Tag Archives: UNESCO World Heritage Site

part 2: island-hopping in the indian ocean: seychelles

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“You cannot discern that ever any people had been there before us,” wrote John Jourdain in his diary.

It was 19th January, 1609. Jourdain was part of the crew aboard ‘Ascension,’ a British East India Company ship that had blown off course on its way to India. He and his shipmates were marooned on what we now know as North Island, one of Seychelles’ 115 islands.

Things have not changed much over the past 400 years. Walk along any of the islands’ white sands lapped by an ocean that’s a cross between emerald green and turquoise blue, or under lush rainforests, and you may well feel you had chanced upon a remote unchartered paradise.

Welcome to part 2 of my series on island-hopping in the Indian Ocean, and to Seychelles—Africa’s smallest and least populated country with the highest GDP per capita of its 54 nations. Continue reading →

part 1: island-hopping in the indian ocean: mauritius

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Welcome to my series on island-hopping in the Indian Ocean. Through 72-hour visual itineraries I hope to take the traveller in you under the islands’ skin. So, why this theme? I asked myself the same question. I live in Goa at walking distance from the beach. And a beach is a beach?

Wrong. 🙂 Every beach is different. And there is a whole world in an island, beyond its beaches. Or so I believe.

I am starting the series with Mauritius and Seychelles which I visited last month, and will be adding to the collection as I travel to more. In August, the temperature and humidity are mild in this corner of the world, and the waters very choppy. Compared to December when the reverse takes place, I figured it was easier for me to handle an odyssey.

A tiny pear-shaped dot in the Indian Ocean, 805 kilometres east of Madagascar, Mauritius owes its existence to volcanic activity eight million years ago. Okay, not exactly tiny. Mauritius spans 1,865 sq. kilometres. Continue reading →

georgia: a story of war and faith

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Two stories define Sakartvelo. War and faith.

We know this ancient country as Georgia. But that’s not what Georgians call it. For them, it is Sakartvelo, land of the Kartvelians. Kartvelian means ‘a person of Kartli’—the historical name of the region since the 4th Century BCE.

Caught between powers hungry for regional domination, Georgia has spent millennia keeping itself and its identity intact in the face of attacks.

As the third country in the world to adopt Christianity in 327 CE, religion runs deep in the Georgian veins. It was faith that strengthened their resolve. It was equally imperative to protect that same faith.

Together these two stories are the story of Georgia. And the Georgian. Continue reading →

travel diaries: in search of king tamar’s svaneti

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Mepeta Mepe, King of Kings Tamar was only 18 when she was crowned co-ruler of the Kingdom of Georgia in 1178. Six years later, when her father King Giorgi III died, she became its sole ruler. Here, I’d like to add some context regarding the word ‘Mepe’ before I write further. Georgian is a gender-neutral language, and Mepe means king or sovereign ruler, immaterial of whether the person is male or female.

Coming back to Tamar, her title was not the only unusual part of her story. Georgia, under her rule, reached its political and cultural zenith. Its borders spread from the Black Sea in the west to the Caspian Sea in the east, and the Greater Caucasus Mountains in the north all the way to eastern Türkiye and northern Iran in the south. She founded multiple cultural academies, and the arts and literature flourished with masterpieces such as the epic poem Knight in the Panther’s Skin by Shota Rustaveli written as an ode to her extraordinariness. Continue reading →

adobe fortresses and futuristic skyscrapers: 72 hours in riyadh

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Riyadh, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s capital in the middle of the Najd desert is a city of contrasts. Mud-brick fortresses from the ruling family’s yesteryears, and steel and glass skyscrapers reaching for the sky jostle next to each other in seamless ease. It is a city where the country’s past, present, and future have agreed to coexist.

If perchance you find yourself in Riyadh, here is how to make the most of 72 hours in it. Taking in the obvious, and some lesser-known gems.

But first, a little crash-course on the country’s modern political history to put things in context:

– The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world named after its ruling family. ‘Saudi’ is derived from the the ‘House of Saud,’ who are originally from Diriyah next to Riyadh. Continue reading →

5 reasons why jeddah needs to be on your saudi arabia bucket-list

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Jeddah Ghair!

If you wondering what it means, it is the city’s motto, and means “Jeddah is different.”

And it is. Cosmopolitan, liberal, capitalistic.

Most countries, over time, are seen to end up with two megapolises—the traditional, political heart and the commercial wheeling and dealing hub bursting with an eclectic art and food scene. Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh. Delhi and Mumbai. Washington and New York. Beijing and Shanghai.

In Saudi Arabia, it is Riyadh and Jeddah. But Jeddah is not just different from the country’s capital in the arid Najd desert. It is different from the whole peninsula. A difference it celebrates with a self-congratulatory pat. Continue reading →

photo essay: ha’il to alula, saudi arabia’s best-kept secrets

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What’s there in Saudi Arabia for the traveller? Aah, you’d be surprised.

Hidden deep inside the desert which covers 95 percent of its terrain are historical and natural wonders which are all the more extraordinary because one could not access them till recently. It is only on 27 September, 2019, that the Kingdom launched its tourist visa.

These treasures span the nation’s very essence—spread across a wide arc, both geographical and in time. From plentiful prehistoric petroglyphs in Jubbah, to impressive remnants of Saudi Arabia’s earliest civilizations from the 1st millennium BC in Dadan. From Hegra’s mystical windswept 2,000-year-old Nabataean tombs, to the medieval town of AlUla steeped in stories. Jump to more recent times, and one gets to explore Adobe forts from the Saudi States in Ha’il to the country’s vision for the future through the ‘Mirror’ aka Maraya Concert Hall nestled in the vast Arabian Desert.

Interesting? Mind-boggling is more the word. Let me take you on a photo essay from Ha’il to AlUla’s Maraya and the secrets the desert guards oh so zealously along the way. ❤️ Continue reading →

photo essay: hampi, stories told and untold

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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.


Continue reading →

travel shorts: pattadakal, a marriage of sorts

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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 →

photo essay: monasteries and manuscripts, echoes from the world’s first christian country

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Before Rome. Before even Constantinople. The first one to officially adopt Christianity was Armenia. Saint Gregory the Illuminator had miraculously healed King Tiridates III who had lost his mind. In gratitude, the King declared Armenia a ‘Christian’ country. It was the year 301.

A century later, in 405, the brand-new State religion introduced a brand-new script to spread ‘God’s word.’ Mesrop Mashtots, a cleric-cum-linguist, was assigned the task of creating an alphabet that would encompass the phonetic expanse of the Armenian language, a standalone member of the Indo-European language family. Over time, the scope of this script increased to document Armenian philosophy, science, and the arts.

Monasteries, as centres of faith and learning, soon cropped up across the Kingdom in breathtaking settings. Perched over canyons, atop sheer cliffs, and in verdant valleys. In the medieval era, there were tens of thousands of these. As Armenia’s realm shrunk, these reduced to a mere few thousand with four of them now UNESCO-listed.

Known as the Armenian Apostolic Church, Armenian Christianity is based on the teachings of the two early Apostles, Thaddeus and Bartholomew. What is more remarkable is that the Armenians resolutely stuck to the original version of their faith for the next 1,700 years, amidst the whirlpool of conversions, genocide, and wars that swept through the region.

Welcome to my photo essay on the most spectacular monasteries of the lot that have survived to date—each with something that sets it apart. Sometimes it is its story, sometimes its location, and sometimes its incredible art. I have punctuated these photos with those of my favourite Armenian manuscripts in Yerevan’s Matenadaran.

Wishing you happy travels, always. ❤️ Continue reading →