Travel
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, I only had chicken and goat meat a handful...
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, only to learn that (like a great number of major exhibits in Beijing) the mausoleum was closed ....
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 to many of us, it's actually not a joke. As the article explains...
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 ....
Teotihuacan, Mexico City
In early first century CE, Teotihuacan was just a hamlet. Its population then grew as people from the Valley of Mexico began arriving there...
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 in the bus...
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 ...
Bodh Gaya
Bodh Gaya is the single most sacred site of Buddhism. It was in the forest here that Prince Siddharta sat under a tree and achieved enlightenment two and a half millennia ago. From here, he went out as ...
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 camped near the lake ...
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 runs 145 KM south into the Pantanal, ...
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...
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...
Al-Beruni's India
The first significant intrusion of Islam into India was led by Mahmud of Ghazni who, quite justifiably, lives in Indian history as a cruel and bloodthirsty fanatic, ...
Anandpur Sahib
Anandpur Sahib is a holy city in Punjab. Its historical significance to the Sikhs is second only to Amritsar. Hundreds of Sikhs once embraced martyrdom here. Sikh history is deeply marked by their struggle for survival in a volatile land....
Land of Asiatic Lion
The only lions in the wild outside Africa are in the Western Indian state of Gujarat in the Sasan Gir Forest Reserve, created in 1913 and accorded sanctuary status in 1965. Hundreds of Asiatic lions have been bred.....
Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka
In Aug 2005, I visited a remarkable site in Madhya Pradesh, India: the prehistoric rock shelters and paintings at Bhimbetka, discovered in 1957-58 by Dr. Vishnu S. Wakankar....
The Burning Ghats of Varanasi
Varanasi (Benares, Banaras, Kashi), on the left bank of the Ganga (Ganges), is one of the seven sacred cities of the Hindus. Among the oldest continuously inhabited cities...
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.Most students had gone home but the institute, though fairly deserted....
The Dilwara Temples
Many Indians claim that the Dilwara Jain temples of Mt. Abu are a more magnificient achievement than the Taj Mahal - both were stunningly ambitious, state-sponsored, multi-year, monumental...
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. The word 'Quneitra' derives from Qantara, or 'bridge', between Syria, Lebanon, Jordan....
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 ...
Land of Two Rivers
"Punjab" comes from two Persian words, panj ("five") and ab ("water"), thus signifying the land of five rivers (the Beas, Chenab, Jhelum, Ravi, and Sutlej). The present Indian state of Punjab is the result of two divisions....
Le Corbusier's Chandigarh
Chandigarh may well be India's greatest achievement in urban town planning. But despite Nehru's enthusiasm, and the evident success of the experiment, the Indian political establishment seems to have learned nothing from it. Chandigarh ought to have become the harbinger for...
Melting Girls and Serpent Women
Two days ago I went on a day trip to Pushkar, a Hindu pilgrimage site, from Jaipur. It has what is said to be the only temple to Lord Brahma in the world. Bathing ghats encircle Pushkar Lake, which.....
Nagarjunakonda
About 1,700 years ago, Nagarjunakonda ("Hill of Nagarjuna") flourished as a city and a great religious and educational center of Brahmanism and Buddhism in the modern state of Andhra Pradesh, south India. Once called Vijayapuri....
Nalanda University
In July this year, I visited Nalanda in Bihar, India, one of the most spectacular archaeological finds on the subcontinent. Nalanda was once a famous Buddhist monastery and university. The region's ...
Potala-in-Exile
The seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile is in McLeod Ganj (upper Dharamsala), a picturesque town overlooking the Kangra valley, below the snowy peaks of the Dhaula Dhar range in the Indian Himalayas.....
The Rann of Kutch
The Rann of Kutch, an area of 18,000 sq km, lies almost entirely within Gujarat along the border with Pakistan. The Little Rann of Kutch extends northeast from the Gulf of Kutch over 5,100 sq km. Once an extension of the Arabian Sea....
Reporting from Home
I'm a non-resident Indian (NRI). I left India in 1989 for a masters degree in the US. I then lived in N. California and W. Europe and had traveled to 50+ countries by late 2004, when I moved to India for two years to read, write, travel, and ...
Rereading Naipaul
I first read Naipaul in the mid-90s: India: A Million Mutinies, The Enigma of Arrival, and A Way in the World. They resonated with me well enough. But in the ensuing ...
The Giant Tortoises of Galapagos
Tortoises are land-dwelling turtles. They are exclusively terrestrial and vegetarian reptiles. In folklore they represent slowness, determination, and long life. Though found all over the world......
An MSc and a Ph.D
Two days earlier, on the bus from Amman to Petra, I met Mohammad, 27, and Zayed, 29. Muhammad wore jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, a moustache and a two-day stubble on his square face. Zayed, dressed in "business-casual" attire, had a slim, clean-shaven face....
A Journey to the West
Journey to the West, "China's most beloved novel of religious quest and picaresque adventure," was published in the 1590s in the waning years of the Ming dynasty. The novel's hero, "a mischievous monkey with human traits ...
Servitors of the Divine Consciousness
In Jan '06, I visited Auroville for the second time (first in '96), but my interest was still purely anthropological. Yet again, Auroville-a township in Tamil Nadu founded in 1968 by the Mother (Mirra Alfassa), a French collaborator of Sri Aurobindo Ghose.....
Who's That Pretty Pachyderm ?
One of the pleasures of traveling in India is to unexpectedly run into elephants. Almost always decked out by the mahout, they're typically found blessing visitors at temples and festivals, strolling down a street, or giving rides...
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 ...
