Allahabad
Final morning in Varanasi. With sorrow, I bid farewell to my new friends in the guesthouse, and to that view from the legendary Room Twelve. Soon I take a final walk along the ghats, and disappear into the smoke-wreathed city. …
Tag: Travel
Varanasi
This train feels less hospitable than the last, and someone warns me to watch my bags. There seem a lot more twitching stares than smiles, and I start to see thieves everywhere. In fact, there are almost certainly nothing of …
From Calcutta to Bodh Gaya
In Calcutta, I wake to the news that my teacher and friend Roderick West has died, tearing a hole in my heart. Yet such was the man’s intellect and spirit that he always seemed eternal, so it is not so …
Sa Pa
The promise of a rail journey fills the heart with the true spirit of travel. Flying always feels like cheating. And so it was that full of the travelling spirit I departed on a sleeper train from Hanoi to Lao …
Hanoi
After a late departure following ferocious storms, I depart for a sky trembling with turbulence in an almost empty Chinese plane. The Vietnamese scientist I befriended in the long wait in Beijing keeps me company, and worries as I become …
The Hugging Mother of Kerala
The backwaters of Kerala are beautiful, a deluxe labyrinth of canals — some cool, coconut lined and quiet, others as packed and polluted as a Bombay flyover. Depending on your tendency to worry, it is either Venice among the palms, …
Lake Como
After the sexy excesses of Milan, where could I go but up? Lake Como is the shimmering jewel of the Italian lakes district, and the Swiss Alps rise majestically on the horizon, like Claudia Cardinale reclining in a blue satin …
Milan
Straddling the north of Italy like a ruby-lipped succubus, Milano is a city of dreams. More specifically, the dreams of a strange cabal of maniacs whose millionaire mission in life is to dictate what you and I should wear, find attractive, …
Istanbul
Anybody who knows me well will know if there’s one thing I don’t understand above all else, it’s sport. Except, of course, for cricket, which isn’t actually a sport, is it? More of a really big board game. And so …
Cappadocia
The night bus to Cappadocia was well enough, but we should have caught a rocket ship. Cappadocia is home to one of the most incredible landscapes I have ever seen … almost as if God called up Dali, Gaudi and Giger …