>>307503I can't accurately attest to rural Pakistan, but while in Karachi and Hyderabad the worst I received was a lot of looks, stares and a few men taking pictures from a distance. No crowding, shoving phones in my face, and the only people touching me were women, which was a nice change from across the border.
>ruins of the Indus River valley civilizationYes! They're extremely interesting and there are tour services for some of the biggest. The only one I got to see was a 4000 year old well, but there are also plenty of beautiful sites to look at. I would suggest waiting quite a while, however. This new war/skirmish aside, the situation with Afghanistan is growing increasingly unstable and the old alliances amongst Taliban, AQ and mountain-pass organised crime syndicates have broken down. That kind of instability ALWAYS leads to kidnappings, ransoms and executions. Give it some time and there may be a lowering of tensions in the region.
>>307509While I had terrible experiences, particularly in rural northern India, I won't say India is uniformly as dreadful, and I found the cities interesting, not dangerous. However
>If you like ancient civilisations its a goldmineI disagree. If you like medieval sites, it's great, however due to successive waves of invasion by peoples who tried their best to erase previous cultures and the British looting half of anything truly ancient, the Indian government was left with very little and neglected them in favour of preserving later, more impressive architecture and artefacts of dynasties and empires which might reflect better on their current culture. On top of that, these few remaining sites are so spread out that you'd need to spend weeks traveling to see them. The decay of Mauryan artefacts and architecture is really unforgiveable. There are still the big, impressive sites that are well cared for, but to see what I consider more interesting artefacts, you'd need to go to museums established during the British Raj on opposite ends of the continent.
