As someone who left her steady job in search of meaning and satisfaction, hustling for work that pays well but gives me no joy was strictly out of bounds. Of course I broke this rule every single time I was in need of money(which was most of the year if I'm being honest), but having worked on few stories that gave me the...
And it's a wrap! Thanks for the great response, as always. :) Over the past seven years, I've climbed several mountains and crossed many passes for the smallest glimpse of Himalayan splendour. Once I hiked for a whole week only to get a 10 minute view of Kanchenjunga and more recently travelled and hiked to the farthest corner of Uttarakhand for exactly an...
Under the veneer of Rewa’s insipid “dusty little Indian town” feel is a treasure trove of forgotten history and an intriguing past that has comfortably faded into oblivion. At first glance, I couldn’t understand what made Madhya Pradesh Tourism send me this way, to this obscure place with nothing remarkable in sight. Little did I know that I was actually being sent down...
A blur of black whizzed past the thicket ahead of me in Sanjay National Park, a remote corner in Madhya Pradesh. If not for the rustle of the dried leaves that raked up few exciting seconds of anticipation, I would’ve definitely missed my first ever sighting of the elusive Sloth Bear in the jungles of this tiger reserve, which were so thick that...
Sitting on the steps of a small shrine housing the imposing emblem of Chandela dynasty, a feisty prince battling a fierce lion, I remember being distinctly unimpressed with what I saw. Blame it on the marketing gimmick that touts Khajuraho to be something it is not, a grand display of Kama Sutra and assorted erotica. If a destination doesn’t even live up to...
Few weeks ago I went exploring Madhya Pradesh's various kingdoms, wild and historic both. Starting with the impenetrable jungles of little-known Sanjay National Park in Parsili, I reached the crumbling ruins of Baghelkhand dynasty's forgotten legacy next. If these offbeat corners satiated the sense of exploration that we so seek from travel, the well trodden trails of Panna and Khajuraho offered a balancing...
[Women's swimming enclosure at Govindgarh Fort] Even when things seem to be going nowhere, India has the uncanny ability to surprise you. By now, I'm tuned to believe there's always light at the end of the tunnel. So even though I was awake for more than 22-hours straight at that point and we were literally in the middle of nowhere, I was hanging...
Furious winds were thrashing the windowpanes of our family's 4th floor apartment. It was June and I'd just returned home from the forests of Pench and mountains of Kashmir. The stormy afternoon was a portent of happy times to come. In a week, I'd be chasing monsoons along the east coast. In three weeks, I'd be in the thick of monsoon in Kerala....
