back to 3000 BCE,

and they describe Kerala as the garden of spices,

and those spices would be transported

on boats pretty much like this.

Hi, is it OK to come on? Thank you. Thank you.

These are Kettuvallams,

literally tied boats made from bamboo

and planks of jackwood tied together

with coconut fibre ropes

and painted in pitch produced from boiling cashew nut shells.

They're unique to Kerala.

I've always wanted to come because

there's this sort of fabled port called Muziris,

which crops up in the Roman sources,

and the author, Pliny The Elder, writes about it,

and he says it was the "Emporium of India."

And we never really knew exactly where it was,

but recently they discovered Roman coins

and Roman jewellery, and amphorae here,

so we know that the Romans were here.

And it gets even better,

because we actually hear about the Romans from Tamil sources,

so they describe them arriving in large, beautiful boats,

packed with gold and cool, fragrant wine,

which they traded for pepper.

Waves of visitors and settlers have shaped

and fed into Kerala's vital mix of cultures and faiths,

and to its amazing cuisine.

So these are just some of the spices, I mean, we're familiar with these,

so cardamom and clove and pepper, which was described as black gold.

And the brilliant thing about spices is their name,

so it comes from the Latin species, which meant something

that was traded that was of particular value.

So, spices are literally special.

The ship's cook, Rahul, uses some of Malabar's aromatic treasures

to whip up a quick lunch for the team.

While Tanya Abraham comes to share her expertise

on the cultural influence of spices.

It's so abundant here. I mean, what you're just sort of surrounded by

with this beautiful flock of birds just going past,

and the coconut palms.

You can just sort of feel the fertility oozing

out of the land here. Yes.

Absolutely. The main reason we have such

an eclectic cultural make up in Kerala

is because of the trade that we've had over centuries.

Jewish, Christian and Arab populations

all made Kerala their home.

It was the spice trade that first brought Arab Muslims

and Islam to India.

Arab traders took Indian spices to East Africa,

Western Asia and the Mediterranean.

And then European colonial empires extended those routes

to the Americas.

The Portuguese brought chillies from South America,

and chillies have become such an important ingredient

in our cooking today.

It is an incredible fact that,

because I think people always associate chilli with India,

and particularly with southern India.

They don't think of it as an import.

The spice trade has had huge, huge impact here.

This is who we are.

I mean, I can't imagine Kerala without spices,

I can't imagine our food without spices,

I can't imagine relationships without spices.

It's the soul of the land.

And it shows how just ecology and nature

and the natural world really impacts human history.

We wouldn't have this history, we wouldn't have these cultures,

we wouldn't have these religions.

We wouldn't have such harmony between the people

if it was not for the spice trade.

The Malabar Coast of Kerala is a treasure and a wonder

because it's the most brilliant example of how really specialised,

unique environments can impact, not just on local,

but on global culture.

The profusion of plenty and bounty here has generated

really remarkable home-grown traditions,

but has also tempted in traders and invaders across the centuries,

who brought their own customs that are now

a part of India's rich, diverse, incredibly varied cultural ecology.

I'm extraordinarily lucky that so many south Indians -

buffalo herders and pilgrims, historians and artists -

have offered to share their treasure-filled heritage with me.

Because India is a cradle of civilisations

and a cauldron of the human experience.

This is somewhere that the millennia has helped

to ferment ideas and innovations.

Currents of culture that have merged to create a wide

and wonderful river of history,

a river that nourishes India itself and many others beyond.

I spoke to the Open University about our exploration of India.

To watch this exclusive interview and to discover more about past

and present global cultures, go to the Open University's website.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media