One night in Mannat
The balmy gale that was lashing at me, trying to throw me, became a full-blown storm now. Motorcycling toward Delhi along the NH1, I was the only one on the road. Everyone else seemed to have scuttled to the safety of dhabas, parked beneath juddering awnings, huddled inside maybe over chole bhatura and lassi waiting […]
Zen and the art of motorcycle riding
You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig The mangy mutt watched me pack my gear with unblinking eyes teary under the neon street light. Gauging for threat it observed me limp around the motorcycle – from […]
Work, Love, Varkala
(This is a post on some people and events that led to my eponymous travel short. If it is the sights that interests you, just click on here here: Here.) The view from my embowered window threw up whole lives. The podgy old lady in the heavily mirror-worked Rajasthani gypsy attire left her home each […]
The great affair
Nothing moves like the road. From where I sat, staring ahead, I felt like I was hurled bodily into a wide-angled void. Into that bluish-green miasmic space between heaven and earth. Trees and houses, shops and hotels, people, ponds, fields and animals, lamp posts and electric wires blurred past as if some celestial puppetry. Between […]
#KeralaCoastalWalk: The warm, curious, sea
The earth may be cruel but the sea is heartless. Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi. Filming the artisanal thattumadi way of fishing was secondary, the foremost task was to not come in the way. A maali…aisa maali… Some of the crew swayed precariously over the gunwale in underwear, ferrying bucketful of fresh water and […]
Your guide to a small Kerala hotel
“Hello! I am THE guide here. The writer was just trying to be more smart than what he really is by giving you some big ‘Lonely Plant-like’ impression with the headline. Like he knows everything there is to Kerala – top five, bottom three, middle one, things to do, food to eat, etc. Even god […]
One grand dream
Extreme travel situations have sometimes forced hunger on me. While I don’t know about tasting blood as an outcome of absolute, continued hunger as some say, what I do know is that it makes one angry at first and then desperate. Desperation can be dangerous – it even snaps the will to live in some. […]
Who will save the lifeguard?
When the rest of the country celebrates saving a life with gallantry awards, honours and cash tributes, there is a bunch for whom saving lives is everyday. Other lives are their living; on any given day during peak tourist season they save at least one. That they are paid for doing this doesn’t diminish the […]
Dashing polyglot, brutal rapist / Some seasoned advice
In most tourism hubs the underbelly comes cleverly right beneath the nose. It is rarely that removed from the ordered façade – that ever-smiling and well-groomed veneer which makes the cover of travel brochures and magazine stories and envy-inducing backgrounds to likeable selfies – but tucked safely away from casual glances. I loped through this […]