A Sri Lankan sojourn

Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, describes Sri Lanka as a ‘small universe with as many variations of colour, scenery and climate as some countries a dozen times its size.’ The futurist and author should know as he settled here in 1956 and lived here till his death in 2008. Snapshots from […]
Don’t be rude to the Creator. Travel.

“Savour every sandwich, live each day as if it’s your last,” says Edward Readicker-Henderson, contributing editor at National Geographic Traveler and author of several favourites including ‘The Traveler’s Guide to Japanese Pilgrimages’, ‘Adventure Guide to the Alaskan Highway’ and the seminal ‘A Short History of the Honey Bee’. He opens up to Wanderink.com on what […]
The Theka Trail – Fermenting a New Trend

Hic! It’s time to make amends. Since the first tourist set out – maps, bags, spirit of adventure, a premature but prickly pining for home, et al – tourism has followed many paths: heritage and medical to eco and spiritual. From the not-so-widely-spoken but practiced sex tourism to new niches like ‘graveyard’ and ‘LP’ tourism […]
Nice-to-Own Travel Gears

My Land Rover phone had held me in good stead the last year when I really roughed it out – including the Parikrama of Mount Kailas in Tibet. I must have dropped it umpteen times and dropped it in flowing water, once even threw it to scare away a ferocious, snappy mutt. It was even […]
The Many Attractions of Pi’s Life

India tourism office in Beijing did not even have a director till March this year. In fact, there was no need for one – outbound figures hovered around 50,000 accounting for a meagre 0.001 per cent of the global number. Now things have changed. No, it’s not that the office got a new head but […]
Telling Tales: Looking for Rebecca

‘Telling Tales’ is an ongoing series on my more memorable fellow travellers. Pierre found his daughter Rebecca in more places than he looked. Strangers came up to him and told him where he would find her while some just wished him that he found whatever he was looking for. Another time a little girl, a […]
To conserve mountains, forests and seas. And thereby, travel.

Where would we all head to if there were no more snow-capped peaks? Where would we trek if there were no more forests to trail? At the rate the polar caps are melting how many more full moons in Bali? Some days ago I got a call from a Greenpeace volunteer asking for donation; I […]
The Walking Tourist

“Walking is a virtue, tourism is a deadly sin,” said Bruce Chatwin. Any traveller worth his visa can rant offhand many promenades of perambulation – from the whole of Siena and parts of Rome in Italy, most parts of old Zurich to our own Mall Road in Darjeeling. Then again, how about a stroll if […]
Jokbahla joyous
‘Mela’ must have its origins here. Around me were colourful plastic goggles like props-in-calling for the retro-theme Vespa ads, mandating humungous physical strength from the parents to pry away boys who just stood there transfixed to imagined bell-bottomed Bollywood numbers from the 70s. Little girls stood in queue outside bangle shops awaiting their turn while […]