Panaji (also known as Panjim) is a town of shades; the pastel shades of the buildings, romantic shades of the Mediterranean, excitable shades of Latin America and noisy shades of India. It’s a town utterly unique to the sub-continent, yet for most travellers it tends to be a quick after thought to a Goan beach [...]
Palolem is the most southerly of Goa’s developed beaches and was once the state’s most idyllic. Nowadays its beauty is very much dependent on your point of view. For those who believe a beach cannot be paradise without a decent selection of cheap restaurants and hotels, a dose of nightlife and plenty of likeminded people [...]
The hustling, bustling town of Palitana, 51km southwest of Bhavnagar, has grown up to serve the pilgrim trade around Shatrunjaya.
Set in a magical valley beside the Lidder River, Pahalgam is framed by pine forests and snowcovered peaks that bear more than a passing similarity to the Rocky Mountains. This was once Kashmir’s most popular resort, but today it exists in a state of limbo, empty for most of the year, but deluged with visitors [...]
Basking under an endless sky, Padum is the capital of Zanskar, but don’t expect more than a few dusty streets and a bus stand. Around Padum, the Zanskar valley shimmers in the wan desert light. Yaks and dzo graze calmly in the fields and the plain is dotted with small farms and villages. Padum has [...]
Madhya Pradesh’s hill station feels a long way from steamy central India. The mountain town is surrounded by waterfalls, cave temples, the forested ranges of the Satpura National Park and rock paintings dating back 10, 000 years. Visitors flock here to attend mass religious meetings held by big-name gurus and to scale Chauragarh, or simply [...]
Orissa is a captivating state with diverse, vibrant living cultures and an unrivalled architectural legacy. It’s where mighty temple chariots carrying powerful deities are pulled through city streets by a heaving throng of devotees, where serene stone carvings of exceptional beauty continue to be excavated from early Buddhist sites and where Adivasis (tribal people) maintain [...]
Entered by a gate crowned with a red Ganesh, Orchha’s name (Hidden Place) is singularly appropriate. Temples, palaces and chhatris fight their way out of the encroaching jungle, their spires and domes overshadowing a few ramshackle streets. At sunset, vultures peer down from the temple tops at the Hindu faithful drifting in to chant incantations [...]
Ooty is South India’s most famous hill station, established by the British in the early 19th century as the summer headquarters of the then-Madras government and memorably nicknamed ‘Snooty Ooty’.
A regular mini Varanasi, Omkareshwar is an Om-shaped island that has long attracted sadhus in droves but is only beginning to show up on travellers’ itineraries. When the sadhus aren’t sleeping off their pilgrimages in the island’s warren of lanes, among colourful stalls selling souvenir linga, they attend Shri Omkar Mandhata. This cavelike temple, which [...]