Bandhavgarh may be smaller than Kanha but it claims to have the world’s highest-density tiger population – offering day-trippers a 99.99% chance of spotting a big cat. In addition to its tigers (27 in the 105-sq-km core area), the 448-sq-km park is inhabited by some 40 leopards, 250 species of bird and some 35 species [...]
Looking at the scuffy village today, it’s difficult to believe that Badami was once the capital of the Chalukya empire, which covered much of the central Deccan between the 4th and 8th centuries AD. However, climb up into the red sandstone ridge and explore the magnificent rock-cut cave temples surrounding the village, and you’ll find [...]
Just over the border from Puducherry is the international community of Auroville – a project in ‘human unity’ that has ballooned to encompass more than 80 rural settlements spread over 20km, and about 1800 residents. Two-thirds of these are foreigners, representing around 38 different nationalities.
They say that every dog has its day and for dog-eared Aurangabad that day came when the last Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb, made the city his capital from 1653 to 1707. Though its claim to fame was only brief, the city retains a number of worthwhile historical relics, including a tempting Taj wannabe and some grandly [...]
Fascinating Assam (Asom, Axom) straddles the fertile Brahmaputra valley, making it the most accessible core of India’s northeast. The archetypal Assamese landscape offers mesmerising autumnal vistas over seemingly endless gold-green rice fields patched with palm and bamboo groves and distantly hemmed with hazy blue mountain horizons. In between are equally endless, equally gorgeous manicured tea [...]
The ‘Land of Dawn-lit Mountains’ grips northern Assam in an embrace of densely forested ridges. These rise to some fabulous snow-capped peaks along the Chinese border. In Arunachal’s deep-cut foothill valleys live at least 65 different tribal groups (101 by some counts) with bucolic cultures and photogenic bamboo-house settlements. High in the beautiful Tawang Valley [...]
Shoved aside by the consumer age, the hippy ’60s needed somewhere to hide; San Francisco wouldn’t do, Carnaby Street couldn’t cope and the Marrakesh Express was suddenly cancelled in a cost-saving exercise. Eventually reaching Arambol’s sickle of sand and rash of beautiful, rocky bays the ’60s knew it had finally found its never-never land. Ever [...]
Famous throughout Goa for its Wednesday flea market, Anjuna’s name still pulls in backpackers, European ravers, long-term hippies and, increasingly, midrange tourists taking advantage of comfy new hotels. Of all the more developed beaches in Goa Anjuna’s is the best.
Aside from tens of millions of pilgrims, not many people make the trip to Andhra Pradesh. But Andhra’s a place with subtle charms, quiet traditions and a long history of spiritual scholarship and religious harmony. The state is 95% Hindu, but you wouldn’t know it in the capital’s Old City, where Islamic monuments and the [...]
Once known as Kalapani – Black Waters – for their role as a feared penal settlement, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands are now a relaxed tropical island outpost that belongs to India but is geographically closer to Southeast Asia. Superb, near-deserted beaches, incredible corals and marine life, an intriguing colonial past and the remnants of [...]