photo essay: caravanserais of the grand trunk road

Posted on October 26, 2026 by Rama Arya

It is the Islamic Hijri year 951. The Gregorian calendar knows it as 1544 CE. I am on my way to Kabul, laden with spices I plan to sell once there. I also have some silks I picked up on the way. It is a long journey from Delhi, but the profits would be better in Kabul instead of selling it to middlemen along the way. More Rupiyas.

However, I must confess just being on the road is an equal incentive. Distant lands, new stories, and the adventures, or should I say misadventures along the way. I chuckle as I recollect incidents. It’s my little secret. Being a wanderer in the guise of a trader.

As the sun sets over the dusty plains, and the muezzin calls out the adhan for maghrib, our caravan weaves its way to the monumental fortified Shambhu caravanserai surrounded with lush green fields. It is our haven for the night—safe from the bandits who scavenge the dark roads once night falls.

I won’t need to pay, either for my own or my pack animals’ food and lodging. Our Sultan Sher Shah Suri, a Hindustan-born Afghan who had defeated and ousted Mughal Emperor Humayun four years ago, takes care of it all. Widely recognized as an able general and administrator, he has built 1,700 such serais along the 2,500-kilometre-long Sadak-e-Azam [Grand Road], connecting the Bay of Bengal to the Hindu Kush Mountains.

The road itself is older, dating back to Chandragupta Maurya in the 4th Century BCE who named it Uttarapatha. Sher Shah Suri expanded it into one of South Asia’s longest trade routes across his vast realm and punctuated it with inns, wells, and kos minars [distance markers]. With my own eyes I have seen him transform the ancient Mauryan artery into the blueprint of Hindustan’s first ever postal service, and eased trade along its length with the standardised currency he has introduced: the Rupiya.

Left: Detail of glazed tile mosaic on Dakhni Caravanserai’s main gateway [1640 CE], Jalandhar; Right: Kos Minar, marker of a kos [2 miles], outside Dakhni Caravanserai, flags the turnoff for Kashmir.

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usgalimal, south goa’s 30,000-year-old geoglyphs

Posted on June 8, 2026 by Rama Arya

I am often asked what is my favourite travel destination. High up on the long list is India. Just when I think I have figured the travel scene out here, it throws me a googly. Now look at Goa for instance. Top layer: beaches and Portuguese-era culture and churches. Second layer: pristine tropical nature and ancient Hindu temples. Third layer? Prehistoric geoglyphs.

Yes, even I was taken by surprise. Far from prying eyes is a collection of some 125 rock carvings spread over 5,000 sq. metres on a laterite shelf dated between 20,000 BC and 30,000 BC in South Goa. They are known as the Usgalimal rock engravings, named after the nearest village. Continue reading →

museum visit: piprahwa relics—the light and the lotus

Posted on June 1, 2026 by Rama Arya

By oneself indeed is evil done and
by oneself is one defiled, by oneself
is evil not done and by oneself is one
purified. Purity and impurity
depend entirely on oneself; no one
can purify another.

~ Dhammapada, Verse 165

The story of Buddha’s Piprahwa relics is as unusual as the story of the man himself—a 6th/ 5th Century BCE prince, Siddhartha Gautama from the Indo-Gangetic plain, who renounced worldly life and possessions to find a faith built on compassion and self-discovery.

Throughout his life, he was adamant he be treated only as a teacher and not God. Because there was no God. Only our karma. Continue reading →

72 hours in chennai: colonial history, an apostle, and hindu gods

Posted on May 25, 2026 by Rama Arya

Chennai had long been on my wish-list. Even though I have travelled extensively through Tamil Nadu, including its magical temple towns’ route, the southern state’s capital had somehow evaded me.

When I got an opportunity earlier this year to explore the city whilst on a personal philanthropic project [I run pro bono workshops in development communication skills for the social sector], no surprises that I grabbed it with glee! The weather was perfect. It was February. I was going to be based in Alwarpet, right next to the city’s historical centre, Mylapore. And I was in no rush. Continue reading →

photo essay: hampi, stories told and untold

Posted on January 19, 2026 by Rama Arya

Don’t mistake the swarms of visitors at Hampi as tourists. Not all of them are. Most of them are pilgrims. For in Hampi, nestled in a surreal boulder-strewn landscape in north Karnataka, each stone is sacred.

Irrevocably tied to the Hindu epic Ramayana, Hampi traces itself back to a mystical past. Anegundi, the expanse across Hampi’s Tungabhadra river, was then known as the vanar [monkey] Kishkindha kingdom ruled by King Sugriva. In the epic, Sugriva’s commander Hanuman and army of monkeys helped Rama rescue his wife Sita from the demon Ravana.

Fast forward a few millennia from otherworldly mythology to historical facts substantiated by Kannada inscriptions and journals of Italian merchant Nicolo di Conti [1420], Persian diplomat Abdur Raazaq [1442], and Portuguese traveller Domingo Paes [1520].

Hampi, was now the capital of the wealthy, secular, and immensely powerful Hindu Vijayanagar empire. The richest city in the Indian subcontinent and the second biggest city in the world, it ruled a realm that encompassed modern-day Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu.

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aihole, cradle of indian temple architecture

Posted on January 12, 2026 by Rama Arya

Indian temple design did not arrive at in a day. Surprised? 🙂

More surprising is where its evolution took place.

The floor-plans and superstructures one takes so much for granted today took shape in a tiny village in north Karnataka over a period of two hundred years of vigorous, yet brazen experimentation.

Known as the ‘cradle of Hindu temple architecture,’ Aihole, the first capital of the Early Chalukya Kingdom [6th to 8th Century] served as a laboratory for the construction of sacred sites.

From rock-cut cave temples to apsidal-shaped monumental structures to one akin to a cozy homely hut. From the ‘northern’ high curved Nagara-style and ‘southern’ pyramidal stepped Dravida-style superstructures to the hybrid ornate Vesara model typical of the Deccan. They all came into being here. Continue reading →

travel shorts: pattadakal, a marriage of sorts

Posted on January 5, 2026 by Rama Arya

Anyone who is acquainted with the idea of India, will also be familiar with the great north-south divide. It encompasses ethnicity, language, culture and in a deeply religious nation, temple architecture. Yet, in a narrow strip atop the Deccan plateau, one gets to witness a marriage of sorts in the latter that is completely unique to the subcontinent.

Pattadakal, a UNESCO-listed 7th-8th Century World Heritage Site displays this north-south eclectic mix at its finest. The enclosed part of the site is made up of eight temples—three of which are models, one a ‘project work,’ and four designed as full-fledged functional places of worship.

The Virupaksha Temple in the last group, with its sophisticated amalgamation of north and south elements, has been in continuous use since its consecration in 740 CE. It was commissioned by Lokamahadevi, a powerful Chalukya Queen, to commemorate her husband’s victory over the Pallava kings of the South.

If you have been wondering about my terminology, it is because Pattadakal, along with Aihole, were akin to a ‘laboratory’ where architects and artisans under royal decree experimented with temple architecture.

How about a corridor through which the local populace could circumambulate the holy sanctum which was otherwise out of bounds? A Nandi to mark the temple site? Perhaps a kalash finale atop the roof symbolising the meeting of heaven and earth? This investigational process, carried out over a couple of centuries culminated in Pattadakal’s most sophisticated edifices. Where the north and south architectural styles, till then side by side in platonic comradery, also merged in a hybrid blend for a while.

Scroll on to see some more images of this site. ❤ Continue reading →

travel diaries: four caves, a lake, a seeker and badami

Posted on December 29, 2025 by Rama Arya

One of Badami Cave Temples’ most impressive sculptures: Shiva as the 18-armed Nataraja doing the Tandava Nritya—the cosmic dance of creation, preservation, and destruction.

One is never far from the gods in India. They are everywhere. Carved out of living rock. Carved into living rock. As far back as even 578 CE.

It is just after lunchtime, and I am at the foot of a gigantic red sandstone escarpment. Hundreds of school-children are racing down the steep uneven steps hewn into the cliff’s face. Their teachers shout behind them to slow down. Not that their wards pay any attention to the ominous warnings. Dressed in shiny tracksuits, they run in and out of the cavernous halls, doubled over in unstoppable giggles.

Slicing their way through this human avalanche are staid family groups. Their elderly matriarchs stomping ahead, undeterred by limps or wobbly canes.

“Aaj bahut bheed hai [It is very crowded today],” I observe to the security guard at the gate. “Roz aisa hai. Season hai na aaj kal [It is like this every day. It is the season nowadays],” he smiles back happily.

In a few months these cliffs will be deserted again, first under the scorching summer sun and then because of the monsoons which would make the stone steps a veritable death trap.

Yet such ominous weathers rarely affected pilgrims in the distant past. 1,400 years ago.

Portrait of a man in Ancient India. Ancient Hindu temples, by virtue of their depiction of both the sacred and secular, offer a fascinating insight into the then prevailing norms and societies.

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a self-guided walk through shimla, the british raj’s summer capital

Posted on July 15, 2024 by Rama Arya

1864. The British Crown was now directly in control of the Indian subcontinent. Five years had passed since they had squashed the Indian Mutiny. It had been a tough fight lasting nearly two years and two months, but they’d won in the end.

Summers in their new capital, Calcutta, were, however, brutal. Oh, how they longed for the grey overcast days back home, bathed in gentle drizzle.

Since the 1820s, the earlier British East India Company officers stationed in India had been escaping from the sun-baked plains to a hamlet in the middle hills of the Himalayas during such summers. The hamlet, comprising some 50 houses, was called Shayamala after a local Hindu goddess.

India’s new rulers decided to make this association more permanent. They renamed the hamlet ‘Shimla,’ and set up the British Raj’s ‘Summer Capital’ on its seven hills.

Every year, just before the sweltering heat clamped down on the Gangetic plains, the entire administrative machinery would move here, replete with traders, restaurateurs, and socialites. Once the heat cooled down, and snow started to peck its slopes, they would all move back again south-eastwards.

A mini-Britain was created in Shimla’s hills. Timber-strapped Tudor houses, soaring neo-Gothic churches, grand town halls, and a theatre for concerts and plays. On the Ridge, which offered rather splendid views, a bandstand was thrown in where military bands could play music and the gentry could indulge in leisurely strolls. Not too shabby now, perhaps they whispered to each other in relief.

Though it is now 77 years since the British have left, their summer capital’s remnants still dot Shimla, and more so on its main commercial pedestrian artery—Mall Road.

Here is a self-guided walk on what to watch out for should you ever be in the vicinity, with suggestions for eating and staying dating back to the colonial days. Take your time and savour its charms. After all, Shimla was always for the long haul. ❤

PS. Take the lift up to Mall Road, and on exiting the lift turn left towards Christ Church.

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kullu manali and their 11 loadstones

Posted on July 8, 2024 by Rama Arya

Loadstone: Noun. A person or thing that is the focus of attention or attraction. In aplenty. In other words—Kullu and Manali.

– – –

Two of India’s most popular hill stations’ names are often taken in the same breath. Even though they are separated by some 40-odd kilometres.

Welcome to Kullu Manali. Two towns located on the verdant Kullu valley in India’s Himachal Pradesh with the ice-blue Beas river gurgling past them.

Free of a colonial overprint, or the culture and faith of an invading ruler, these two towns have in the past, as well as today, continue to epitomize Himachal history, traditions, and heritage. In all its unadulterated richness.

Gods are in abundance here, and so are centuries-old beliefs. The lines between mythology and mundane reality are blurred with characters from the epics Mahabharata and Ramayana popping up everywhere. Ancient sages, mythical heroes, demons, and the proverbial Noah [in Hinduism’s case Manu] who set forth from his ark to kick-start the lineage of mankind. They are all somehow associated with the Kullu valley which has earned itself the moniker ‘Valley of Gods.’

There’s also tall graceful fir trees, rivers fed by melting glaciers punctuated with hot water springs, and wooden homes which have housed many a generation of pahari [mountain] folks inside their weathered walls.

You will need at least a few days to get acquainted with Kullu and Manali’s sites. Hotels and taxis are easily available. Let me not go into them here. Rather let this post be a roadmap of what makes these two towns attract pilgrims and tourists in their droves, always. ❤ Continue reading →