I came Tamil Nadu on an overnight sleeper bus to Chennai. It was the last of my South Indian states but it felt different. The language was so foreign. The people seemed different. The heat was intense. I stood in the Chennai Bus Station and ate one of the most delicio...

Pondicherry was quite strange. A French colony until 1962, it remains an eclectic mix of South Indian and French culture, sprinkled with the chic cosmopolitan flair added by the proximity to nearby Auroville and the steady influx of boutique tourism. The streets are fi...

Hampi was lovely. Tourist season hadn’t yet begun and the tiny town was practically empty. In the mornings I would go to the little dhaba at the beginning of Hampi Bazaar and sip chai while looking across to the Virupaksha Temple and its 11-storied tower. In the evenin...

I loved Goa immediately. A thick silence hung in the air and the fields were ripe and saturated. The grey of the monsoon cast a heavy green over the trees. The feeling of Goa was tangible, like there was something distinctly different from other places. It was instantl...

As I come to my last blog post about my amazing trip to Rajasthan, I think back to the people I met along the way; I think about the sights I’ve encountered which seem to come from another world; I think about how crazy an opportunity it is to be alone, wandering throu...

Udaipur was slow love. I arrived off a deluxe 12-hour sleeper bus from Bikaner, to a hot and cramped town full of rickshaw drivers charging three times too much and rooftop cafes requiring climbing 63 steps to a terrace with no shade and expensive bland “continental fo...

The feeling of Mumbai can totally shift from morning to evening. My very first memory of the city was when I arrived at three in the morning. My office had arranged for a car to come pick me up from the airport and take me to a hotel for the night. I sat in the back se...

When I first came to India I was afraid to cross the street. I would wait on the side of the road for a break in the cars that never seemed to come. Everyday when I got home from work I would immediately shower away the collected dust and retire to my air conditioned b...

A stuffy 45-minute bus ride south of the Rajasthani desert town of Bikaner lies the Karni Mata Temple, more colloquially known as the 'Internationally Famous' Rat Temple.

As you approach the Temple, the streets are lined with the usual smattering of stalls selling stre...

High Tea at the Elgin in Darjeeling, West Bengal 

Celestial Seasonings, the Colorado-based tea company, has a flavour (my very favourite tea flavour) called Bengal Spice. Two years ago, when I was just deciding to come to India, a friend of mine would come over and we w...