1. Unit 8: South Asia
Chpts: 23, 24, 25

2. What South Asian influences are part of your everyday life
What South Asian influences are part of your everyday life? What foods or practices?
What kinds of news stories about South Asia have you seen or read? (coverage of weather-related disasters, conflict between India and Pakistan, stories about the Himalaya or Everest climbs)

3. The Taj Mahal
The Taj Majal is located outside the city of Agra, in northern India.
The Taj Majal was built in the 1600s by a Muslim ruler as a tomb for his wife. Constructed of white marble, the building is decorated with verses from the Quran, the holy book of Islam.

4. 25 Crazy Facts about Mount Everest
Mount Everest and the Himalayas keep growing about 0.5 centimeters per year

5. South Asia: one of the largest and most diverse populations on Earth
A landscape having the world’s highest mountain ranges and some of the world’s great river systems (the Indus, the Ganges, and the Brahmaputra rivers)
Birthplace of two major world religions, Hinduism and Buddhism
Regional challenges that include a large population, limited and environmentally threatened resources, and national and ethnic tensions

6. Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
See also, OVERPOPULATED - BBC Documentary minute 3:20 to 4: 50

7. Population Density of India

8. Hinduism Hinduism is both a religion and a way of life.
Requires every person to carry out his or her dharma, or moral duty.
Hindus also believe that after death people undergo reincarnation, or rebirth as another living being. Process occurs until person overcomes earthly and materialistic desires.
In the law of Karma, good deeds, actions in accord with one’s dharma, move to positive things, while bad deeds chain a person to the cycle of rebirth.