Splash 2013: All Set to Make Waves
This year’s edition of Wayanad Splash – a genuine effort to promote rain tourism – takes off on July 12. Be there if serious off-roading, dirt biking or mud football floats your boat. And yes, business will meet business too. ‘It’s like the human brain. We know it but we don’t know it.’ This was […]
Curious in Kerala: What really is Malabar
There was Malabar. And there was the rest of Kerala. A landowner relative used to tell us he was going to Malabar and would be gone for weeks, sometimes months. From my early memories thus ‘Malabar’ meant ‘faraway’. A swank house would spring up overnight in the neighbourhood and we would be told the folks […]
Pimp my trip: Amazing yet simple travel gears
Yes, we have been travelling even before they were vague strokes on the drawing board. And yes, we will continue to travel even if we do not get to lay our hands on them. Then it doesn’t hurt to get to know some of the gears that have caught the recent fancy of the pleasure […]
India’s first seaplane: The swanky, bumpy last mile
Stormy dark clouds piloted an inclement weather. Slogans of dissension rippled over the backwater from hundreds of fisherfolk who gathered in their boats with families braving the monsoon shower. The media scrutiny was intense. And like any other episode of moment this one too was accompanied by bouquets, brickbats and high drama. Nonetheless, it was […]
Riding Khardung La – The World’s Highest

(June is among the precious few months between life-stilling cold and landslide-prone monsoons in the Himalayas. The passes are open – well, most of them – and the snow is only starting to muck over. June is when most riders do the epic Khardung La run, through Leh and Ladakh regions. A month that sticks […]
In a Nutshell: Why We Love Museums

“The museum is the first place I go to when I visit a new country or town,” the effervescent Hilary Taylor told me outside Tharu Cultural Museum along the fringes of the Chitwan National Park of Nepal. Being a paleontologist, Hilary has every reason to linger over and savour the indigenous artifacts, handicrafts and other […]
Summer Sojourn in Srinagar

Since summer immemorial all of us from the rest of India have been heading to Kashmir for the salubrious climate guaranteed year-round by the encapsulating Zanskar and Pir Panjal mountain ranges. The Jhelum River that flows out of a spring in Anantnag meanders slowly and purposefully before exiting at Baramullah has also given the state […]
Travel Bug by Bollywood

Yash Chopra, the romance goes, promised his wife during their honeymoon in Switzerland that every movie he made would have at least one song or scene set in the Alpine land. He kept his promise and in the bargain did more for the country’s tourism than the government or the tourism body could accomplish: the […]
Wanderink Exclusive: Interview with Marcello Arrambide, The Wandering Trader

The era of the freeloading traveller came to an end with that of the great emperors. The dawn of democracy meant the wayfarer earn for the road ahead – giving rise to the breed of the ‘physical’ nomad – those who laboured bodily to fund their trips. This breed might be waning today with […]