Photographs: Amit Dave/Reuters
India has fascinated many. Mark Twain called it ‘the cradle of the human race’ and Albert Einstein said that without India contribution to maths ‘no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made’.
Business Insider has pulled together some staggering statistics from the sub-continent that will blow your mind.
Click NEXT to read the astonishing facts…
14 facts about India that will blow your mind
Image: The helper of a driver rests on top of his parked truck along a busy highway on the outskirts of New Delhi.Photographs: Adnan Abidi/Reuters
India's road network is long enough to loop around earth over 117 times, says Business Insider
According to CIA World FactBook, India has a road network of 4.7 million kilometres, is the second largest in the world.
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14 facts about India that will blow your mind
Image: Commuters travel on fog covered roads on a winter morning in New Delhi.Photographs: Anindito Mukherjee/Reuters
New Delhi’s air is the most polluted in the world
New York Times reported that The World Health Organization recorded a PM 2.5, which is nearly three times that of Beijing which has an annual mean of 59. PM is the measurement of particles in the air.
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14 facts about India that will blow your mind
Photographs: RMehra/Wikimedioa Commons
India has the wettest place on earth which receives an average rainfall of about 40 feet every year
If you think it’s Cherrapunji you are incorrect. The wettest place is a village 10 miles of Cherrapunji called Mawsynram.
Mawsynram receives an average annual rainfall of 467.35 inches per year or four inches more than Cherrapunji, according to weather.com.
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14 facts about India that will blow your mind
Image: Malini Agarwal (C), blogger-in-chief of missmalini.com, poses for a picture with her friends at the "Ren by China Garden" nightclub in Mumbai.Photographs: Vivek Prakash/Reuters
India will become the world's youngest country by 2020
By 2020, India is set to become the world’s youngest country with 64 per cent of its population in the working age group. In the next seven years, the median age in India will be 29. The population in the 15-34 age group is expected to rise from 430 million in 2011 to 464 million in 2021.
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14 facts about India that will blow your mind
Image: Patrons drink beer and eat food at a pub in Mumbai.Photographs: Vivek Prakash/Reuters
India guzzles 50 per cent of the world’s whiskey
According to Quartz.com, India is far and away the world’s biggest guzzler, owing in part to its large population. Roughly half of the world’s whiskey is drunk by the sub-continent. Most of it is made by UB India, the world’s largest whiskey company by volume.
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14 facts about India that will blow your mind
Image: A young female devotee shaves her head as part of the cleansing ritual during the Thaipusam festival.Photographs: Rahman Roslan/Getty Images
About Rs 2,500 crore worth of hair is bought and sold in India
Temples are the biggest source for quality hair. In fact, Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams holds an e-auction for the hair tonsured off devotees. It raised 74 crore from the sale of hair in September last year, albeit down from the high of 130 crore in June three months earlier, according to The Economic Times.
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14 facts about India that will blow your mind
Image: Rahul Bajaj, chairman of the Bajaj Group, Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries Limited, Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy and Wipro Chairman Azim Premji (L-R) attend a meeting with India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (not seen).Photographs: Adnan Abidi/Reuters
India's 25 richest people have a combined net worth of $174.8 billion, which is about as much as Ukraine's GDP
Mukesh Ambani is Indias richest man and is worth $24.2 billion. Ukraine has a nominal GDP of $176.2 billion, according to the IMF, states Business Insider.
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14 facts about India that will blow your mind
Image: Tourists walk over the Thar Desert at Jaisalmer in the desert Indian state of Rajasthan.Photographs: Vijay Mathur/Reuters
About 25% of India’s land is turning into desert - that’s the equivalent of three United Kingdoms
Changing rain pattern, over-use of land and excessive grazing is turning the country’s land to desert. India occupies just 2 per cent of the world's territory but is home to 17 per cent of its population, according to a Reuters.
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14 facts about India that will blow your mind
Image: People shop for clothes during a seasonal sale at a store inside a shopping mall in Mumbai.Photographs: Danish Siddiqui/Reuters
Consumer spending in India is expected to triple by 2020.
Indian consumer spending is projected to rise to $3.6 trillion in 2020, from $991 billion in 2010, according to Boston Consulting Group.
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14 facts about India that will blow your mind
Image: A man sleeps in early morning among his cattle at a livestock market.Photographs: Danish Siddiqui/Reuters
India has the world's largest dairy cow population
There were 44.9 million dairy cows in India in 2011, and about 260 dairy million cows in the world. About 17.2 per cent of the worlds dairy cows reside in India, according to DairyCo.
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14 facts about India that will blow your mind
Image: Beds lie empty in the emergency room of a hospital.Photographs: Lee Celano/Reuters
India's medical tourism industry will be as big as is set to equal $2 billion.
Medical tourism is a growing sector in India. India’s medical tourism sector is expected to experience an annual growth rate of 30%, making it a $2 billion industry by 2015, according to Wikipedia.
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14 facts about India that will blow your mind
Image: A labourer loads coal onto a truck at a coal yard on the outskirts of Jammu.Photographs: Mukesh Gupta/Reuters
India has over 275 billion tons of coal reserves, that's the equivalent of 1.37 billion blue whales, states Business Insider
India is expected to pass the U.S. to become the worlds second largest coal consumer over the next 20 years. This will primarily be driven by its electric power sector.
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14 facts about India that will blow your mind
Image: Mukesh Ambani's skyscraper residence Antilia.Photographs: Jhariani/Wikimedia Commons
India has the most expensive home, constructed at the cost of about $1 billion. This is equivalent to the GDP of Somalia.
Mukesh Ambani’s home, Antilla, cost $1 billion, making it the most expensive home in the world. It takes a staff of 600 to manage the 27-storey building.
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