A Journal of Travel Tales Across 72 Countries
Confront your fears before they conquer you, they say. I did. What does it take to jump out of an aircraft flying 15000 feet as the ground rushes toward you at the speed of light? How does it feel when your instructor pushes you off …
Mountains are majestic and irresistible. Linking the plains and plateaus with the skies; reaching out to suspended droplets of water in the clouds and gathering them in glaciers and snow peaks; sheltering the treasures of the sea floor in their crests; cherishing unfathomable secrets in …
Islands are magical. They often are quirky, funky, wilful, eclectic and more. Islands are never insular even when isolated. Vibrant, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual or pidgin, multi-cultural in a way mainland can never be, islands are the stuff of legends and lore. They are too independent to …
Our planet is hopelessly trodden upon. There is hardly a spot untrampled by human feet or unclaimed by human greed. Even in the remotest jungles of the Amazon or Borneo, or the wastelands of Patagonia, our insatiable race is digging for buried riches – oil, …
My love of train journeys began in 1981 when I travelled all the way from London to Moscow, by train crossing the channel by ferry and resuming the train ride in Belgium to reach Paris. We stopped in Paris, Frankfurt, Berlin (those days it was …
Skirting the rock cluster, we are almost upon him, a full-grown lion in all his mane-ly glory. His shimmering halo silhouetted by the flaming African sun, he is standing on tiptoe, snout upturned ever so slightly to catch the scent of zebras milling about in …
Charles Darwin, all of 22 years old in 1832, stumbled upon Galapagos Islands, partly to escape his persistent seasickness while on a five-year voyage on HMS Beagle. At the end of just five weeks’ stay on the islands, he collected enough specimens of both flora …
Beijing West railway station is as crowded as Chennai Central railway station, but is much grander and more orderly. Passengers are not allowed on the platform until a few minutes before departure. People stand patiently in queues in front of the gates without shoving or …
Solemn and sombre, the women stand silently around the slab sheltered by an ornate blue-tiled octagonal pavilion. Without exception, all heads are wreathed in black headscarves, revealing little of the tresses underneath. As I draw near, I find that some of the women sport trendy …
