The India Ride

When Canadian brothers Colin and Ryan Pyle finished their record-breaking motorcycle adventure around China in 2010, they promised themselves that it would be their last such venture. Of course, they were wrong. Back in the saddle again, Colin and Ryan have set out to tackle the diverse country of India, and they had no idea what to expect! Whether it was monsoon rains, crashes in Mumbai, the claustrophobic roads of Kerla or even a brutal paragliding landing in Manali; nothing could stop these two adventurers as they triumphantly completed a 54 day--14,000 km--motorcycle circumnavigation of India. In an Indian expedition of un-foreseen extremes, Colin and Ryan battled the Rohtang Pass in a rainstorm, made a pilgrimage to the most visited holy site on earth in Amritsar; they also jumped off a perfectly good mountain and learned how to make the perfect cup of Indian tea in Darjeeling. If that seems like a lot, all of this was done while traversing over isolated mountain passes, blazing a trail through the roasting hot deserts and battling the insane traffic of Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata. In their book The India Ride, Colin and Ryan take us with them as they make their way through the remarkable and stunning landscapes of India. In the end, the brothers had learned what it takes to succeed as a team as they had circumnavigated a billion people, pushed themselves to new limits, and shared in an adventure that most of us will only ever dream of.

In 2008, India will likely overtake China as the world’s fastest growing economy and become one of the largest economies globally. Foreign investment is increasing dramatically and business opportunities abound for those who know how to find them. With a growing middle class and booming markets, India holds much promise for investors. Riding the Indian Tiger shows you how to get in on the ground floor and profit from India’s economic boom.

Former chief CNN India correspondent and award-wining journalist Ravi Agrawal takes readers on a journey across the Subcontinent, through its remote rural villages and its massive metropolises, seeking out the nexuses of change created by smartphones, and with them connection to the internet. As always with India, the numbers are staggering: in 2000, 20 million Indians had access to the internet; by 2017, 465 million were online, with three Indians discovering the internet every second. By 2020, India's online community is projected to exceed 700 million, and more than a billion Indians are expected to be online by 2025. In the course of a single generation, access to the internet has progressed from dial-up connections on PCs, to broadband access, wireless, and now 4G data on phones. The rise of low-cost smartphones and cheap data plans has meant the country leapfrogged the baby steps their Western counterparts took toward digital fluency. The results can be felt in every sphere of life, upending traditions and customs and challenging conventions. Nothing is untouched, from arranged marriages to social status to business start-ups, as smartphones move the entire economy from cash-based to credit-based. Access to the internet is affecting the progress of progress itself. As Agrawal shows, while they offer immediate and sometimes mind-altering access to so much for so many, smartphones create no immediate utopia in a culture still driven by poverty, a caste system, gender inequality, illiteracy, and income disparity. Internet access has provided greater opportunities to women and changed the way in which India's many illiterate poor can interact with the world, but it has also meant that pornography has become more readily available. Under a government keen to control content, it has created tensions. And in a climate of hypernationalism, it has fomented violence and even terrorism. The influence of smartphones on "the world's largest democracy" is nonetheless pervasive and irreversible, and India Connected reveals both its dimensions and its implications.