Practical, honest writing to help you travel better.
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 temple
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