Our drive from Bikaner to Shekhawat was long and hot, and travelling with a driver who believed that both sides of the road belonged to him, meant that by the time we reached our hotel in the village of Churi Ajitghar we were tired and on edge. It was two in the afternoon and there…
Category: Culture
Why you need to add Pali to your Rajasthan Itinerary
The thing about travelling to Rajasthan is that sometimes there’s a feeling that you’ve seen it all. Jodhpur’s Mehranghar fort, Udaipur’s City Palace, Jaipur’s Hawa Mahal and Jaisalmer’s living fort are awe inspiring and iconic and rightly get thousands of visitors every year, but there’s so much written about them and so many photographs and…
Kolhapur’s Pehelwani Heritage
An insight into the wrestling tradition of Kolhapur, a place that put India on the international wrestling map and gave us our first individual Olympic medal.
Murud Janjira’s African past and the mystery of the Boab tree.
Indians of African Origin? We first came across the story of the Siddis a few years ago in an article that spoke about a community of African descent living in pockets of Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka. The article referred a people who came to India centuries ago, as slaves, traders or warriors, and fought for…
reDiscovery Podcast S3E9: A unique Ganpati celebration in a 400 year old Goan family’s heritage home
In September 2017 we spent a couple of weeks driving around Goa, during the tail end of the monsoon, which happened to be the same time as the Ganesh Chaturthi festival. While Hoshner has often photographed the Ganesh celebrations at home we have never really experienced the festival outside of Mumbai. So when a friend…
Korlai: A Portuguese speaking village on Maharashtra’s Konkan coast
Over the last couple of years of travelling and documenting our journeys on our blog we have built a vibrant community of like-minded travel junkies who are as enthused about the idea of discovering more of India as we are. Often when we are travelling through a state, locals following our journey on social media…
Pinguli’s Kala Aangan that preserves the dying art of the Thakkar community
You should meet Chetan and check out the Thakkar art, I think you’ll find it interesting. This is how many of our journeys begin and this suggestion from a fellow traveller, when we were researching stuff to explore on our Maharashtra road trip proved to be an excellent tip! Pinguli is a little town on…
reDiscovery Podcast S3E5: One family’s quest to preserve their unique ancestral home
We love old heritage homes and since this season is all about the preservation and conservation of art, culture and heritage we thought it would be great to feature the story of Maranat Mana, one of the last living Pathinaru Kettus or four courtyard homes in Kerala and the unique manner in which one Namboodari Brahmin…
reDiscovery Podcast S3E4: A Konyak Naga documents her tribes dying tattoo culture.
The North East of India is a region like no other. With hundreds of tribes, each with different customs, traditions and dialects it is as diverse and culturally rich as anywhere else in the world. However with the relentless march of time many of these traditions are getting lost in the swirl of modernisation, not…
In Photos: Inside Bodhgaya’s Mahabodhi Temple, Buddhism’s holiest site
What do you associate Bihar with? For most people the first thing that probably comes to mind is backwardness, poverty, crime and of course Laloo Prasad Yadav. However what a lot of people don’t realize is that Bihar is also the cradle of Buddhism and home to a number of important Buddhist sites. It is…
The Sonepur Mela: Of Elephants & Tantriks
Down to the river. It is pitch black as I stumble out of my tent and join the stream of humanity resolutely making their way towards the river in the inky darkness. It was only 5 am, but already the streets were lined with vendors selling everything from packets of flowers to hot milky tea….
Finding Buddha in Bihar
Tracing the path of the Buddha from the spiritual home of the faith in vibrant Bodhgaya to the crumbling Kesariya Stupa in the dusty plains of north Bihar.