Tag: Travel Writing
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THE GREAT MOGHULS
But all was not well in the empire. The Moghuls came from Central Asia. Descended from Genghis Khan and Tamburlaine, they swept down from the steppes in the sixteenth century, conquering all who stood in their way. Adept horsemen, ruthless warriors, they lived in the saddle and took no prisoners. And they founded the greatest […]
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OH, KOLKATA!
The air is humid and a few spots of rain begin to fall. Morning at Howrah Station. As the Doon Express pulls into Platform 5, I look out through a scratched and grimy perspex window at the sun, rising pale and wan, through a haze of smoke and mist. Porters shift loads of hessian-wrapped freight […]
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LADY IN RED
Her long dress is bright amid the sea of black dresses… It is raining on Park Street. Outside the big plate glass window of the Barista Café, the black tarmac of the street gleams beneath the rush of tyres and bright yellow taxis. People hurry past on the pavement beneath undulating waves of umbrellas. The […]
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FROM FAIRLIE TO HOWRAH
And the dawn comes up like thunder, outta China, ‘crost the bay… – Rudyard Kipling, Mandalay Travelling is a series of vignettes and coincidences. As you move through landscapes and cross continents, you see things that remind you of home. You see familiar faces in crowds of complete strangers. Doppelgangers appear and disappear on platforms […]
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TIPU SULTAN’S MOSQUE
He anoints my hands with a fragrant oil and bids me welcome… “Allāhu ‘akbar; lā ‘ilāha ‘illā-llāh…”(Allah is greater; there is no deity but Allah ) – Muzzeim’s call to prayer It is quiet inside the mosque. The roar of traffic out on Chowringhee Road, though still audible, is nothing more than a low murmur. […]
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The Plains of Madhya Pradesh.
Empty platforms in nameless towns flashing by. I made these notes in my diary as I crossed the state of Madhya Pradesh on the SC DNR Express from Nagpur to Allahabad. 07:20 Monday 17/2Mist over the fields in the cool of dawn vanish in moments as the sun rises.A man in an orange jacket standing […]
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CONFLUENCE
Few things can prepare you for your first sight of the River Ganges… The driver was lost. Confused by the labyrinth of one-way streets, roadblocks, police checkpoints and conflicting signposts he became disoriented and anxious. His battered Ola cab bumped along a rutted, potholed street running diagonally across a wide, empty expanse of empty ground […]
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THE GRAND TRUNK ROAD
“Such a river of life as nowhere else exists in the world.”– Rudyard Kipling On the Dufferin Bridge I was standing on the Grand Trunk Road. Formerly known as Uttarapath, as Sadak-e-Azam and as Badshahi, the Grand Trunk Road is one of Asia’s oldest and longest main roads. Its route from Chittagong in Bangladesh to […]
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TWO BEERS AT THE LEOPOLD
The head waiter has a moustache with the tips waxed and curled up in twin hooks, giving him the look of a villain in a 1920s silent movie… The Leopold Café is the go-to place for the white folks here in Colaba.¹ It is expensive, of course, but after a long day of walking the […]
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IN THE TEMPLES OF OUR FATHERS
The worshippers jostled and shoved me along, moving clockwise around the statue and its marble enclosure. Outside the colourful chaos of the Crawford Market I plunged in deep, following the route set out for me on my phone by Google Maps: half lost and half found. In a densely packed street I came across a […]
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