India
Can an unhappy place make others happy? Apparently, the answer is yes, if that place happens to be India. While India ranks low on the happiness spectrum, foreigners from E.M. Forster to the Beatles have sought their bliss in India’s ashrams and on the banks of its sacred river, the Ganges. Did they find what they were looking for? Some, perhaps, though just as many it seems left disappointed. The allure of sacred India, though, has not diminished, even as the country embraces a high-tech future.
(Caleb Kenna for The Boston Globe/File, Text by Eric Weiner/Globe Correspondent)