You visit a place you haven’t been to before. You walk the streets, you notice. You discover things about the world (most of all, you discover things about the place you’re from). You meet people. You become a different person through the people you meet. You continue walking, lucky...
One day in Delhi, we were walking around Chandni Chowk, one of the oldest markets in the city. Outside the Sis Ganj Sahib Sikh temple, we bumped into a friendly guy called Vijay (or rather, he bumped into us). The friendliness, it turned out, came complete with a small...
Porbandar is a small coastal town in western Gujarat, complete with a crowded port, narrow alleys and an ever-present smell of fish and salty waters – and famous for two things. In recent times, it came to been known as a shady place, in the hands of criminal groups,...
Among all historical, mystical and legendary places in Delhi (of which I didn’t see more than a handful – this time around), one of the most fascinating is the tomb of 14th century sufi saint Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya. The dargah (which by the way is a Persian term, meaning...
On our journey through Gujarat, we stopped for a few hours in a small place called Bhanvad. The town is surrounded by a semi-dry landscape, dotted with palm trees and greenery, and has the mountainous Barda Hills as a backdrop. There was a maze of charming back alleys, and...
What is the first thing you do when arriving in a new city? After finding a place to sleep and making sure you’re not hungry, that is. For me, one of the very first things is exploring the bookshops. Large cities may be noisy and hectic, and lack the...