Chinese Food for Thought
In gastronomic matters, I am squarely among the less intrepid of men. Raised by a vegetarian mother who wouldn't allow meat in her kitchen and a near-vegetarian father, ...
An Indian-American in China
Arriving at the mausoleum of Mao Zedong on Tian'anmen Square, I looked expectantly to join a long line of Chinese tourists awaiting their moment to view Mao's body, ...
John Frum
Some time ago, Ruchira brought to my attention an article about a village on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu, where the people believe Prince Philip of England is a god. Though it might sound preposterous ...
Divinity is Here
Have
Bedouin, will travel. I am in the village of Rum in south Jordan, all signed-up for two days in
the desert. The clincher was the Bedouin honcho's sell job: "I have open
jeep, ...
The Lost City of Ugarit
The road to Lattakia goes over the
Anti-Lebanon Range. I had left Aleppo under a blue sky at noon; now a
thick fog rolls in, tall conifers appear in the valleys, visibility drops.
The pop Arabic music ...
Nobody's Land
"Cuiabá is the city of mangoes. We don't buy them, just pluck and eat," says Rizardo, our wildlife guide. Riding in the bed of a pickup truck, we are going down the Transpantaneira, a dirt road that ...
Signore, Speak English?
Many years later, last
October, after completing a short assignment in Paris, I went to Italy for
a three-week vacation. I took an overnight train to Rome ... the eternal city...
At the Foot of Mount Yasur
I am six hundred miles east of the Great Barrier Reef in the archipelago
of Vanuatu-or, as they say in Vanuatu, the "ni-Vanuatu"
archipelago -- home to nine active volcanoes ...
Notes from Cuzco
It
was six a.m. when the AeroPeru jet arrived in Lima. The night had seemed
real long partly because an elderly senora let her head collapse on my
shoulder every few minutes...
A Hammam in Damascus
I
was
first
led
to
a
small,
furnace-hot
sauna
chamber.
Just
as
I
had
begun
broiling
in
my
own
sweat,
the
door
opened
and an
orderly
tossed
a
half-bucket
of
water
on
the
heating
elements ...
On Diversity
Last October, I went sightseeing in Calcutta with a friend. We began with a short cycle rickshaw ride, took a local train to Sealdah, wandered near College St, boarded another train to the Kali temple at Dakshineshwar, caught a commuter boat ...
Ghost Town in the Levant
Quneitra was once a bustling town in the Golan Heights and southwestern Syria's administrative capital with a population of 37,000 ...
A Day Trip to My Alma Mater
I got a B.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (IIT, KGP). Sixteen years after graduation, I visited it again from Kolkata during Puja 05 ... |
Dholavira: A Harappan Metropolis
The road to Dholavira goes through a dazzling white landscape of salty mudflats. It is close to noon in early April and the mercury is already past 100F.
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Forbidden City
Surrounded by moat and high walls, the fabled Forbidden City earned its name by being closed to everyone outside the Chinese royal family and their eunuchs and maidservants. The largest surviving palace ... |
| The Birthplace of Ganesh
Dodi Tal, considered the birthplace of Lord Ganesh, is a lake in Garhwal, western Uttaranchal. We hiked 44 km in 3 days, going up and down from about 5,000 ft to 11,000 ft, where we...
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Melting Girls, Serpent Women
A day trip to the Pushkar camel fair that attracts over 250,000
visitors from India and abroad. Villagers turn up for both
business and pleasure...
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