travel diaries: in search of king tamar’s svaneti

Posted on July 27, 2026 by Rama Arya

Fresco of King Tamar [left] with her father King Giorgi III. This fresco in Vardzia is the only surviving portrait of Tamar painted during her lifetime in the 12th Century.

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.

Eight centuries ago, deeply religious herself in a deeply orthodox country, she also chose to divorce the husband the court nobles had chosen for her. She then found herself a second husband [David Soslan, an Ossetian prince] in 1189 who was more to her liking.

According to Georgian legends, Tamar had a special fondness for Svaneti, a region in the upper reaches of the Greater Caucasus Mountains, where, come summer, she would make the journey to a castle named after her. Here, snow-capped peaks reached out to iridescent blue skies, hemming in emerald meadows in which cows mooed and stone towers pricked its sleepy valleys.

Continue reading →

adobe fortresses and futuristic skyscrapers: 72 hours in riyadh

Posted on May 11, 2026 by Rama Arya

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

Posted on May 4, 2026 by Rama Arya

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

Posted on April 6, 2026 by Rama Arya

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

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.

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 →

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

Posted on December 1, 2025 by Rama Arya

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 →

travel diaries: moscow to vladivostok, sleepless on the trans-siberian railway

Posted on September 22, 2025 by Rama Arya

Siberia. View from my train window.

PROLOGUE

The Trans-Siberian Railway. From Moscow to Vladivostok. 9,289 kilometres across the vast expanse of Russia, and eight time zones. The longest railway line in the world. Now, how can one resist a journey of such epic proportions!

I had first heard about the railway service laid out between 1891 and 1916 by two Tsars—Alexander III and his son Nicholas II—when I just started working. Something inside me then and there decided I had to undertake this voyage. No, not because I am a train buff. Hardly. But because then, and today, a few decades later when the dream is being realized, it is the epitome of travel.

Dear Diary, here’s my 14 days of travel on the Trans-Siberian Railway with stops at the historical cities en-route. A journey that turns out to be one of my most authentic travel experiences to date. ❤ Continue reading →

karelia: when russia met finland

Posted on September 15, 2025 by Rama Arya

Surrounded by 1,650 islands, the 22 Aspen shingle domes tumbling down the Church of the Transfiguration on Lake Onega’s Kizhi Island seems straight out of a fairytale. Just when you expect a goblin to peep out from behind a carved gable, the church bells on the nearby bell tower break into a peal of lilting musical notes. Inside the church itself built of pine logs in 1714, a four-tiered wooden iconostasis with 102 icons recounts tales of prophets and feasts in colourful gilded, recently restored glory.

Together with the equally unique nine-domed Church of the Intercession built in 1764 and 19th Century Bell Tower, it forms the Kizhi Pogost, a UNESCO-listed ensemble of medieval Russia’s grandest wooden churches. They are evocative of the country’s archetypal onion-domed cathedrals, but are made completely out of wood, sans any nails except to hold the domes’ shingles in place, in keeping with local building traditions. There are other buildings on the island including the tiny 14th Century Resurrection of Lazarus Church, and numerous houses, barns, and windmills.

Kizhi Island is the centrepiece of the Republic of Karelia, a region which has found itself amidst a tug-of-war between neighbouring Finland and Russia through much of its history. This has resulted in a heady mix of Russian Orthodoxy laced with rituals and superstitions rooted in Finnish folklore which stubbornly live on.

Though Peter the Great [r. 1682 – 1725] and Catherine II [r. 1762 – 1796] turned Karelia’s iron-rich fields into a ‘factory’ at Petrozavodsk to produce ammunition for their wars against the Swedes and Turkey respectively, and the Soviets made it the site for their infamous White Sea Canal gulag camp, Karelia still retains its goblin Finnish charm. Look closely, it is hiding under the eaves of those quaint wooden homes and mythical churches scattered across the verdant isles and meadows.

Church of the Intercession and Church of the Transfiguration. Continue reading →

travel guide: the five untold unesco-listed treasures of western russia

Posted on September 1, 2025 by Rama Arya

Not far from Moscow lies a ring of UNESCO-listed historical towns where the Russian nation, religion, arts, and architecture first took shape a thousand years ago under the rule of the Rurik dynasty. Frozen in time, these towns are a far cry from the enormity of Moscow. But their legacy has survived a millennium, through the cold-blooded Mongol onslaught and despite Soviet industrial atheism, forming the blueprint of what is intrinsically ‘Russia.’

Here are the finest of those towns. Achingly beautiful, and steeped in history and traditions, no visit to Russia is truly complete without them. And it is not just me who thinks so. The locals will vouch for it too. ❤️ Continue reading →