A Journal of Travel Tales Across 72 Countries
The golden sun plays hide and seek behind the spires of the receding Stockholm skyline. The city’s myriad holmens and bridges are silhoutted against the horizon. The green church steeples glint through the snowdust. From the deserted deck of my Viking Line cruise …
The Mandalay-Bagan cruise in the Irrawaddy is the highlight of my trip to Myanmar. Flanked by sculptured mud-banks sprinkled with stupas whose steep spires rise skyward as if in prayer, the river is tranquility personified. The boat glides gracefully. Sunrise on the Irrawaddy is a …
The barbed wire fence is never out of sight. It is no more than a few meters away almost wherever you go in this town of blocked roads and spiked gates. In some patches, the spiky wire is draped around a reinforced steel and …
From the McMahon Line on the Indo-Tibetan border, the Siang seems almost benign. Is this the same river that routinely ravages the plains of Assam every year, washing away homes, hearths and wreaking havoc? Is this the same river that spreads out in chaotic tentacles …
Driving through the wastelands towards the proverbial nadir of the earth may not be everyone’s idea of travel, but that’s what we embark upon when we undertake our journey to biblical Jericho, a couple of hours’ drive from Ramallah, the Palestinian capital. It is a …
How does it feel to be on the equator? Hot and humid for sure, but also as exasperating as it is exhilarating. A 360 degree horizon splattered with rainbow hues, endlessly flat delta crisscrossed by expansive and meandering rivers, deep and dark jungles harbouring strange …
On a sunny evening, we, the Nikitin team of 13 along with our three cars set sail from Sochi, the Russian town on the Black Sea coast set sail aboard Apollonnia, a medium-sized skiff. As we pulled out of Soch, Mt.Ruslan with its lofty beret …
Almaty is the charming and mountainous former capital of Kazakhstan. The capital has now moved to a very swanky and ghostly Astana built with oil wealth. Set in the foothills of the trans-Altau mountaints, Almaty enjoys a cool climate all the year round. I was …
The Kangra valley toy train is waiting for us at the Pathankot railway station. Like all hill trains, this one is a narrow gauge tin box with big windows and a noisy engine. There is only one class of travel – janta – and we …
If you think a tiny string of painted steel boxes balancing precariously on a two feet wide track meandering on the hillside is an unlikely candidate for the UNESCO World Heritage Site status, think again. It may not be as magnificient as Humayun’s Tomb or …