India is by far one of the richest places in history and cultural heritage. This country in Southern Asia boasts a variety of tropical rain forests, deserts and beautiful beaches. It is known worldwide for a wide variety of festivals and wildlife. The locals of India are also known to be warm and friendly. This diverse atmosphere makes it a unique holiday destination.

Among the most popular Indian holiday adventures, is the Rajasthan Golden Triangle Tour, which involves traveling through Agra, home of the world famous Taj Mahal. The Taj Mahal stands beautifully overlooking the Yamuna River. The best time to visit is at dawn when the color of the dome is changed from white to pink by the sun’s reflection.

Also very popular in Rajasthan is camel trekking. This is the ideal adventure for those who would like to experience the desert with a more hands-on approach. Camel safaris are available for those interested for just a few hours as well as a few days.

The Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary in Kerala is another point of interest to consider when planning Indian holiday adventures. This is one of the most popular wildlife reserves in India. It houses a wide variety of wild pigs, elephants, flying squirrel and close to 300 species of birds. The ideal time to visit is between December and April. At this time the weather is dry, attracting the forest animals to drink at the lakeside of the sanctuary.

What is a holiday adventure without great beaches? The beaches of Goa are among the most beautiful and inviting in India. The Anjuna beach attracts a variety of visitors ranging from the reserved to the very adventurous. During the Christmas and New Years holiday the beach is especially busy with all kinds of travelers. Fresh fruits are available on the beach from local vendors. On the beach front also there are great places to eat and drink complemented by good music.

India offers a variety of shopping too, from great malls for clothing to malls that specialize only in fine jewelry. Gould Soulk Mall has a number of branches throughout India. This mall specializes in gold to Gold Merchants and Gold Jewelry buyers. Like any other mall it features also food courts for dining.

When planning a great Indian holiday adventure much assistance can be attained by consulting at least one reliable travel site. The site famous-india.com features a number of tour packages and attractions. The site offers very useful information and answers just about every question a prospective visitor to India would ask. Available also, is an online tour planner which assists enquirers with price quotations, itinerary and bookings.

Once it is decided what city will be visited the site, greatindiaholidays can assist directly with hotel bookings. As soon as the visitor submits the intended travel dates, number of persons traveling and how many rooms will be required, a list of hotel options will be presented. Information is given on the types of rooms available featuring the amenities and room rates for each.

Christmas as we know it today is actually a fairly recent event and there are various theories as to how the birth of Jesus became to be associated with December 25th.

The earliest events that can be viewed as world-wide holidays were the celebrations of the winter solstice that usually occurs around December 21st at the moment. Sun worshipping was very common in the period around 200 AD and the date around which the sun stopped its downward trajectory and started to move upwards in the sky was a very significant event. Since those early celebrations, the association with the birth of Jesus and later the different characters known as Father Christmas and Santa Claus have developed. December is not the most significant date in some countries and places like Spain still put more weight on January 6th or the Epiphany, which celebrates either the baptism of Jesus or the coming of the Magi depending on which religion you belong to.

Whatever your religious leanings, the Christmas period is still regarded as one that remains embedded in tradition, however in some countries, and the UK may be one of them, the commercialism that goes alongside the period may be slowly overtaking those historical traditions.

When you look back, even just a few decades, at what is typically associated with Christmas in the UK many things have evolved. Of course some things remain like Midnight Mass services for church goers, the traditional Christmas Day meal of Roast Turkey followed by Christmas pudding and the giving of Christmas cards and presents.

The Queens speech, broadcast on Christmas Day during the afternoon, still remains, but may be struggling to remain current in the light of everything else that today’s youngsters have vying for their attention on that day. Even the sending of Christmas cards, which were also a reason for people to write and update seldom-seen friends about the events of the past year, are now pretty redundant in that role due to the immediacy and ease of email. Some may even regard the bulk sending of paper cards as being environmentally unfriendly. You rarely see a nativity crib model in many UK homes these days, while new traditions like decorating the outside of houses with thousands of electrical lights, as made famous by Jennings Osborne in the USA, are gaining a foothold. Church attendance numbers fell by over 33% in the 6 year period between 1989 and 2005, so there is no wonder that the focus of Christmas is changing rapidly in the UK.

For a more traditional Christmas, less affected by the wave of commercial influence, many people are opting to spend their festive break in countries such as Germany and Spain, where the strength of the traditional Christmas still seems to be holding fast.

As an example, the island of Lanzarote is typical of many Spanish regions in the way it celebrates Christmas. Here the primary focus is on Christmas Eve and the January Epiphany rather than the usual Christmas Day focus seen in the UK.

On Christmas Eve or Nochebuena, most businesses will close early to allow people to travel and get ready to spend the evening with family and friends. Many will attend a Midnight Mass in their local church. Of all the days across the holiday period, Christmas Day is a very low key affair. There is no giving of gifts, an activity that comes later, and most people just see the day as the start of a period of resting, not working and enjoying the company of family. The next significant date is New Years Eve, when the start of a fresh year is celebrated with huge firework displays, with Puerto del Carmen staging the biggest display on the island. However the main day comes on January 6th, when presents are given and people celebrate the Epiphany. On the evening before the village of Yaiza, in South of Lanzarote and one of the prettiest villages on the island, is typical of many others on the island, seeing many people taking to the streets, with kings in costume giving confectionary to the children. Unlike the custom of Father Christmas in the UK and other Northern European countries, it is the kings that deliver the presents that the children will receive the next day.

Of course these traditions seem even more odd to UK visitors when you imagine the mild temperatures that are still normal at that time of year in the Canaries and the bright sunshine that still makes spending time on the island’s many wonderful beaches perfectly enjoyable.