4 sri lankan game reserves for 4 authentic safaris

Posted on May 6, 2024 by Rama Arya

What’s a visit to Sri Lanka without a safari in its iconic game reserves? Blessed with a rich heritage and oodles of natural beauty, the tropical island’s game reserves offer a peek into its third charm: a teeming wildlife. But which one should you go to? Here is a rundown of Sri Lanka’s four most famous ones, and what to expect from each, in no specific order. For not all game reserves are ever the same. 🙂

1. Udawalawe National Park

If elephants are what you are seeking, and that too in plenty, then head straight to the Udawalawe National Park. With a head count of around 500 and herds of 50-or-so roaming the grasslands, sighting of the wild Asian elephant is guaranteed in all its glory, all year round. In fact, be prepared to have multiple close encounters with the gigantic mammals who will oftentimes come right up to your safari vehicle. Smaller than their African counterparts, the Sri Lankan subspecies of the Asian Elephant you see is characterised by patches of depigmentation on its ears, face, trunk, and belly. Continue reading →

jaffna: the unexplored north of sri lanka

Posted on April 1, 2024 by Rama Arya

Twenty-six years of civil war is a long time. A whole generation grows up exposed to the horrors of war, stripped of their right to education, health-care, and utilities. It is hard for one living in a ‘secure’ country to even fathom such dreadfulness day in and day out, year in and year out.

Sri Lanka’s LTTE-Sinhalese civil war started on 23 July, 1983 and ended on 19 May, 2009, during which an estimated 40,000 civilians died according to a UN Experts Report. Those who could leave, left the country. Root causes of the civil war were a series of anti-Tamil riots following independence in 1948 and the 1956 Government Act which recognized Sinhalese as the only official language.

Fuelled further by the government’s citizenship and education policies, it led to the creation of the LTTE or Tamil Tigers, as they were known, and their demand for a separate Tamil state ‘Tamil Eelam.’

Suicide bombers were a trademark of the Tamil insurgency. Even India, Sri Lanka’s neighbour, could not be immune to it. India’s ex-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in 1991 by a 22-year-old female LTTE suicide bomber.

Jaffna [Yalpanam in Tamil] on the northern tip of Sri Lanka, was the epicentre of this civil war which spread across the island’s northern and eastern coastlines. Mutilated factories, bombed homes, and walls pock-marked with gunshots are still scattered throughout the city and its surrounds. An echo of its turbulent past.

Three things, by some miracle, have survived from the nearly three decades of fighting: One, the region’s places of worship—magnificent colourful Hindu temples, poignant grand churches, and sacred Buddhist sites—two, its bygone colonial ruins, and three, a bunch of remote sleepy isles on the Palk Strait in the Indian Ocean. Continue reading →

11 memorable experiences only to be had in turkmenistan

Posted on February 19, 2024 by Rama Arya

Tourist number: 1933.

It is the early hours in the morning of 1 October, and I am at the gleaming falcon-shaped marble-encased airport in Ashgabat, capital of Turkmenistan. I ask the official at the visa counter what does this line on my entry stamp mean. He explains that 1,932 tourist visas had been issued in 2023 before mine. I am 1,933rd. This does not include the 3-to-7-day transit visas, by-the-way.

With a silly grin plastered on my face, I tell him he has no idea how much it means to have that sticker on my passport. Many months of planning and three back-to-back flights, from Goa to Muscat to Dubai to Ashgabat, and I am finally, finally here.

I guess my enthusiasm is contagious. The otherwise poker-faced official gives a little smile and wishes me a happy stay. I respond with a beaming grin.

Outside, shifting lights on the airport’s facade recreate a falcon’s flapping wings. Continue reading →

travel guide: turkmenistan’s 3 legendary unesco-listed treasures

Posted on February 5, 2024 by Rama Arya

For a history buff, Turkmenistan is what wish-lists are made of. Its historical sites comprise three of the greatest world cities of the past which served as the capitals of some of the region’s most powerful empires in the ancient and medieval world, namely, the Great Seljuks, Khwarezmshahs, and Parthians.

All three of these cities are UNESCO World Heritage Sites today: Merv in the south-east, Konye Urgench in the north, and Old Nisa near the capital Ashgabat.

Welcome to my travel guide on these legendary metropolises’ fantastic histories and breathtaking monuments. Places very few visit, in one of our world’s Least Visited Countries. ❤

MERV: ‘QUEEN OF THE WORLD’ AND CAPITAL OF THE GREAT SELJUKS

Coronation of Seljuk Sultan Ahmad Sanjar [r. 1118 – 1157]; Jami’ al-Tawarikh by Rashid al-Din, Tabriz, Persia, 1307 AD.

Often described as ‘the wandering city,’ Merv is Turkmenistan’s grandest UNESCO World Heritage Site, both in scale and age: 1,236 hectares [including the buffer zone] and 4,500 years. Listed in 1999, it is also the oldest and best-preserved oasis city along the Silk Road in Central Asia. Continue reading →

a guide to solo travel in afghanistan for the indian traveller

Posted on December 25, 2023 by Rama Arya

At the Minaret of Jam with my driver Sher Aga and fixer-cum-translator Obaid.

“Why are you in this western tour group? Why are you with them?”

I faced this question at almost every checkpoint during the few days I travelled in Afghanistan as part of a group. A Taliban soldier on the 5th day was more explicit. “This is your country! You don’t need to be with them to see Afghanistan.”

– – –

This travel guide to Afghanistan is specifically meant for Indians. Like Indians in colour and passport. It does not, and cannot, apply to people of other colours and nations or an Indian with a western passport. 🙂

Let me put it in context first.

According to Indian textbooks, Afghanistan was once a part of India. According to Afghan textbooks, India was once a part of Afghanistan. Sorry, not India, but ‘Hindustan.’ Afghans, like the rest in Central Asia, still refer to India by its Silk Road-era name given to the sub-continent by the Persians.

Afghan fine-dining restaurant menus have Hyderabadi Biryani and Aloo Gobi listed under ‘Afghan Dishes,’ while Afghan women wear nose rings and bindis and are adamant it is an Afghan thing. We Indians, of course, believe it is all intrinsically ours, and just smile about it in smug complacency. You get the drift.

Both countries have shared personalities and dynasties across a millennium. For one thousand years it was the likes of Mahmud of Ghazni, Muhammad Ghori, the Khilji Dynasty, Lodi Dynasty, Mughal Emperor Babur, and Sher Shah Sur. Today, it is a chunk of Bollywood. Yes, Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan and Celina Jaitley, yesteryear heroes Feroz Khan and Sanjay Khan, and bad guy Kader Khan all have Afghan blood in them. And these are just a few in a long list. Continue reading →

the complete travel guide to ancient bactria and silk road’s fabled city: balkh

Posted on December 4, 2023 by Rama Arya

Of all the cities that has survived the annals of time, Balkh, the capital of ancient Bactria [6th Century BC to 6th Century AD] in northern Afghanistan, is perhaps the most evocative.

Volumes have been written on its wars when it was the capital of Bactria, and thereafter, a part of post-Bactrian empires. Art and literature have had a constant muse in its colourful personalities, Alexander the Great and Roxanna, and their marriage which paved the course of history. One of the oldest religions in the world, Zoroastrianism, was founded by one of Balkh’s very own citizens, Zoroaster.

But its greatest claim to fame, and subsequently its greatest legacy, came from its simultaneous role as Silk Road’s fabled city. For 1,600 years, from 130 BC – 1453 AD, Balkh was not just a confluence of commodities, but also of religions, ideas, and knowledge. Continue reading →