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The first thing you notice in McLeodganj is not a view. It is a sound. A low, steady whirr of prayer wheels being turned by a hundred hands, somewhere…
Some treks are about summits. The walk to Bhagsu waterfall is about small things: the clang of a temple bell behind you, a shepherd's goats blocking the…
You hear it before you enter: a deep, layered hum of chanting, rising and falling like breath. Butter lamps flicker. An old woman beside you prostrates,…
On a map, the drive from Bir to McLeodganj is just a short hop across the Kangra valley, a few hours on winding roads. Most people treat it as a transfer:…
It starts as a road, then a path, then a set of rough stone steps through the forest. You hear the water long before you see it. Then, round a bend, there…
Ten minutes above the bustle of Mussoorie's Mall, the noise just stops. The road narrows. Deodars close in overhead. An old stone church appears around a…
You take off your shoes, roll up your trousers, and step into the stream. The water is cold enough to make you gasp. Ahead, the rock walls rise on both…
It's still dark when you reach the ghat. Lamps are already lit on a small stage by the river. A row of priests begins a quiet morning aarti, then a group of…
Most Ashtavinayak guides list the eight temples as stops on a route. This one pauses at each one, because the details that make each temple distinct from…
Trimbakeshwar is not simply one of the twelve Jyotirlingas. It is the only one with a three-faced lingam representing Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva together. And…
Most Jyotirlingas sit in temple towns. Bhimashankar sits inside a forest. The temple is within the Bhimashankar Wildlife Sanctuary in the Sahyadri hills…
If someone asked you to design a Sahyadri trek that fit everything — forest, waterfalls, iron ladders, ancient caves, a ridge with a view that runs to the…
Hidden inside the dense forests of Raigad district, about 25 km from Mahad, sits a waterfall that would be famous anywhere else in the country but stays…
Rajgad means “King of Forts,” and for once the name is not an exaggeration. This was Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj’s capital for roughly twenty-six years…
Everyone who treks near Lonavala knows Lohagad. Far fewer climb Visapur, the larger, higher and wilder twin fort standing right beside it — connected by the…
Kothaligad does something no other Sahyadri fort does: it makes you climb through the inside of its own pinnacle. The summit is a thumb-shaped rock tower…
Korigad is the fort that says yes to everyone. Standing at about 3,050 feet near Peth Shahpur, just 18 km south of Lonavala, it is one of the easiest…
Bir Billing is the paragliding capital of India, the site of the 2015 Paragliding World Cup, and one of the top five paragliding destinations in the world.…
The twelve Jyotirlingas are the most sacred Shiva shrines in India — self-manifested lingams of light, scattered across the country from Somnath on the…
At 1,646 metres — 5,400 feet — Kalsubai is the highest point in Maharashtra, and climbing it has become something of a rite of passage for Sahyadri trekkers. It
Ratangad means "fort of the jewel," and it earns the name. Perched at 4,255 feet in the Ahmednagar district, overlooking the Bhandardara reservoir and the sweep
If the Sahyadris had a final boss, it would be Harishchandragad. At 4,668 feet, it's the third-highest peak in Maharashtra, but what makes it legendary is the K
If you've seen a photograph of a near-vertical rock staircase carved into a cliff face in the Sahyadris, it's almost certainly Harihar. At roughly 80 degrees, t
Sandhan Valley is unlike any other trek in the Sahyadris. There is no fort at the top, no summit to reach. Instead, you descend — into a water-carved canyon rou
Most Sahyadri treks end at a fort or a summit. Adrai ends deep inside a forest where sunlight barely reaches the floor. Tucked near Khireshwar village in the Ma
There are pilgrimages that ask you to travel far, and there are pilgrimages that ask you to travel deep. The Ashtavinayak Yatra is the second kind. Eight…
A little over two hours from Udaipur, in the Aravalli hills, stands a wall that most visitors to Rajasthan have never heard of — and that happens to be the seco
Kerala's coast gets the postcards, but Munnar is where a lot of travellers say the trip actually surprised them. Up in the Western Ghats, the humidity of the pl
North Goa's beaches double as a water-sports hub, and for a first-timer the sheer range of options — parasailing, jet-skis, banana boats, scuba — can be a littl
Few trips pack as much contrast into one loop as this one. In the space of a single journey you go from snow-fed rivers and pine ridges to a colonial hill town, a calm modernist ci
"God's Own Country" is a tourism slogan that, annoyingly, happens to be earned. Kerala is green in a way that surprises people — palm and paddy and tea — and it moves at a pace tha
Some places are over-photographed and still manage to stop you when you finally see them. Kashmir is one. The valley earns every comparison to paradise it's ever been given — the l
Dehradun is less a single destination than a doorway. Sitting in the Doon valley between the Himalayan foothills and the Ganga, it puts a hill station and one of India's great rive
Everyone drives through the Konkan on the way to Goa and almost nobody stops. That's the whole opportunity. Maharashtra's coast is wilder and quieter than its famous neighbour — re
The first time Udaipur opens up in front of you is usually from a rooftop at dusk, when the light goes copper on Lake Pichola and the City Palace stops looking like a photograph an
Everyone from Mumbai and Pune thinks they know Goa, because everyone has done the version that lives on Baga Beach for a weekend. That Goa is real and it is fun. But there is a sec
There is a moment on every Ladakh ride — usually somewhere past the top of a pass, engine ticking, prayer flags snapping in a wind that has crossed a hundred kilometres of nothing
Three of the twelve Jyotirlingas sit within a day's drive of each other in Maharashtra, and the circuit that joins them — Trimbakeshwar near Nashik, Bhimashankar in the Sahyadri fo
Banaras does not ease you in. You arrive into noise and heat and the smell of incense and river, and somewhere in the middle of it stands Kashi Vishwanath — one of the twelve Jyoti
Two of the twelve Jyotirlingas sit within a few hours of each other in Madhya Pradesh, and together they make one of the most rewarding legs of an extended Shiva pilgrimage. Ujjain
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