[nickcarraway]

In India Hindi would get you around

English and Hindi are the official languages of India. English and Urdu are the official languages of Pakistan.

[Cronos]

True, English and Hindi are the official languages of India -- and it has 26 other national languages and hundreds of other languages.

Barely 3 to 9% of the population can speak English out of which only about 2% can converse normally.

Even Hindi -- only about 40% to 50% know the language, the rest don't.

When I travelled around the country, in the south most didn't know Hindi. There were places were some knew broken English, but no Hindi. And there were many places where they knew neither!

[mamelukesabre]

Urdu and Hindi are the same language. They just use different alphabets to write their language.