Can one really argue the pleasures of sitting inside a monument, suspended in time, or a leisurely conversation with a local through whom the past lives on? Isn’t that how travel to places steeped in history should be like?
I am prone to believe there is only one unalloyed way to explore heritage precincts—on foot, on your own, and at your own pace. With no stringent “you have 15 minutes here” or the need to absorb a site amidst a non-stop rattle of facts and stories, some true, some crafted just to enchant you.
Last month, I also discovered no city deserves one’s space and slowed down pace more than Lucknow, where nothing much has changed inside its old city walls over the past 250 years. The mosques and imambaras are still functioning. Travellers from far and wide still gaze at its colossal monuments in wonder. Continue reading
Bundi. The very name is evocative. Translated literally it means sweetened, fried chickpea flour—a snack indigenous to Rajasthan. When applied to a small, sleepy, powder-blue painted town nestled in a deep gorge surrounded on three sides by the Aravalli hills with a spectacular fort and palace looming over it, it becomes synonymous with one of India’s best kept secrets. A secret with myriad secrets within its folds.
