Are too many photographers ruining our festivals?

In our enthusiasm to get the best photos are we as photographers becoming less considerate of our colleagues documenting the same event and infact also of the very people we are here to photograph?

Why I love (and hate) travelling with my spouse

Hoshner and I met on a Tiger Safari in Pench in Madhya Pradesh over a decade ago. It was a common friends’ birthday and 10 of us came from three cities across the country to celebrate our friend,  go tiger spotting and drink. We mostly talked about our shared interests in travel and exploration. He…

How we travel India on Rs 2500 a day!

How on earth do you travel so much ? Isn’t it Expensive ?! It’s a question we get asked all the time and part of the reason we are writing this post is to debunk the myth that travel is expensive. What if we told you that we travel on just INR 2500 / day…

We Are Family

Many years ago, I was travelling across Turkey, with a white male friend. We were off the usual tourist circuit and visited small towns and villages. Because we couldn’t pass off as related, I wore a ring. When anyone asked if we were married, this helped avoid a lot of questions and made life easier. For years,…

Allahabad, My Grandfather, and the house that Nehru built

Most Indians of my (Ambika) generation have grown up with stories of the British rule, the valour of many fallen Indians, the freedom struggle and ultimate independence. For those like me, whose grandparents were intimately involved in the struggle and subsequent making of the country, the stories were more personal. My maternal grandfather, grew up…

Travelling India in 2S

Some of my earliest memories of travel involve my parents, me and two or three massively stuffed suitcases piled into an unreserved compartment of the Saurashtra express. It was the annual summer vacation to my grandmothers ancestral home amidst the Chikoo and Mango orchards, in the sleepy seaside town of Gholvad, on the Gujarat border. In…

Reflections.

As many of you know, Hoshner is a Parsi, and I am a mixed breed of Tamilian Brahmin, UP and Himachali descent. Having grown up in Madras, I can still read Tamil and speak a smattering of it. My husband, who is of Iranian descent, is, outside of Bombay, Puna and Delhi and perhaps the…