India Travel Notes: Vegetarian restaurants are everywhere in India, and you will have no problems finding them. Instead of listing every one of them possible, HappyCow lists only the places that have been recommended to us along with the ones that we have personally visited. Even a typical non-vegetarian Indian meal includes some vegetarian dishes compared to other cuisines. Vegans should be aware that most Indian vegetarian recipes include dairy in the form of ghee, curd, and paneer. Being a vegan in India is not so easy, but being vegetarian is.

In India, with a population of over 1.1 billion, more people are vegetarians than anywhere else on this planet. The majority of them are vegetarian due to traditional or religious beliefs. Food plays a major role in the practice of religion in India. During the ancient Aryan Vedic period meat was consumed after animal sacrifice to the Gods. This slowly changed with the rise of Jainism and Buddhism, since their founders advocated the principle of ahimsa, or non-violence. The Brahman priests, who advocated animal sacrifices as offerings in the name of religion, also began to preach vegetarianism since it gained much popularity in India. They even began to follow a vegetarian diet themselves. Rural Indian food in India is often vegetarian. Food items like roots, cereals, pulses, wheat, and rice form the main portion of the diets. Many Indians, being farmers, find it economical to stick to a vegetarian diet. In major cities, wealthier Indians tend to be the main consumers of non-vegetarian foods.