travel

All That You Can’t Leave Behind

The photographs did not come out of the frames easily. I was naïve to think that I could so simply extricate my pleasant, hopeful memories of India.

The Private Lives of Old Delhi

We’ve come to a place that is the opposite of a private library. This is the collection of too many people to count.

Village Vignettes: Romancing Rural Rajasthan

In Rajasthan, pride does not take on the ugly avatar of arrogance. It helps the people ground themselves in a coherent identity in the face of a fast globalising landscape.

Village Vignettes: Harvest Season

Being a handicap in a farming family is a deadly curse—the ignominy of being an extra mouth to feed without the solace of being a helping hand.

U-bends: Ujeli, Again

Uttarkashi isn’t likely to make the top ten lists of many tourists. It doesn’t offer much in the way of museums or ancient ruins or souvenirs.

Songbird

In the dead of a summer afternoon, hiking through a forest in the Deccan is an unnatural experience.

A Hippie in a Strait Jacket

Airports and airplanes are the best places to try on different faces to masquerade your identity and experiment with your personality.

Village Vignettes: Happiness

The secret to happiness, so intangible, and yet so familiar, remains too tantalisingly nebulous to encapsulate in words.

U-bends: Haridwar

It was a row of circling flames along the riverbank at dusk, illuminating clouds of incense and chanting pilgrims. For a moment, the postcards came to life.

Alice in Wonderland

Against the backdrop of history exists a town dripping with experimentation and modernity. Except this is not a town. This is Hauz Khas Village.

Village Vignettes: Opium for Dinner

For most of us, opium usually paints a picture of the messy tangle of the narcotics trade, undercover dealings, and sometimes, a withered Chinese lady smoking a pipe.

U-bends: Rishikesh

When the river rises, the platform is submerged and Shiva rides the current, swells of water lapping against his thighs.