Indian culture is about food and dance and stories and all sorts of other activities.

As India is an old civilisation, it has hundreds of special stories and types of foods. You might not be familiar with them, so this is an opportunity to find out.

There’s so many exciting things to learn about India, so make sure you don’t miss out!

The Story of Rama and Sita

Rama was married to a beautiful, strong woman called Sita, whom he loved very much. They lived together in a small hut in the forest.

But this wasn’t a normal forest. Strange creatures lived in it, including the Demon King Ravana. Ravana had blue skin, 20 arms and 10 heads. One day he saw Sita walking in the forest and decided to steal her away.

When Rama realized Sita was missing, he decided to find her, but didn’t know which direction to go. Luckily, Sita was smart. She dropped pieces of her jewellery so that Rama could follow the trail. First she dropped a pink bracelet, then a ruby ring. Finally she dropped a blue jewel.

Rama followed. He could tell that Ravana was taking Sita to his secret island, which was surrounded by water.

He needed to find some friends to help him rescue Sita. He went to find his friend Hanuman, the King of the Monkeys. He had the body of a human, the face of a monkey and a tail. Hanuman promised he and his monkeys would help Rama.

They knew Sita was on an island with no bridges. They decided to find some rocks to throw into the sea and make a bridge. But first, they needed to defeat Ravana. Rama found a bow and arrow near by, and then went to find Ravana.

Rama fired an arrow from the bow straight into Ravana’s heart, killing him immediately. Rama then found Sita on the island, using the rocks to rescue her.

There were celebrations when Sita was rescued. Everyone put a candle in their windows, to show that the light of truth and goodness had beat the darkness of evil. Every year this story is celebrated at the festival of Diwali.

There are a few different versions of this story, which is also called the Ramayana. Here’s another version (make sure to turn the volume down!)

Activity 16: A Story Maze

You need to help Rama find Sita through the Story Maze. But… you have to follow the same order as the story above (the story of Rama and Sita), picking up the right objects in the right order.

Next to each object is a letter. When you arrange these letters in the right order, you’ll get the answer to the puzzle⭐

Watch out for demons - you can’t cross those!

If you’re not sure which way to go around the maze, go back and read the story again.

What is the word that is spelled out in the Story Maze?

Activity 17: Dot to dot

There are lots of different, beautiful types of clothes that people wear in India. The clothes in India are often very bright with wonderful colours.

Read about different types of women’s clothing and then tell us, which is the dot-to-dot on page 22 of your workbook? That’s the answer to the puzzle⭐.

You can colour it in as well!

Activity 18: Indian Food

India has an interesting system for food delivery called Dabbawala. Lots of people send metal lunch boxes, called tiffins, with homecooked food to their family.

The tiffins are sent by train which means everything has to be very well organised, to make sure the right food goes to the right place.

Tiffin boxes are marked with a special symbol, which tells people where the tiffins should be taken off the train. It has to be a symbol not a word, because some of the delivery boys can’t read.

Every day 20,000 tiffins get sent across India and hardly any end up in the wrong place!

Dinesh works in a resturant. He is responsible for taking the tiffin boxes to the train station, so they can be delivered to different people in different cities.

But there’s been a mistake!

Someone has forgotten to mark the tiffins with the right symbol for the correct city. Dinesh knows what’s in the tiffins, and what each customer prefers to eat. Can you help him mark the tins correctly with one of the symbols above?

You’ll find the customer preferences on page 23 of the worksheets. Which tiffin goes to which person? There’s one person who doesn’t have a tiffin - his name is the answer to the puzzle ⭐

Congratulations, you’ve finished!

You should have 18 answers now.

Take the light green-blue squares from each of the Answer Grids and write them out in the boxes on page X of your printed sheets. It’s a question in Hindi

Can you answer the question? You’ll probably need to use Google Translate.

Ready to finish? Click the button below which says ‘I have the answer’. It will ask you to put in a password. The password is the answer written in the squares on page X.

Make sure to write it all as one word, and without capital letters, like this:

thisistheanswer

If you’ve got the answer right, you’ll go through to another page!

If you didn’t get the answer right, you’ll need to try again. If you’re really stuck you can click the button below, which says ‘Answer Page’. Make sure to only do this when you’ve tried your absolute best!