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Letter from the Editors:

For two weeks in March, 16 Columbia Graduate School of Journalism students zigzagged across northern India by bus, plane, subway, bicycle rickshaw, autorickshaw, horse carriage, car, motorboat, rowboat, and train. We began in New Delhi and ended in Mumbai, stopping in seven other cities along the way in our quest to report and write about religion and spirituality in India. This is our online magazine to showcase what we found on this incredible journey.

Our daily dispatches are stories we filed while we were traveling. They describe experiences such as participating in a Baha'i service in the serene Lotus Temple in New Delhi; sitting on the floor to share a communal dinner at The Golden Temple with hundreds of turbaned Sikhs. They recount an early-morning boat ride along the sacred Ganges River watching some Hindus doing devotional yoga in the water and others burning the bodies of loved ones on funeral pyres; and meeting newly-minted 11-year-old Zoroastrian priests from the Mumbai fire temple . "Submit to Mother India" became a mantra that served us well as we negotiated middle-of-the-night trains and bouts of "Delhi belly."

During our trip we also reported feature stories, which we wrote when we got back to New York. You can read about the religion of cricket; Veer Bhadra Mishra, a priest and hydraulic engineer named one of the heroes of the planet by Time Magazine for his work cleaning up the Ganges; a Sufi rock star; the crisis of Tibetan succession; how new technologies are spreading Ayurveda-- India's ancient philosophy for healing the body, mind and soul--to new shores; and how the Jain-run bird hospital in Delhi is dealing with avian flu

Finally, you can trace our route on our interactive map with audio slideshows and videos of highlights such as our trip to Wagah, at the India-Pakistan border; playing Holi and sprinkling each other and our new friends with pink and green powder for the Hindu spring festival; and visiting the site of the Buddha's first sermon.

A heartfelt thank you to the Scripps Howard Foundation for sponsoring this study tour of India which we will never forget and most importantly has trained us to report and write about the myriad of religions we will cover in whatever cities we find ourselves eventually working. Enjoy our Web site!