Author: Thommen Jose

For 17 years I was a consultant specializing in corporate and responsibility communication based in Delhi. I wrote scripts, and directed films which were in turn used to build brand awareness, mobilize people, and raise funds, or just goodwill. My work mandated widespread traveling and to ensure I saw the places and got to know the people better, I began documenting it. My blog Wanderink.com was once among the top 10 travel blogs on responsible travel from India. I think its my writing that landed me book assignments from the Times of India Group which resulted in two road tripping books which I still talk about like yesterday: Experience Agra and around on the road and Experience Chhattisgarh on the road (both are available online). There were more that came along but I guess the discipline of writing was killing. Ok, actually, I think it was some other pressing personal issues. Before moving on to my wonderful present job, quickly about me: I hold a graduate degree in economics and a post graduate degree in communication and journalism. I was sub editor with The Week, a national newsweekly before moving on to advertising and later stints as copywriter, creative director with a few national agencies. All these glamorous stints and travel outings put some tattoos on me including one of an airplane on my neck. It was, let's say, closest to soothsaying that ever came my way. Right now I am with the company of some great people who represent airlines across markets - AirlinePros. Of course, my job is a continuation of what I have been doing - communication. My workplace has lots of airplanes and photographs of beautiful people and places. Contact me thommenjose@gmail.com

Lighthouse tourism: Mind the steps

It reminds you of a Grimm tale illustration – red and white striped delectable candy on the outside, lurking peril inside. When a ‘revamped’ Kovalam lighthouse – officially Vizhinjam lighthouse, was opened to the public on December 4 last year, I was among the few enthusiastic ones who flocked to applaud the rise of a […]

Hawa* beach hacks

One of the funniest stories my dad told me from his younger days was about Sosamma who ran a roadside eatery. One day Sosamma made 10 puttu, hoping to sell each for one rupee. For whatever reason, she was particularly hungry that day and began polishing off the puttu one by one. By evening there […]

#KeralaCoastalWalk

As far as office rides go this one takes the cup. The fibre boat crested every wave at somersault angles and landed with emphatic thuds, each a sledgehammer blow from below deck. I sat close to the helm – it is smoother toward the aft, where the rest of the crew were – where I […]

Floats and feuds of the Pala Jubilee

Trading and religion have always gone hand in hand – the unpredictability of one unfailingly appealed to the vagary of the other. Pala, flanking the fertile banks of the Meenachil River, attracted farmer settlers from millennia ago. Recorded history shows they were mostly Christians or Nasrani – as the Syrian Christians of Kerala are known […]

Labuan Bajo – the next Bali?

It was a rare event – Wally was quiet. And Wally was never quiet, as his friends vouched, unless he was sleeping nor still if he wasn’t staring you down enquiring after the ‘angle of the dangle.’ Then at the Tree Top Bar which he runs with his son Mathews close to the Labuan Bajo […]

Qudsia Garden: Rangeela territory

What do you wear when you are soon going to doff it for a copulation session for canvas? What was that semaphore again for more shisha in the hookah? How long does one keep jigging for the frolicsome mood to be captured as still life? At the Qudsia Bagh in Civil Lines I tried to […]

Hampi rocks

‘Geological time includes now.’ Looking up at the looming cracked dolmens, precariously balanced boulders, perching promontories and other formidable formations from the gulch I was tracing it wasn’t easy to shrug away Edward Abbey’s artful caution. That they had been like that for most part of millions of years is exactly what prompts – and […]

Responsibly yours / Gramam, Kochi

If you have to showcase responsible tourism practices the way it should be – a collective effort – then frame this one. All the seafood, vegetables, egg, coconut, oil and fruits used in the homestay are produced locally ensuring benefit for the entire village. In the three-acre coconut farm surrounding the property no chemical fertiliser […]

Sing a song of suspense

“When I invite my girlfriend to an evening in the karaoke bar she is aroused and anguished at the same time,” says Alitt Susanto taking deep drags from a fancy cigarette atomiser. A fruity flavour wafts around us. “She doesn’t know whether I will be singing about love and longing. Or leaving.” The silver haze […]