A lesser known version of Rajasthan

The most touristy thing we did on this trip

Our annual road trip this time was to  Rajasthan -- yes, it was in Jan-Feb this time and  not in November and yes, it was much shorter than the usual three weeks, we did what we could, but at the end of the two weeks we had covered 3342 kilometers which is about the same if not a little more than what we had done in our annual forays lasting about three weeks in previous years. We drove a lot but all that driving was enough only to discover a very tiny part of that large, beautiful, colourful and extremely attractive state. 

There were essentially three cities we planned our trip around this time -- Bikaner, Jaisalmer and Jodhpur. But we also got to experience some parts of Rajasthan that tourists normally do not have time for. We saw many imposing but abandoned hawelis, huge but deserted villages, breathtakingly beautiful architecture and exquisite frescoes, pretty lakes, vast desert landscapes and much more... Also, it was the first time I felt that while on a road trip, the journey itself is what was special, much more than the destination. Looking out of the window of our Kia Seltos into the endless desert sand dunes and the scruffy green-gold landscape filled with low bushes and thorny shrubs, one could experience not just the magnificence of it all, but also the pettiness and meaninglessness of so many of our earthly ambitions...

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Travelling in God's own country

The three of us at the Padmanabha-
-swami Temple in Trivandrum

Kerala has been on my bucket-list for a very long time. So when Jaynee, my British friend from Leeds, UK, mooted the idea of travelling to Kerala and doing a trip together of the main sights, I was excited. Yesssss! Here are some thoughts on the 10-day trip that Jaynee, her husband Dugald, and I did starting at Trivandrum and ending at Cochin on Diwali day 2024. Our actual travel itinerary* is at the very end. 
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A weekend trip to the Land of the Thunder Dragon

These days it takes less than three hours of driving to get to Bhutan from Guwahati, yet I had never been there. So this weekend, Prabin da, Manjushree bou and I set off to Sangrup Jhonkar, which was supposed to be a very pretty place in the Bhutan hills. And since we wanted to make the most of the two days on hand we decided to take a long detour to Sangrup Khonkar and go via the scenic spot of Daragaon on the Diring river beyond Mushalpur and Nikashi. Here is the account of our trip.

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Driving through temple country

Time for a roundup of another 21-day road trip, this time along the east coast of the Deccan peninsula, starting an ending at Hyderabad going down all the way to Rameshwaram (Dhanushkodi) covering nearly 5000 kilometers in all (including three day-excursions that we did by taxi).  The team was the same as last year -- Hema, I and Hema's son Shamir's faithful Hyundai Creta that did not let us down even once. In that time we visited at least five large forts*, six museums*, many palaces*, churches* and at least a dozen immense temples*. Nine stops* in all spanning twenty nights, not counting Hyderabad. And it worked, this time, without a flat tyre, without either of us falling ill seriously or our having to lose time or change plans because of some unforseen development. [* means the list of names is to be found at the very end of the blog]

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Four summer months spent with friends in Germany

Lyubov and me in Limerick

These last four months in Wuerzburg this summer went by very quickly, almost too quickly. What is more, many things -- both good and bad -- have happened in that time, and have left me rather out of breath. But I have realised, all over again, that I am very lucky in my friends. More about all that below:

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To Jayantada, from Dublin, with love

Photo credit: Bishweshwar Das

Jayantada (the renowned poet Jayanta Mahapatra) left us for ever on the evening of Sunday, 27th August 2023. I was in Cork then. I went numb. My flight back to Germany on Monday the 28th August was cancelled and I suddenly found myself in Dublin on Tuesday, the 29th August, with nothing else to do but wander around, while waiting for the flight rescheduled for Wednesday. This is what I saw that day, in the company of a lovely Finnish woman, whose flight was also rescheduled. I wrote the poem at 2 a.m. on the night between Tuesday and Wednesday... Talking to Jayantada helped.... here it is...

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Random thoughts about Indian tourists in Europe

I am an Indian myself. But there are a few things I find hard to understand about my guests from back home when they come visiting: here is a random sample of some problems I have had. I am not complaining, perhaps I am just as bad as any of them, but I just wanted to make a list so that I knew what to expect, and what not to expect, next time someone comes visiting me. I guess some of my friends will be cross with me because they think I am talking about them, I hope they will forgive me and take it in the right spirit. I am being grossly unfair here I know, for most of my friends who have visited me over the last years have been very independent, capable, accommodative and were a lot of fun and no trouble at all.  But still, there are some typical Indian traits that I need to talk about. Or perhaps these traits are not Indian at all...

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Beauty that heals; and some thoughts to ponder on

As luck would have it, I have been to a few places in the last few weeks that have filled my heart with a kind of joy that only naturally beautiful and old places and objects can give... First I spent a wonderful day in the beautiful north German town of Lübeck where the exquisitely beautiful hofs (inner courtyards) of many old but newly restored apartment complexes made me jump with joy... 

Following closely on that trip came a visit to the quaint little city of Hannoversch Münden, where the rivers Fulda and Werra join to become the river Weser. The beauty of the half timbered houses of that ancient city and the natural beauty of the area around the 'Weserstein' (the Weser Stone on which is inscribed a lovely verse about the rivers, more about that later)  are unparalleled. I have to write about those two places if only to show you some photos to prove my claim.  

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The stuff of dreams

When I had said yes to going to Freiberg, little did I know what was in store for me... and then it all began to happen... and before I knew it I was drawn into that rabbit-hole like little Alice in Wonderland...What happened to me in those days in Freiberg was an illustration of the statement, 'The secret, Alice, is to surround yourself with people who make your heart smile. It's then, only then, that you'll find Wonderland.'

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From Goa by road through Karnataka

 Hema and I had done a similar 3-week long road trip before, in November 2020, through Central India. This time our stops   were Goa (1N), Dandeli (1N), Hampi (4N),   Chitradurga (2N), Shimoga (4N), Chikmaglur (4N),   Udupi (3N), Kumta (2N) and Goa (3N). But    this 24-day trip (covering more than 3500 kms) through western Karnataka north of Mangalore,   starting and ending at Goa, was different. 

 For one, there was no Covid which made its presence significantly felt by its very absence. But still. we made a few rules for us, and tried to keep to them -- no driving at night as far as possible, and trying to avoid big cities, and staying in homestays rather than hotels, wherever possible. 

Without the fear of Covid looming large over us, the logistics was much easier this time.  Everything was open, the roads were full, the towns and cities were bustling with activity. But precisely because of that, we knew that driving around would be a bigger challenge than last time. So we chose a much shorter route, so that no single journey from one stop to the next was more than 200 kms. But we had not factored in the many long and winding day trips we made at each halt. So in the end we landed up having driven more than 3500 kms, almost 1000 kms more than last time. Like last time, 24 days; like last time, Hema drove, but this time the car was different. This time we had a Hyundai Creta that Hema's son Shamir very kindly lent us. And that car held up and did not let us down, even once. No punctures, no getting stuck in the mud, no refusing to start, although we made it do some pretty tortuous journeys and although very often the road we were on was nothing more that deeply pot-holed mud tracks.

And  what a revelation that part of India was for us.

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Four seasons in three weeks

A rambling and largely impressionistic account of my recent  three-week long trip to Mongolia.

I really did not know what we were in for when I signed up for a three-week long trip to Mongolia this August – I knew nothing about the place so whatever we do will be new and special, I told myself. For some reason I had always wanted to travel to Mongolia, sandwiched as it is between two big  countries, Russia and China, and still holding out and trying to chart its independent path at least after the fall of communism in the last decade of the 20^th century. Mongolia was also the home of the legendary chieftain Chengis Khan who had conquered such large swaths of land in Central Asia and Europe in the 13^th century, just on the strength of his not so large but fiercely brave army of armed horsemen. What else did I know about Mongolia – yes, that the erstwhile capital was a wonderful city of Karakorum which was totally lost but the present capital had a most unlikely name starting with u -- Ulaan Bataar and that there were ferocious wild horses there. That was it.

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Through central India in the midst of Covid

Sick and tired of sitting at home and doing nothing most of this year, in September, my friend Hema and I made plans to go on a road trip through central India in November 2020 if the Covid situation would allow us.  'Road trip' because Hema and her husband had recently bought a new Kia Seltos which she wanted to drive and take on a long drive. 'November' because we thought it would get colder and the Covid scene could get worse in December after the festival season, and 'Central India' because the Covid numbers were relatively smaller in Madhya Pradesh than in the other states that we could reach easily from Gurgaon where Hema had a home, and which would be our starting and ending point. We were aware that it was not the best time to travel (without big reason) and that many things could go awfully wrong. But we decided to take a calculated risk and go. And we were lucky. We have just got back to Gurgaon yesterday after a 24 day long trip through central India, covering more than 2600 kms and with halts at nine places. 

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The many different rich

Just felt like writing about three kinds of rich that I met, all within the space of a single day, in a town in Upper Assam recently.

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A terrorist in Germany looks like me

A first-hand report of a real incident that took place at Frankfurt airport on New Year's Day 2018.

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Strange encounters in the Jaintia hills

My friend Hema and I had undertaken a 2-week long road trip in January 2017 through some hilly parts of NE India. At one village in the heart of the Jaintia hills, we ran into a French anthropologist friend of mine, who was staying and working in the village at that time. The additional tensions created between the ethnographer and her field consultants on our arrival in the village as tourists are described in this description of our brief stay in the village.

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What a year!

2015 will go down in the personal story of my life as a really momentous year where many things happened... after a long stagnation this was the year when things finally fell in place. Three of the most important landmarks:

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Chilean Flavours

A description of a wedding in Chile between a Chilean with long dark hair and a German blonde on crutches, and much more...

The fact that the wedding was going to be in Chile in early December, in the beginning of summer there, was already something special. Having to look for summer clothes to take along before leaving shivering cold Germany felt a little weird. But it seemed a pleasant thought to be able to have a few warm summer days even in the middle of  'our' winter.

Landing in Chile reminded me of how different the whole country looked from the other places I knew -- vast empty spaces with gorgeous landscapes and colours in between densely populated cities. No matter where one was, one did not need to go far to get a view of the snow-capped Andes in one direction and the rising waves of the Pacific on the other. This country has it all from semi-equatorial deserts and tropical areas in the north, through idyllic temperate zones to the Patagonian ice fields of the Antarctic south...

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Afghanistan revisited...

Ten years after my first visit to Afghanistan in 2004, there is nothing spectacular to report. The country limps forward, the bombs and the natural disasters notwithstanding. Whether the situation there is better today than it was ten years back is hard to say. 

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Four...three...two...

Haven't written anything for long. So thought I'd write a few lines, and tell you a little about our whirlwind trip around Germany covering close to 2000 kilometers in 8 days. And if you want to know what the numbers in the title mean then you have to read on till the end...

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After England

Just back after a 16 day trip to England; given that the last time I was there was in 2004, there was a lot of nostalgia involved. I met old friends, saw many new places, I also participated in a conference... here is a report:

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