The old man on a bench in a village near Kangra
A few houses with slate-tiled roofsAnd a deserted chai-kiosk some distance awayWe stopped before a fork in the roadWhere an old man sat on a benchLooking up through a tree, it seemed. Delhi to Palampur is a long driveThrough the conflict of busy thoughtsThat dash, zoom, dip, and diveAnd are forever connecting dots. I shut...
Stone cliffs, silk, and bloody tales of Chanderi
Many travel enthusiasts know of Chanderi cloth but may not be aware that 1 km of silk used in this 20 to 22 DN fabric weighs just 1.5 gm and that 190 gm is the general weight of a sari. Chanderi isn’t just about hand-woven silk cotton and pure silk extracted from the roots of...
Travel, Music, and Technology
Travel changes you. So does music. I have always believed that a trek in the mountains is jazz for the nerves, a dip in the sea is pop for the mind, and steps into the diverse cultures of the world are the ragas that connect life with creative thoughts. And if you aren’t already aware,...
We are all travelers
The soft sound of a pin dropping on a rug. Even the whimper of thoughts as I gently scratch my head as I think. Or the thunderous buildup of musical notes as someone unknown somewhere strange walks in or rushes out or does whatever has to be done. There are no rules of any of...
The view from room 522
The view from room 522 More, give me more More of this and more of that More this side and more everywhere More is the score More under every hat More to save and more to spare. In a world where more dominates I enter room 522 in Radisson here And walk to the window....
Getting under the skin of tourism
We travel to see ‘beauty of souls in new landscapes’ as Lailah Gifty Akita said, and there are many who believe that tourism is what the world needs most. Wayne Chirisa feels that visiting new places ‘unveils new dimensions of this world not known to the naked eye’ and Leslie Jamison wrote in an essay...
Seen them all, he said. Really, I asked?
Between seeing and seeing again lies an entire universe of change. Changes happen faster than one blinks an eye. What this means is that one visit is never going to be enough. Not ten. Not even a hundred visits. There will always be some new addition or some perceptive insight that wasn’t there in past...
Notre-Dame Cathedral in 2014
The small quaint stores in the area where one walks past Sainte Chapelle and Palais de Justice to reach the Notre-Dame cathedral are forever busy selling intricate symbols of religious mythology. We found these figurines of everyone from apostles to demons and forever alert gargoyles and decided to walk fast as we had already spent...
Tourism is a deadly sin
It was four in the morning and we were slowly making our way through the dark lobby of our hotel to go outside. There were two dark figures, probably the night-shift receptionist and another person presumably to attend calls to housekeeping, snoring without a care on the sofa there. As we stepped out and breathed...
The wrong sort of traveler
A few years back we were trying to fall in love with the treacherous landscape of Spiti and had our bookings in home-stays in the villages around Kaza. Places like Dhankar, Tabo, Hikkim, Demul, Kibber, Langza, and Komik are well about 4000 metres, the air is rarefied and breathing isn’t easy, and the houses are...
Entering the unexpected
‘What on earth is a blind list?’ I asked myself some time back… and hopped from one explanation to another and soon enough realized that the moment I mention a destination (imaginary or otherwise) and make it a part of a document or make a subliminal decision to go somewhere or discuss with friends about...
Our yellow-infused blind travel date
‘I think I’ll pack this yellow khadi suit,’ said Specky, my wife, ‘will be absolutely cool and go well with the blue skies in Goa.’ I smiled because this was the fifth yellow to go into her bag after yellow silk jootis, yellow cotton cap, her notebook with a textured yellow cover, and a pen...
