Drawn to the flap and free-fall of brightly coloured diamonds, I have wandered to the heart of the Old City on the day of the annual Jaipur Kite Festival. I have escaped a rooftop of drunken men who tugged violently at string...
Category - Travel
I can smell the bootleg liquor on his breath, feel its effect on his hand that holds mine firmly but with fingers that push between my knuckles and dance up towards my wrist. He is dragging me across a sandy courtyard, surrounded...
Forget cheeky, monkeys in India are utter bastards. Plain and simple. On the Indian subcontinent, a constant battle wages between man and monkey. Neither man nor monkey appears particularly unhappy about the situation. It is...
In India cricket is a religion and children are its devout, slightly deranged, disciples. There is no space too small, no obstacle too big, no setting too inappropriate, no equipment too rudimentary – the game, as...
I love shirts. They are not just clothes to me. They are far more than a covering for my tin-ribs and sporadic chest hair. They exist way beyond the limits of cotton, buttons, and stitching in the very fabric of my soul. There...
Varanasi’s Ghats are a labyrinth of alleyways and narrow corridors leading down to the Ganges. They are dirty, chaotic, and utterly wonderful. Holy cows nose and nibble at garlands of flowers strewn amongst piles of litter...
It starts with the tolling of the bells, plump yet sharp soundwaves wading through the yellowing fog. The prayers, incantations, and wailings follow shortly, winding around the dawn light, sliding down only to clamber up again...
I am sitting on the broad steps of a temple in Kathmandu’s Durbar Square and I am reading a book. The warm glow of the sun has turned the pages to butter, the words to ants, to barcodes. Hawkers and tourists stream around...
Kumari She is a Living Goddess, plucked from the innocence of childhood and placed amongst goats heads, severed and spurting. Thrust before the faithful and the faithless, worshipped, revered, in thick eye make-up she stares at...
In the sun, with a jagged peak emerging high above the horizon, the two of them flow together, undisturbed and liquid. The daughter brushes her mother’s long black hair which tumbles then shimmers like silk, tumbles then...