58fgthjkl

DECEMBER 2015 • `150 • VOL. 4

ISSUE 6

Cities of Joy PARIS THE ART OF PEOPLE-WATCHING

BENGALURU ONE STEP AT A TIME PANJIM REINVENTING THE MODERN

PLUS EUROPE’S RISING STARS: 12 CITIES YOU SHOULD VISIT NEXT

Coast With the Most A Sri Lankan Holiday

PROMOTION

n a t i o n a l g e o g r a p h i c t r av e l l e r i n d i a

DECEMBER 2015

CONTENTS Vol 4 Issue 6

URBAN SPIRIT

Tampere, Lucerne, Bologna—putting the Continent’s lesser-known destinations in the spotlight

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REINVENTING THE MODERN

Past and present in Panjim as it negotiates the 21st century

By Vivek Menezes

70 Bordeaux, France

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THIS CITY WAS MADE FOR WALKING

Rediscovering Bengaluru’s avenues and alleys, one step at a time

By Zac O’Yeah Photographs by Nirlek Dhulla

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CAFÉ SOCIETY

Lessons in flânerie, the fine art of people-watching in Paris

By Tara Isabella Burton Photographs by Peter Turnley

J.D. DALLET/AGE FOTOSTOCK/DINODIA

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EUROPE’S RISING STARS

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VOICES

DECEMBER 2015 • `150 • VOL. 4

ISSUE 6

Coast With the Most A Sri Lankan Holiday

68

24 Guest Column

What do great journeys make you think of?

26 Slow Travel

Getting outdoorsy to conquer fear results in a new travel bucket list

28 Crew Cut

When missed connections and chance encounters dislodge the best-laid plans

N AV I G AT E

30 Hidden Gem

Little-known European islands to soak up seascapes and local lore

33 Local Flavour

Frosty climes and sweet icewine in Canada

34 Take Five

Cities of Joy PARIS THE ART OF PEOPLE-WATCHING

BENGALURU ONE STEP AT A TIME PANJIM REINVENTING THE MODERN

PLUS EUROPE’S RISING STARS: 12 CITIES YOU SHOULD VISIT NEXT

On The COver American photographer Peter Turnley captured this couple at Esplanade du Trocadéro in Paris, France, his adopted home of 40 years. It captures the city’s spirit of romance and its infectious joie de vivre, and proves that, despite the challenges, life can still be quite wonderful.

Rock around Europe’s eastern block

38 The Insider

Embracing the weird and wonderful in Austin, Texas

68 Checking In

46 The Find

Starry skies and cosy desert camps in Rajasthan

Surajpur Wetland, a refuge for birds and Delhi-weary souls

SHORT BREAKS

50 Bookshelf

Stories that delve into the heart of Africa

52 The Power of Place

The Himalayas are a Russian painter’s muse

S M A R T T R AV E L L E R

58 Money Manager

A couple’s retreat to Sri Lanka’s southern coast

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NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | DECEMBER 2015

From Delhi REGULARS 18 Editor’s Note 20 Notebook 122 Inspire 128 Dire Straits

114 Centuries-old palaces and other curiosities in Jhalawar, Rajasthan

Stay

118 Secluded Kerala beaches and a taste of a Malayali home 120

A haveli-turned-heritage homestay in Gujarat

PETER TURNLEY/CORBIS NEWS PREMIUM/CORBIS/IMAGELIBRARY (COVER), GUIDO COZZI/ATLANTIDE PHOTOTRAVEL/TERRA/CORBIS/IMAGELIBRARY (CROSSES), BRETT STEVENS/CULTURA/DINODIA (FOOD), PHOTO COURTESY: MANVAR DESERT CAMP AND RESORT (ANIMAL)

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Editor-in-Chief NILOUFER VENKATRAMAN Deputy Editor NEHA DARA Senior Editor NEHA SUMITRAN Associate Editor KAREENA GIANANI Associate Editor-Special Projects DIYA KOHLI Features Writer RUMELA BASU Art Director DIVIYA MEHRA Photo Editor CHIRODEEP CHAUDHURI Associate Art Director DEVANG H. MAKWANA Senior Graphic Designer CHITTARANJAN MODHAVE Editor, Web SEJAL MEHTA Assistant Editor, Web SAUMYA ANCHERI Features Writer FABIOLA MONTEIRO Features Writer KAMAKSHI AYYAR

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Editor’s Note |

N I LOU F E R V EN KATRA M A N

J

I had wondered, sceptically, what he was going to say, quite sure the religious babble would not resonate with me

ust as I have a list of places I want to travel to, I have long held in my head, a tentative list of places I really don’t want to go to. Not because I’ve been there and didn’t like them, but because I feel they hold no interest for me. Given that I’m only going to have a finite number of travel experiences, I’d rather not spend time at certain places.

Several of the destinations on my mustn’t-visit list are connected to religious pilgrimage. While I respect the sentiments of pilgrims, I haven’t felt the need to plan a trip to Tirupati, or Rajasthan’s Karni Mata temples, or numerous other sites, for one reason or another.

This summer I was in Narendranagar a small village in Uttarakhand’s Tehri-Garhwal hills enjoying a bit of quiet time. The young man at my hotel’s reception desk asked me if I wanted to go to Rishikesh, 17 km away, for the Ganga arti that evening. Not being one for religious ritual, I declined. I’d seen some photographs of the Ganga arti elsewhere earlier, and had decided that it wasn’t something I wanted to spend time on. During the course of the day, three other hotel staff mentioned the arti, recommending it highly. By late afternoon, I began to consider it. That evening before sunset, I reached the steps leading down to the River Ganga in front of the Parmath Ashram in Rishikesh. It was swarming with freshly scrubbed young men in yellow kurtas and orange dhotis, who looked like they were in training at the nearby ashram. Suddenly, there was a buzz in the air. Everyone stood up and

I heard loud whispers, “Swamiji is here, Swamiji is here.” I stood reluctantly, and turned my head to see a man with a long beard, half-dyed, half-white hair and bright orange clothes walking towards us. I rolled my eyes inwardly wondering what I had signed up for. We all sat down and Swami Chidanand Saraswati took the mike and immediately started singing. Unexpectedly for me, a mellifluous voice rose gently over the mike, and though I could not understand the actual words of the bhajan, I could feel the pleasant vibrations of the singing. I noticed the soft breeze coming off the Ganga, the gorgeous evening light as the sun fell behind the horizon, the river a dusky orange. As darkness fell, I found myself enjoying the energy and rhythm of the evening, closing my eyes and savouring the calm.

And then he started speaking. I had wondered, sceptically, what he was going to say, quite sure the religious babble would not resonate with me. I was in for a bit of a surprise. He spoke of “human social responsibility or HSR.” Why do we only hold corporates responsible for society, he questioned? Why not each one of us? Start by keeping your home and neighbourhood clean, and please don’t dirty the Ganga on the pretext of religious ritual, was his advice.

Come back tomorrow, he said, to donate. Ah-ha!

I thought, that what this is all about. And then he continued: Don’t bring any money. Come and donate blood; we need people to participate in our blood donation drive. And then, before leaving he made a simple, grounded request: that everyone in the audience commit to spirituality by planting a tree, and more importantly, by taking care of and nurturing it.

As the Swami left, a buzz of voices rose as everyone started the jostle to leave the venue. I lingered on the steps a few minutes longer, taking in all that I had just experienced. I walked down to the Ganga to acknowledge the spirituality of the place. It was the same feeling I’ve had when hiking in the Himalayas, when driving through vast, untouched Ladakh, or staring up at a star-filled sky—a feeling of connectedness and calm.

Back home, as I looked back at my three days in the area, this evening stood out for its unexpectedness, and for the fact that it made me feel good.

It provided insight into something I’ve been sceptical about—how religious fervour translates into action that makes a difference. Since then, I’ve been a little careful about adding any more places to my mustn’t-visit list. Who knows what eye-opener lies in store at the spots I’ve belittled.

OUR MISSION

Rishikesh, Uttarakhand

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National Geographic Traveller India is about immersive travel and authentic storytelling, inspiring readers to create their own journeys and return with amazing stories. Our distinctive yellow rectangle is a window into a world of unparalleled discovery.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | DECEMBER 2015

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THE MUSN’T-VISIT LIST

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BEST OF THE WEB

Beginners’ Guide to Diving Make the most of the peak diving season which lasts until April in India. Dive instructor Umeed Mistry provides a quick, easy introduction to getting a diving licence and picking the right operator. See Web Exclusives>Experiences

Tech Travel At our November Meetup, travel writers Rishad Saam Mehta, Natasha Sahgal, and stand-up comedian Azeem Banatwalla discussed how they use technology to enhance their travels, with NGT Deputy Editor Neha Dara. Here are tips from the experts and the audience.

the legends of yana rocks

Features Writer Fabiola Monteiro travels to Goa to learn to make the dessert bebinca, and finds tales, recipes, and the warmth of home in its kitchens.

See Web Exclusives>Experiences

Hike through the jagged, black, limestone monoliths of Yana village in Karnataka, with an eye out for leopards and Asian paradise flycatchers.

See Web Exclusives>Guides

pondicherry guide Indulge in quieter pleasures as you explore the sunshine city.

Assistant Web Editor Saumya Ancheri finds the best places to feast, meditate, and walk around Pondicherry.

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GO TO NATGEOTRAVELLER.IN FOR MORE WEB-EXCLUSIVE STORIES AND TRAVEL IDEAS

LETTER OF THE MONTH

Fishing for Joy Earlier this year I visited Jharkhali, a small village in West Bengal’s Sundarbans. My boatman invited me to his home in this village, dominated by paddy fields, where I observed how locals live in mud and thatched-roof houses.

Each home has a small pond in the backyard where they rear fish for the family’s consumption. I was passing by one of these ponds when I noticed a young boy happily swimming after he had secured his catch for the day. —Anupam Chanda Correction In the story titled Set in Stone (October 2015), it was incorrectly stated that fossils of Triceratops were found in India. The correct information is that some fossils unearthed in India in the 1980s were believed to be of Triceratops, but the theory was later disproved.

Thanks to Atharva Sreekar (Class 6, Bengaluru) for pointing out the error.

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NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | DECEMBER 2015

■ Websites like Vayable, EatWith, and Cookening allow travellers to experience a new city with locals, and share meals.

■ Avoid using public Wi-Fi networks if they aren’t password-protected, especially when financial transactions are involved.

■ Nirbhaya, Watch Over Me, and Woman Safety Shield Protection are helpful personal safety apps for solo women travellers.

■ Twitter and Instagram— thanks to its geotagging option—throw up great tips of things to eat and see in a new place.

NEXT MEETUP: 11 December 2015, 7-8.30 p.m.

Venue: Title Waves bookstore, Bandra (West), Mumbai.

ILSE REIJS AND JAN-NOUD HUTTEN/FLICKR/CREATIVE COMMONS (DIVER), ANUPAM CHANDA (BOY)

following bebinca to goa

■ Install anti-theft applications like Undercover (for iOS) on your laptop to lock it in case of theft.

Notebook |

CONNECT

NGT INDIA@WORK

Food for Thought Last month, I was in Shillong for the Terra Madre Slow Food festival, dedicated to Indigenous People. The five-day enclave included panel discussions, markets, and taste workshops, where I first sampled unusual fare including these Eri silkworms (they’re delicious, by the way).

I also met people from as far away as Scandinavia and as close to home as Karnataka. This is Janaki akka, from the Nilgiri hills of Tamil Nadu. She is part of the Keystone Foundation, a rural enterprise that helps millet farmers and honey gatherers package and market their produce.

She was part of my day trip group to Nongtraw village near Cherrapunji. It was a lovely day when we hiked down, but we were all a little anxious because we had to descend 2,500 steps to get there (and back up again). “Will you be okay?” I asked silverhaired Janaki as we got off the bus. She was old enough to be my grandmother. She gave me the sweetest, shyest smile and replied, “I’m from the Nilgiris. Will you be okay?”

— Senior Editor, Neha Sumitran

INSTAGRAM OF THE MONTH

THE FIND

Well in Time Photographer Sajad Rafeeq’s photo essay captures the saffron season in Jammu and Kashmir. His series details the gathering of saffron crocus flowers in his hometown of Pampore, near Srinagar.

For a week or two around early November, the fields outside Kashmir’s summer capital turn into a purple canvas, and almost every Pampore family is involved in the harvest. Around 15,000 flowers are required to produce one kilogram of dried saffron.

More images at www.natgeotraveller.in FOLLOW @NATGEOTRAVELLERINDIA ON INSTAGRAM

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NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | DECEMBER 2015

One of the best parts about exploring a city on foot is that it lets you dilly-dally. Earlier this year, I was in the Andalusian town of Granada, Spain. The narrow paths leading up to the palace of Alhambra were lined with little stores selling football jerseys, magnets, and other bric-a-brac. I stumbled upon this colourful ceramic clock in one such shop. It was the perfect souvenir to bring back from a region well known for handpainted ceramics. What made the clock even more special was that it was handmade by the kind old man who sold it to me.

—Web Features Writer, Fabiola Monteiro

NEHA SUMITRAN (SILKWORMS), SAJAD RAFEEQ (FIELD), FABIOLA MONTEIRO (CLOCK)

Valley of Flowers

Voices |

GUEST CO LU M N

Walking to the World’s End WHAT MAKES FOR GREAT JOURNEYS? WHAT DO THEY MAKE YOU THINK OF?

Nirupama Subramanian is a columnist and author of two novels, Keep The Change and Intermission. She has also won the Commonwealth Short Story Competition prize in 2006 for her short fiction.

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JAN WLODARCZYK/AGE FOTOSTOCK/DINODIA

W

The weather and vegetation in this park change frequently. here is the end of the world? Is it at the deepest A watery sun emerges from behind the rain clouds. The Europefloor of a great blue ocean, or the highest tip of an gorse plants and the bright green fern give way to a montane a bare, bleached mountain? Is it at that taut line forest. I like the change, the surprises, the chance for serendipwhere the sky kisses the earth and the eyes can see ity. The walk is more difficult now; the terrain is sloping, uneven. no further? Or is it the dark point at the edge of my imagination?

The ground under my feet is slippery; crossing a muddy gully These thoughts come unbidden to me as I stand at the enis a feat that requires balance and agility. Yet, there is a delight trance to the Hortons Plains National Park in southern in traversing these paths that was not there along the easy flat Sri Lanka. I am with my husband and daughter, my fellow travplains. I realise that I would rather be challenged than bored. ellers on a five-kilometre walk that will take us through the I walk on. park’s varying terrain to World’s End—a steep escarpment at the A sudden muted roar and a fine cool spray on my face tells me edge of the plains. From here we will have a view that will make that I am at Baker’s Fall. We watch the majestic surge of white us feel like we’re at the end of the world. water in companionable silence. I want more such moments The July sky in this part of Sri Lanka is the colour of cold steel. of shared joy, of this collective sense of awe. In a few minutes, There is a hint of incipient rain, though the sky seemed clear I notice a board pointing us to World’s End. It is a sheer drop when we left the hotel in Nuwara Eliya. In the beginning, my at the edge of a cliff swathed in low hanging clouds. There are focus is on staying together, on getting there and back quickly no fences or barriers at the edge. Beyond a point, I cannot see before we are assailed by hunger, fatigue, or inclement weather. anything. It would be easy for a person to go over into the void, a But soon, I realise that our speeds and needs are different. I am quick soundless fall. Life seems fragile, precarious. walking by myself.

What will I feel at my world’s end? Perhaps just this—I made the I usually like to move from one activity to another. Life is aljourney, connected not just to the outer world around me, but also ways “busy” even on a vacation. But on this narrow path through to the world within me. The greatest journeys are those where we the grassland, I find space and slowness. The solitude offers up not only pay attention to the changing scenery around us, but also its treasures. There is a bright patch of rhododendron, a red become mindful of the changes in our own mental and emotional flower set like a jewel against the green velvet leaves. A small landscape. I begin the walk back to the park’s entrance, knowing, as white board informs me that it is a native species known as Asoka or Maha Rathmal in Sinhala. How many such gems do I T.S. Eliot said, that “the end of all our exploring will be to arrive miss observing as I scurry through life? where we started and know the place for the first time.” I feel a few drops of rain. We don’t have umbrellas or raincoats. I am not as prepared World’s End, Hortons Plains as I would like to be. In the grassland, there National Park, Sri Lanka is no shelter around us for miles. I feel annoyed, a little scared, and guilty. I spend a minute blaming the guide for not warning us and myself for not packing well. Standing under the sky, I lift my face to the rain. How do I react when things don’t go as planned?

Do I mistake a mild drizzle for a downpour?

Drops splash against my cheeks and run over my lips. The water tastes of hope. My family gathers around. “Don’t worry, it will stop soon,” I tell my daughter. “You are always trying to be an optimist,” she says in the manner of teenagers. Perhaps I become one, after a bout of recrimination. What would I do in a rainstorm? When my optimism runs out, I do need support. I am glad I am not alone. We walk together for a while, joined by other trekkers, feeling connected.

Voices |

S LOW TRAV EL

Am I Tough Enough?

Biju Sukumaran is a travel writer currently based in Barcelona, Spain.

GETTING OUTDOORSY CREATES A NEW BUCKET LIST

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DAVID EPPERSON/PHOTODISC/GETTY IMAGES

S

Argentina Polo Day that spreads appreciation for the sport of crabbling up the side of the mountain, I reached out polo. I’d assumed I would learn about the game from the sideuntil I found a handhold on the sheer rock face rislines. As professional polo players thundered across the field, my ing above me. At Kent Mountain Adventure Center group learned the game’s rules and history. This quickly changed in Estes Park, Colorado, I was safely hooked into the to more interactive demonstrations, and soon I was practising harness and treated to views of the forested slope below. But I’m swinging the long-handled mallet. Before we realised it, we were actually scared of heights, and though I followed the advice not mounted on horses, and the practice session culminated in an to look down, my mind see-sawed between fear and elation. actual game. This step-by-step process made a daunting task I was never the audacious one when I was a kid. I was the one like playing polo quite doable. with my nose firmly planted in books while my friends traipsed In an Internet culture obsessed with snapshots of life, many around having adventures. So how is it that I came to be hanging of us also long to be that person in the amazing adventure picoff a Colorado cliff? When did that change happen? Not overture. But sometimes it’s difficult to take that first step. We think night for sure. that it’s best to watch and appreciate. What I’ve learnt instead is During my travels whenever I’ve come across outdoor that gradual changes eventually have an impact on our identity. adventures that sound too far out there, I’ve tended to assume Breaking a skill into smaller parts makes everything possible. they are for people who’ve always been athletic. This is especially At a kitesurfing festival in the Dominican Republic, I met the case when I’ve travelled to places like Colorado, which some amazing athletes that seemed worlds apart from me. Later, immediately summon up images of young, fit mountain climbers when the resort offered a class in kitesurfing basics, that feeling dangling off precarious ledges. It’s an image that has older, less of impossibility first arose in my mind. But then I remembered fit travellers shaking their heads and shuffling off to the nearest the people I’d met, and it sparked a curiosity. Soon I was practicbrewpub. Thankfully, more and more companies now offer ing movements with a gigantic kite. I learnt how to keep it in the services for complete beginners. air, and got comfortable with the arm movements that would Which is exactly how a novice like me was hanging off a rock. move the kite higher or lower. Did I become a kitesurfing athLess than halfway up, I had been tempted to turn back. But I lete instantly? No. But broken down into smaller components it persevered, bit by bit, chanting “one more step” in my head like didn’t seem like an impossible thing to do after all. a mantra, until I completed the climb. Finishing, I lurched awkTravel has the ability to open new doors, offer untrodden paths wardly onto the ledge pinned to the cliff face. The whole world and passages yet unknown. When we overcome fear and venture seemed to spread before me just as a wide range of new options into new territory, we encounter opportunities to redefine ourin travel opened up in my mind. I was shocked when I realised selves, and for a moment, glimpse who we could be. that despite my fears, I had actually enjoyed myself.

Earlier that week, I had confronted another fear: descending down a mountain on a bicycle. Leafing through a brochure about biking the nearby Trail Ridge Road, the highest continuously paved road in the United States, the words “arctic tundra” and “29 miles of biking” leapt out at me as a challenge. Though I had been an avid cyclist in high school, those days were long gone. “That’s not me anymore” I had initially muttered, thinking only of the pain that I’d have to endure. But soon enough, the visions of tumbling down the mountainside disappeared and I couldn’t get the idea out of my head.

The tour operator kitted me out with a bike, warm clothing, and assurances of a leisurely downhill glide, and I began to relax. I stopped frequently to admire the view, which shifted from intimidating icy walls of snow to warm alpine meadows.

My journey to enjoying outdoor activities started Crested Butte, unexpectedly, during a visit to Argentina in late 2013.

Colorado, U.S.A. I attended an event organised by a company called

Voices |

CR EW CU T

Striking Gold WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE BEST-LAID PLANS GO AWRY?

Kareena Gianani Kareena Gianani is Associate Editor at National Geographic Traveller India. She loves stumbling upon hole-in-the-wall bookshops, old towns, and owl souvenirs in all shapes and sizes.

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NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | DECEMBER 2015

AMAR GROVER/JAI/PASSAGE/CORBIS/IMAGELIBRARY

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by then, basking in the intimacy I felt with the village and cont was midnight, and I sat sullenly at the edge of a dysfuncnecting with its people. Soon, we were playing peek-a-boo with tional fountain outside my hotel in Pelling, Sikkim. I had his ruddy-cheeked nephew who looked baffled at the racket we arrived just that evening with two friends to see Mount made. I helped Indra’s mother as she cooked traditional Limboo Kanchenjunga before we headed to Gangtok, and further fare of millet pancakes, phulaurah (buckwheat) fritters, and local north. It was meant to be just for a day but a political party had greens. My rotis were shapeless but my joy was complete. just announced a three-day bandh across the state, making travOver two days, with no lofty peaks calling and no bookings to elling around or out of this west Sikkim town impossible. The confirm, we blended into Darap’s rhythm, enjoying a place not mountain’s silvery peak was the saving grace as Pelling seemed on our original itinerary, one that I hadn’t even heard of until the lacklustre, with squat hotels springing up at every bend. day before. Indra’s cousin took us around the village, to sweepA month before the trip, I had planned and shared with my ing rice fields which were making way for lucrative cardamom friends an elaborate itinerary. It listed everything I thought we crops. He pointed to a deorali (shrine) on a small hilltop, a pit must see and do in Sikkim. That’s the kind of traveller I was stop for travellers and local traders travelling to nearby villages, in my early 20s, packing each day to the brim, leaving little to and his secret hiding place. Later, on a night walk, my friend chance. A strike had no place in my plans. So when I realised and I ended up at one end of the village, where the road petered we were going to miss our hike to the nearby town of Yuksom, out and a lush forest began. Slowly, our eyes adjusted to the inky and would not be able to see the thangkas at Gangtok’s Namgyal night, and I saw a dozen fireflies flitting in and out of our converInstitute of Tibetology, I was upset. sation. There was nowhere else I wanted to be and for the first My friends were in better spirits. They suggested we walk time on my travels, the present was enough. around Pelling the next morning without map or agenda.

When the strike ended, we went up north on schedule. But It didn’t sound like a great idea to me, but I joined them anyway. unlike in the past, I let myself linger in markets, eavesdrop A few kilometres into the walk, we realised that the weary stretch on conversations, and have an extra bowl of instant noodles. of hotels around us was in fact surrounded by deep woods. We Instead of asking the driver to go faster, I frequently asked him set off hiking alongside gnarly trees on steep slopes, through to stop the car just to be able to appreciate the Teesta River stretches so silent that even the softest birdsong was magnified. snaking unhindered through valleys, before dams alter this Like the legendary magpie I collected strangely shaped, shiny region forever. I picked wild flowers to press in my book or wear rocks flecked with minerals, to use as paperweights. behind my ear. It was in Sikkim that I discovered a new side to We walked for over an hour, stumbling upon a 300-year-old the traveller in me: one who is happy to leave things to chance monastery folded deep into the woods. Amid the stillness outand every once in a while, revels in missed connections. side its prayer hall, I felt inspired to write my first travel journal, something I had never found the time for, with one eye always on the clock during my previous travels.

Pemayangtse Grinning like children, that afternoon we sneaked Monastery in into a tearoom run by a welcoming local who wasn’t Pelling, Sikkim actually supposed to be serving customers during the strike. Over glucose biscuits dipped in tea, he convinced us to visit Darap, a village eight kilometres away, where his friend ran a homestay.

Darap was everything Pelling will never be—free from billboards and the construction sites of upcoming hotels. Its one-storeyed homes had cosy, airy courtyards and balconies. It was here we met Indra, one of the entrepreneurs trying to develop Darap as an ecotourism destination. He said he was a mountaineer who missed home when he was away, but now pined to scale peaks when he pored over account books. His homestay, which he claimed “wasn’t much,” turned out to be a charming two-storeyed log house he had designed himself. I had positively perked up

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local flavour Canada’s frosty climes are perfect for its sweet icewine

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the insider Embracing the weird and wonderful in Austin

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the find Surajpur Wetland, a refuge for birds and city-weary souls

Golden evening light washes over Norway’s Vega Island.

Hopping off the Continent THE VEGA ARCHIPELAGO Norway

KASTELLORIZO Dodecanese islands, Greece

Birdwatchers have known about this 6,500-island archipelago (and UNESCO World Heritage Site) just south of the Arctic Circle, particularly its eider ducks. But buzz is building around hiking and cycling opportunities in fishing villages and fjords of the eponymous main island.

As the farthest-flung landmass in the Dodecanese, arid and rocky Kastellorizo doesn’t see the influx of travellers that many of its sisters in the archipelago do. Among its charms is the cathedrallike Blue Grotto—a sea cavern accessible only by lying flat on a boat—and ancient castle ruins.

STREYMOY Faroe Islands, Denmark

LOPUD ISLAND Elafiti islands, Croatia

Even the largest and most populous of the 18 islands that make up Denmark’s Faroe archipelago can seem otherworldly with its treeless landscape sculpted by glaciers. Adventurous eaters head to Koks, the restaurant in the Hotel Føroyar, lauded for its New Nordic cuisine made with locally sourced ingredients.

This car-less island in the Elafiti chain was once the summertime retreat of aristocrats from the mainland.

Today, it attracts day trippers heading to its horseshoe-shaped Sunj beach and exploring the medieval ruins of churches and fortifications. Don’t miss the art-filled 15th-century Franciscan monastery in the village of Lopud.

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NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | DECEMBER 2015

Kastellorizo, Greece

MARIA SWÄRD (HOUSES), IZZET KERIBAR/LONELY PLANET IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES (BOAT)

LITTLE-KNOWN ISLANDS IN EUROPE TO SOAK UP SEASCAPES AND LOCAL LORE

HI D D EN GE M

Ilha do Pico, Portugal

Isle of Mull, Scotland

MUHU Estonia

Only 160 kilometres from Estonia’s techie capital Tallinn (accessed by an ice road in winter), this Baltic Sea isle is a throwback to the Middle Ages, with thatched-roof cottages, a working windmill, and trapezoidal tombstones carved with pagan symbols. Elders still traditionally run fishing villages.

ILHA DO PICO Azores, Portugal

These islands are luring adventurers for hiking, climbing, and biking.

Those in the know beeline to Pico, the archipelago’s second-largest island, to scale Mount Pico and explore Gruta das Torres, a lava cave that was first explored by scientists in 1990. Above ground, stone walls embrace farms and vineyards.

ISLE OF MULL Inner Hebrides, Scotland

Don’t let the tidy town of Tobermory fool you. Beyond this picturesque facade of brightly coloured buildings is a wild expanse of bens, moors, and lochs, waiting to be scaled, hiked, and

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Pantelleria, Italy

kayaked. The jewel of the island is Castle Duart, the 800-year-old ancestral home of Clan McLean and still owned by the family.

PANTELLERIA Italy

Forget lolling on golden, sandy beaches.

There are none on this sun-baked idyll halfway between Sicily and Tunisia.

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Instead, regular visitors (Giorgio Armani is one) snorkel in secluded coves, soak in hot springs, dine on pasta tossed with tomatoes and herbs, and load up on jars of the island’s briny capers. —With reporting by Mark Baker, Julia Buckley, Stuart Forster, Suzanne King, Margaret Loftus, Chris Moss, Pol Ó Conghaile, Mark C. O’Flaherty, and Amanda Ruggeri.

HEMIS/INDIAPICTURE (ANIMALS), LUIS DAVILLA/AGE FOTOSTOCK/DINODIA (MAN), ANDREA MATONE/AGE FOTOSTOCK/DINODIA (SWIMMING)

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LOCA L F L AVOU R

Dessert in a Bottle FROSTY CLIMES HELP CREATE ICEWINE, CANADA’S MUCH-LOVED DRINK BY KAREENA GIANANI

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very winter, owners of many Ontario wineries watch the thermometer closely, as if tracking the stock market.

If the temperature is -8°C or lower for three consecutive days, they can harvest a variety of grapes to make the extravagantly sweet icewine, drunk primarily as a dessert wine. Strangely, for a drink born in the northern hemisphere, of freezing temperatures and a winter crop, it has the lingering flavour of tropical fruits like lychee, pear, or pineapple. Best served chilled, icewine is a versatile drink. Canadians have it as an aperitif, with or as dessert, or pair it with cheeses or pâtés; but I see it going equally well with a round of spicy kebabs.

Icewines can be red or white and are made from Riesling, Vidal, or Cabernet Franc grapes.

I first tasted Ontario’s “liquid gold” over lunch at the 19thcentury Prince of Wales hotel in Niagara-on-the-Lake town. My white Riesling had an intense flavour and the aroma of apricot

and honey, with a hint of tangerine. Its unmistakable acidity—a balance of sweet and sharp—distinguished it from other dessert wines.

The first icewine was supposedly made in Germany in the 1700s, some say by sheer accident: Farmers trying to salvage their harvest after an unexpected frost ended up with this complex, rich drink. German immigrants brought their eiswein tradition to Canada in the 1970s. Intrigued by the drink and its legend, I signed up for a wine tour at the Reif Estate Winery nearby. Its German owner is a 12th-generation winemaker who produces both table and icewines.

In August when I visited, the grapes were nowhere near frozen. But according to our guide, come November, workers cover the fruit in nets to protect them from hungry birds.

When the temperature is right, pickers don parkas, warm boots, and mittens and handpick the fruit. It is immediately pressed and each grape releases a miniscule amount of juice. It takes

about three kilos of frozen Vidal grapes to produce one 375-ml bottle of icewine, whereas the same quantity produces six times the table wine. This difference is also reflected in the price: A 200-ml bottle of Reif Estate’s Vidal icewine costs CAD25/`1,200, double that of a 750-ml bottle of their Vidal table wine.

Some like to mix icewine with vodka for an icewine martini, but I didn’t want to change a thing about the drink in my hand. Sipping a Vidal icewine, I let its smooth texture roll in my mouth, and bottled it in my palate’s memory. THE VITALS The Icewine Some 60 of Ontario’s 132 wineries produce icewine. Presently, the 2011 Riesling Grand Reserve Icewine, 2012 Inniskillin Cabernet Franc Icewine, and Château des Charmes 2012 Vidal Icewine are among the finest.

The Tour Numerous wineries run tours.

I visited Reif Estate Winery in Niagaraon-the-Lake (130 km/1.45-hr drive from Toronto). The tasting tour included table and icewines (www.reifwinery. com/visit.php; Apr-Oct daily at 11.30 a.m., 1.30 p.m., and 3.30 p.m., weekends Nov-Mar; CAD5/`250 onwards).

DECEMBER 2015 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA

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PHOTO COURTESY: REIF ESTATE WINERY (GRAPES), COSMO CONDINA/ALAMY/INDIAPICTURE (WINERY), OLEKSIY MAKSYMENKO/AGE FOTOSTOCK/DINODIA (BOTTLE)

To make certified icewine, vintners across Ontario’s wineries (top right) harvest only naturally frozen grapes (top left); A bottle of Cabernet Franc Icewine (bottom) can cost at least four times as much as a table wine made of the same grape varietal.

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TA KE F I VE

The New Europe ROCK AROUND THE EASTERN BLOCK—THE CONTINENT HOTS UP

Belgrade, Serbia

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Serbia’s rebellious spirit hasn’t always served it well, but nowadays the country is aiming for European Union membership. The capital, Belgrade, exudes big-city glam, and its clubs are the best in the Balkans. Fun-loving Strahinjića Bana street enlivens the trendy Dorćol quarter. More scenic and lower key: the Zemun waterfront, on the opposite riverbank from Belgrade.

The lures of Lithuania—its pristine forests and lakes, and a long, majestic strip of sand dunes along the Baltic— don’t immediately jump out. Simona Dambauskas, a designer, says life revolves around simple pleasures such as strolling through the capital Vilnius’s baroque cityscape or picking mushrooms in the woods. Lithuania adopted the euro in January 2015.

SERBIA Caffeinated Culture

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LITHUANIA Nature Playground

Curonian Spit, Lithuania

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BIBIPHOTO/SHUTTERSTOCK (CAFÉ), NICK HASLAM/ALAMY/INDIAPICTURE (MUSHROOMS)

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rom baroque cityscapes to big-city glam, from an old Venetian port, to Europe’s best wines, Eastern Europe is packed with surprises. Once locked behind the Iron Curtain, these five countries offer fresh takes on the Old World. Here’s the New Europe decoder.

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TA KE F I VE

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MOLDOVA Great Wine Country

Europe’s least visited country (about 12,000 visitors per year) produces some of Europe’s best wines east of Italy.

Fossil evidence suggests that indigenous communities here were using grapes to make wine as early as 3,000 B.C. Popular varietals like Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot thrive in the south, but look out for local grapes such as Rară Neagră or Fetească Albă. Stop by old wineries such as Mileştii Mici and Cricova, where wine is stored in vast limestone cellars.

Tiraspol, Moldova

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Not long ago the very model of seclusion, Albania these days tops the list for adventure-seekers and those looking to go off the beaten track. Trekkers head north of the energetic capital, Tirana, to hike the rugged “Accursed Mountains.”

To the south, the curvy coastal road from Vlorë to Sarandë unspools between steep mountain passes and the blue Adriatic Sea. The coastline has some wonderful beaches not yet discovered by sun chasers. Plus there are plenty of water sports from windsurfing, kitesurfing, stand up paddleboarding to sailing.

Borsh, Albania

Piran, Slovenia

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SLOVENIA Beauty Queen

From the old Venetian port of Piran, with its terracotta roofs, and the bluegreen waters of the Soča River, to the shores of Lake Bled backdropped by the snow-capped Alps, tiny Slovenia may well be Europe’s prettiest place. Bledbased Domen Kalajžić says his country is simply blessed with natural beauty: “Get lost in the great outdoors, and you’ll find the way back to happy spirits.”

—With reporting by Mark Baker, Julia Buckley, Stuart Forster, Suzanne King, Margaret Loftus, Chris Moss, Pol Ó Conghaile, Mark C. O’Flaherty, and Amanda Ruggeri.

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DANIEL MIHAILESCU/STAFF/AFP/GETTY IMAGES (BARRELS), UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP/DEAGOSTINI/ALAMY/INDIAPICTURE (SHEEP), MATTHEW WILLIAMS ELLIS/ROBERTHARDING/CORBIS/IMAGELIBRARY (PORT)

ALBANIA Adventure Central

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THE I N S I D E R

Austin Power WELCOME TO THE LAID-BACK TEXAN CAPITAL. IT’S A PLACE TO WHOOP IT UP, WANDER, AND EMBRACE THE WEIRD BY DAVID WHITLEY | PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAN WESTERGREN

Native Austinite and folk musician Alejandro Rose-Garcia, better known as Shakey Graves, plays in his studio.

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uttural roars escape from the death metal club across the road. The bartender hands out cans of beer to people who want to drink them in the street.

Two guys with beards caked with pizza brought in from the food truck next door discuss whether to go and see ZZ Top tomorrow night. Queues mount outside a barbecue joint, responding to rumours of a secret gig by a big-name band that would usually be playing on a larger stage.

Wednesday night Austin feels woozily alive. Staggering slightly, but brimming with confidence and invention. Music oozes from its sweaty pores, genre an irrelevance as long as it’s live. It’s the fuel powering the city’s energy and its eagerness to teeter on the edge of

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irresponsibility. It’s Margaritaville with a few cans of Red Bull chucked in, easy-going good times laced with youthful adrenaline.

The fastest growing city in the U.S. may be the capital of Texas, but it feels as if it’s in a constant state of rebellion against all that surrounds it. Austin’s charged liberalism and determined individuality kick and scream against the conservatism of Texan typecasting.

“Keep Austin Weird” is a semi-official slogan; “Don’t Dallas My Austin” is a T-shirt and bumper-sticker clarion call against the sprawling big-business neighbour to the north.

It hasn’t always been this way. The transformation from cow town to capital of cool arguably began in 1987, when the South by Southwest festival was first set

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | DECEMBER 2015

up here. Part creative industries trade show, part music gig epidemic taking over most of the town, it has spurred Austin’s ballooning festival calendar.

ATLAS

SLOVAKIA IA

BANGLADE ADESH

COLOMBIA

LESOTHO

Austin, Texas In 1991, Austin officially adopted the slogan “Live Music Capital of the World.”

Today the city has more than 250 live music venues that host blues, rock, jazz, and country artistes.

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THE I N S I D E R

Barton Springs Pool Surrounded

by Zilker Park abutting Lady Bird Lake, this is one of the greatest urban swimming venues on Earth. Its three acres of spring-fed waters are a constant 20°C all year, with the odd fish or salamander to tickle your feet. Watching college students try to impress each other with elaborate leaps from the diving board is half the fun.

Congress Avenue Bridge Up to 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats live under the bridge spanning Lady Bird Lake. During the summer and early fall, they go insect-hunting around sunset, creating a sky-filling, speckled black cloud.

Texas State Capitol The shape mimics that of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., but Texans’ typical one-upmanship ensured theirs was built 15 feet taller.

Crafted from local red granite, the capitol provides free tours punctuated with quirky details about the building’s history and design.

Bullock Texas State History Museum

Bartender Zack Flores (top) pours a drink at the Hotel San José in the SoCo district; Locals and visitors alike patronise South Austin Trailer Park & Eatery (bottom), one of several stationary food truck stops in the city.

The University of Texas has always ensured a youthful presence, but the city has become fresh-faced with an influx of enthusiastic musicians, artists, and tech pioneers.

Austin isn’t a place for rigid itineraries or working through checklists. It’s a place for acting on overheard tip-offs, for following instincts and whims.

Yet, once the sun comes up and the haze subsides, a pervading dresseddown relaxedness reveals the city’s charm and counterbalances the charge.

Off-leash dogs loll in parks, mosquitoswatting canoeists glide past, and “y’alls”

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pepper conversations in a betrayal of the valiant fight against Texan roots.

CAPITAL CACHET South Congress Avenue If one street

captures the Keep Austin Weird vibe, this is it. Just about every building flanking South Congress rewards the inquisitive. Shop signs are cartoonish neon artworks, cafés and food trucks provide prime people-watching opportunities, and fashion statements ranging from confidently individual to thoroughly absurd often strut along the sidewalk.

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Just north of the capitol, this museum gives a handy rundown of why Texas is what it is. Epic independence battles against Mexico, the birth of ranching, and the impact of the discovery of oil are all covered.

Harry Ransom Center Part of the giant University of Texas campus, this treasure trove of old documents and artefacts has two big hitters—an original Gutenberg Bible and, remarkably, the first known photograph ever taken.

LBJ Presidential Library Few presidents ushered through as many social reforms as native Texan Lyndon Baines Johnson, although he’s usually remembered for the Vietnam War. His presidential library offers an engrossing look into his life, work, and character—but also a snapshot of a transformative period in recent history.

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Austin style.

This Sixth Street institution is notorious for its gloriously silly screenings, such as The Big Lebowski and Wayne’s World quote-a-longs, complete with comedy props.

VINYL AND VINTAGE Allens Boots It’s not so much a whiff of

leather upon entering as a full-on nasal assault. Allens is Western-wear browsing with a wow factor (boots stitched with the Texas flag, anyone?).

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THE I N S I D E R

Uncommon Objects Antiques,

conversation pieces, miniature art displays—this warren of much loved old junk is a joy to wander through.

INSIDER TIPS Bang for a Buck Most people drive in

Early risers dip into Barton Springs Pool (top); Jimmy Fox, aka Red (bottom), a member of the Austin Facial Hair Club, competes in beard contests around the country.

Waterloo Records It’s what all record

Whole Foods Market The massive

stores should be—with a genre-spanning collection, regular live performances, and late evening hours.

headquarters of this healthy food store is a social gathering space complete with a wine bar, taco stand, and Italian trattoria.

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Texas, but locals coming from the airport hop on the 100 bus, which handily drops off riders downtown and around the University of Texas campus. It leaves every half hour and costs $1.75/`115.

Pick up the Paper The Austin AmericanStatesman is the main local newspaper, but the weekly Austin Chronicle has a steadier finger on the pulse.

Fest Prep Ahead Austin’s busy calendar has a downside—accommodation prices, which don’t tend to be budget-friendly in the first place, skyrocket when big festivals are on. Book months in advance for a good deal.

GET SOME SHUT-EYE

Unless you want to spend a lot on taxis, aim for digs reasonably close to the action downtown, on South Congress Avenue, or near the University of Texas.

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THE I N S I D E R

green tomatoes, and baked mac and cheese. An upstairs lounge features live music most nights.

Vespaio This is the best bet for inspired Italian food, yet the atmosphere manages to remain in harmony with the go-your-own-way vibe of its South Congress Avenue surrounds.

LATE-NIGHT MERRYMAKING

A Texas longhorn embellishes boots at Allens (top left); The Scallywag—with coconut-battered shrimp, bacon, pickled onions, and habañero peach jam (top right)—is a speciality taco at Torchy’s; Vintage-style neon signs (bottom) light up the Roadhouse Relics studio and gallery.

Austin Motel The somewhat phallic neon sign outside proclaims this motel to be “So close, yet so far out.” Along with an eclectic array of guest rooms boasting murals, the kidney-shaped pool, affordable rates, and free parking draw crowds.

The Hotel San José A favourite with many visiting bands, this spot in the heart of SoCo district features rainbow bathrobes and cowskin rugs that help you forgive the occasional lapse into too-cool-for-school minimalism.

W Austin Hotel This downtown property has rock-star swagger: living-roomstyle lounge areas, iPad chargers, and poolside cabanas.

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BARBECUE AND BEYOND

White-tablecloth fine dining is an option in Austin, but it misses the point—this is a sociable burger, BBQ, and burrito town.

Torchy’s Tacos A brick-and-mortar child of the food truck scene, Torchy’s combines inventive ideas with local ingredients. Vegans flock here for tacos stuffed with fried avocados, portobello mushrooms, and roasted corn. The dark chocolate brownies are made from scratch.

Lamberts In the heart of downtown, this lively bistro serves a classier version of Texas smoked barbecue alongside comforting dishes of devilled eggs, fried

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Austin’s historic Sixth Street is famous for bar crawls, but it attracts a young, student crowd that uses “party” as a verb. Head elsewhere.

Banger’s Rainey Street—where new bars pop up inside old houses seemingly every week—is infinitely more lovable. Banger’s, with its egalitarian Bavarian-beer-hall-style benches and 101 craft tap beers, is an excellent starting point.

Stubb’s A few blocks north of Rainey Street, the Red River District has a bar with live music for every conceivable taste. Stubb’s is the top dog—the guys behind the Austin City Limits music festival book the bands here and pull in big names.

Speakeasy Multistage, multi-bar Speakeasy is a reliable and central safe bet—whether you want to catch an upand-coming math rock (rock music with complex rhythms) band or chill with an expertly mixed cocktail over the backroom pool table.

The Broken Spoke Cold beer, good grub, and real country music make this honkytonk a standout. Two-step dance lessons are offered Wednesday through Saturday at 8 p.m.

PROMOTION

TOMORROW’S WORLD Greener Homes by Godrej Properties

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reen is not a colour. It is a multi-dimensional idea and the way forward for our planet. Green is a revolutionary word. Godrej Properties understands the immense value of going green and sustainability has always been an underlining feature of its design and vision. As part of the organization’s commitment to a better tomorrow, every building it creates is an environmentally friendly piece of architecture. The Godrej Properties promise is one of sustainability, conservation, and a greener, better future.

In keeping with this idea, Godrej’s flagship properties in Bengaluru have been certified by the Indian Green Building Council (IGBC) even before their completion. The three proposed projects cover different categories of residences. The common binding factor is their intelligent green design which has earned them a gold rating from IGBC. GODREJ GOLD COUNTY off Tumkur Road will feature beautiful villas and townhouses built around ample green spaces.

The earth-friendly design ensures maximum optimization of power and water usage with minimum wastage.

GODREJ PLATINUM is a modern high rise with spacious apartments and an unparalleled view over the Hebbal Lake. It has eco-sensitive features like solar power, windows designed for thermal insulation, and an active rainwater harvesting system.

GODREJ UNITED located in the cosmopolitan neighbourhood of Whitefield combines the best of amenities with sprawling green spaces and the latest features of sustainable design.

The team at Godrej Properties are just like the early pioneers.

Armed with ideas for an ecologically healthy world for today and tomorrow, they forge ahead breaking new ground and creating residences that matter. Godrej celebrates the environment by building homes that are not just for you, but also for the future.

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THE F I N D

Surajpur Safe House JUST OUTSIDE DELHI, A REFUGE FOR BIRDS AND CITY-WEARY SOULS

BY KAVITA DEVGAN | PHOTOGRAPHS BY BHANU DEVGAN

Visitors to Surajpur often spot rare sarus cranes, the 5 to 6-foot tall palegrey birds with reddish legs and large bills. They are very noisy, trumpet loudly, and are often seen in pairs.

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y birder-photographer husband has been going to the Surajpur Wetland and Natural Forest, a biodiversity park located on the fringes of Greater Noida, frequently for the last two years.

His descriptions of an easily accessible bird paradise, hidden from the cacophony of Delhi, sounded perfect, and I finally decided to see what the fuss was all about.

We left early on a Saturday morning, and after just an hour’s drive I found myself transported to an expansive, green space. There was a gentle quiet, made up of the pleasant sounds of the forest. My city-deadened senses woke up, and I began to register the different textures and sights.

From the entrance we started walking clockwise on an oval trail that goes

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around the huge waterbody at the centre of the park. No cars, scooters, or cycles are allowed. Walking is the only way to experience this tranquil area, and soak in the park’s biodiversity. Benches at regular intervals are perfect for a short rest, and there are watchtowers to climb and say hello to the birds. The trail is

dusty, but clearly marked out, and goes through some deeply forested areas.

The only mammals we saw on that day was a herd of nilgai, but grey mongoose, Indian hare, golden jackal and the five-striped squirrel are also frequently visible. Birds we saw aplenty: flocks of sarus cranes and multiple

THE VITALS Look Out For 186 species of birds from 44 families, some of which are threatened.

These include 102 resident species, 53 winter migrants, 28 summer migrants, and 3 passage migrant species. Large numbers of local and migratory birds can be seen from Oct to Mar (surajpurwetland-up.com).

Getting There Surajpur Wetland and Natural Forest is in Surajpur village in District Gautam Budh Nagar (Greater NOIDA), about 40 km/1.5 hr southeast of Connaught Place in Delhi. It is best to hire a full-day cab for the journey from Delhi, which will cost approximately `3,000, as getting a cab for the return journey might be tough.

Open All days, from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.; no entry fee (the divisional forest officer, Gautam Budh Nagar Forest Division, can be reached at 0120-2425989 for more information).

Strict rules prohibit picnicking and ensure visitors keep the park clean.

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THE F I N D

Seeing large flocks take flight over the Surajpur Lake is an uplifting sight. Here a flock of northern shovellers pierces the quiet with their calls while spot-billed ducks frolic in the water (top); Purple swamphen (bottom left) live in the marshy spots around the lake; Nilgai (bottom right) might be the largest of Asian antelopes, but they’re still rather shy of humans.

species of storks flying above us in droves, piercing the serene morning with their conversation. Herons, northern shovellers, cormorants, water peafowl, and buzzards were spotted along the trail. Frolicking on the water at various points were spot-billed ducks, lesserwhistling ducks, cotton pygmy geese, comb ducks, common teals, purple moorhens, and red-crested pochards.

The ferruginous pochard, bar-headed goose, greylag goose, and gadwall are

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also found here in good numbers, and some lucky visitors may catch a glimpse of rarer species like the bristled grassbird, and black-necked stork. To top it off are 52 species of butterflies.

Much work has gone into creating this park. Since 2010, the Uttar Pradesh Forest Department in collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund-India, with support from the Greater Noida Industrial Development Authority, has developed 761 acres of the Surajpur

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Wetland. Besides creating a nature trail, more than a million trees have been planted, and an artificial dam built to ensure water supply during the winter.

It took us four hours to complete the whole circuit, though it’s possible to do it in as little as 1.5 hours, with fewer stops.

By the time we were ready to leave, I had a new appreciation for this place where visitors can enjoy nature at close quarters, and local and migratory birds get themselves a piece of paradise.

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BOO KS HEL F

Literary Lions of Africa BOOKS THAT DELVE INTO THE HEART OF THE CONTINENT BY GEORGE W. STONE DON’T LET’S GO TO THE DOGS TONIGHT

By Alexandra Fuller (Random House, 2001)

Raised during the Rhodesian Bush War, author Alexandra Fuller scuttled with her family from their scrappy farm in Zimbabwe to Malawi to Zambia, in this big-hearted tale of survival.

OUT OF AFRICA

By Isak Dinesen (Putnam, 1937)

DOWN THE NILE

By Rosemary Mahoney (Little, Brown and Company, 2007)

Spellbound by the Sphinx, Rosemary Mahoney rowed solo down the Nile in a fisherman’s skiff—perilously close to crocodiles—to survey the cultures along its shores, paying homage en route to the great travellers (Gustave Flaubert and Florence Nightingale) who preceded her.

WEST WITH THE NIGHT

By Beryl Markham (Houghton Mifflin, 1942)

The first person to complete a solo eastwest transatlantic flight—and that’s the least interesting thing about her—Beryl Markham evokes her childhood in the Great Rift Valley of Kenya and her exploits as a bush pilot.

THE POISONWOOD BIBLE

By Barbara Kingsolver (Harper Flamingo, 1998)

Except Rosemary Mahoney’s book Down the Nile, few literary accounts have touched upon the lives of Nile River fishermen (top); It is easy to see why the rugged stretch of Kenya’s Great Rift Valley (bottom), with its lakes and volcanoes, inspires vivid storytelling in Beryl Markham’s West with the Night.

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NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | DECEMBER 2015

A moving account of a Christian missionary family from the U.S. state of Georgia, that alights in a small village in the Belgian Congo in 1959. In the resulting clash of values, saving souls becomes harder than it seemed.

CYRIL LE TOURNEUR/CONTRIBUTOR/GAMMA-RAPHO/GETTY IMAGES (BOAT), NIGEL PAVITT/AWL IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES (VALLEY)

“Looking back on a sojourn in the African highlands, you are struck by your feeling of having lived for a time up in the air,” writes Isak Dinesen, who ran a coffee plantation at the foot of the Ngong Hills, near Nairobi, Kenya. She recorded the airy rhythms and knotty romances of an East Africa lumbering from tradition to modernity.

International Dance & Music

29th - 31st January 2016

MUSIC , DANCE , ART, HISTORY... and now Geography!

Sirpur International Dance & Music Festival - 2016 A dance and music festival. Hosted in the backdrop of the artistically built Laxman Temple – extolled as one of India's finest brick temples ever. Constructed circa 650 AD... a slice of history. The Sirpur Dance & Music Festival is now a global event, attracting local, national and international performers.

Music, dance, art, history, geography... with each passing year, the Sirpur International Dance & Music Festival takes on a new dimension. Don't miss it for anything in the world!

Festival dates: 29th - 31st January 2016 Follow us on: Gochhattisgarh

Chhattisgarh Tourism App get it on:

Toll Free No.: 1-800-102-6415 (8 am to 8 pm)

Website: http://www.tourism.cg.gov.in

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THE POWER O F PL AC E

Russian painter Nicholas Roerich felt a deep connection to high places such as the Himalayas. Like in other paintings, “Song of Shambhala” captures his spiritual connection with landscapes and panoramas of nature.

Painter’s Muse

L

ast year, I encountered the work of the legendary Russian paintermystic-writer Nicholas Roerich and its hypnotising quality led me to research him further. Roerich wandered extensively through the Himalayas and painted the most striking landscapes of the mighty mountains.

Something about the Himachali village of Naggar held him in its thrall, and he settled and worked there until his death in 1947. That’s what had brought me to visit Naggar.

From my vantage point I can see the skeletal, cement-hued Beas River, gentle slopes dotted with apple orchards, pine forests, and tiny hamlets. A man with a crutch limps along a narrow path in a field of green. An autorickshaw splutters up the snaking road. Fierce

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mountain crows circle and caw. Like in an enchanted map, life goes on in the Kullu Valley as I watch transfixed from the terrace of the Naggar Castle, perched atop a crag in the village.

Unlike European castles, this is an elegant Pahari-style structure in stone and timber, containing woodcarvings of pine and spruce. But like many old castles, it has its share of secrets and stories. One of its courtyards has an eerie weeping willow while the Jagtipath Temple stands in the other. The temple

From my vantage point I can see the skeletal, cement-hued Beas River, gentle slopes dotted with apple orchards, pine forests, and tiny hamlets

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | DECEMBER 2015

contains a slab of stone, which according to local belief, was carried here by gods who had transformed into bees. The town was the erstwhile capital of the Kullu Valley and the castle was built in the 15th century by Raja Sidh Singh.

It was used as the royal residence and later as the state headquarters of the kingdom. Today, it is a heritage hotel overlooking the spectacular Kullu Valley.

In Naggar I realise why Kullu is called the “valley of gods.” And I’m perhaps looking at the same magnificent vistas that drew Nicholas Roerich here nearly a century ago.

A 20-minute walk from the castle lies the Roerich estate. Perched high above the village, it consists of the painter’s two-storey house, an art gallery with over 40 paintings, a small temple, and a

HERITAGE IMAGES/CONTRIBUTOR/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

WHAT IS IT ABOUT THE HIMACHALI VILLAGE OF NAGGAR THAT INSPIRED THE WORKS OF TWO RUSSIAN PAINTERS? BY ANINDITA DEO

PROMOTION

Celebrating new tourism ties at the China International Travel Mart

K

unming, the culture-rich capital of the Yunnan Province, is a 2,400-year-old city located along the ancient Silk Route. It is also the financial and political nerve centre of southwest China and a big tourist destination. In a nutshell, the perfect choice of location for the recently concluded China International Travel Mart (CITM) held here from 13-15 November.

Regarded as the largest professional travel mart in Asia, the CITM featured over 1000 hosted buyers from various countries and regions who came together to discuss and exchange ideas and information as well as enhance cooperation in the field of travel and tourism.

As a major player in the region, India had a strong presence at the event and one of the highlights of the ties between the tourism divisions of both countries was the special India-China Tourism Forum at the CITM. Dr. Mahesh Sharma, Hon’ble Minister for Tourism & Culture in India and Mr. Li Jinzao, Chairman, China National Tourism Administration were the key speakers at this Forum.

Since tourism has become a significant spoke of the Indo-China bilateral cooperation, various efforts are being made to promote travel between the nations. In keeping with this theme, China will launch the ‘Visit China Year in India 2016’ campaign which will organize various programmes and activities to promote travel and tourism.

The evening also showcased the best of the region’s cuisine and heritage and lived up to the colour and drama of this “City of Eternal Spring”.

THE POWER O F PL AC E

memorial. The white-washed, wooden house has been preserved just the way it was when Roerich’s son Svetoslav lived here. A tree-lined path leads to it through a garden in a riot of colours.

Visitors can walk through common spaces of the house but are not allowed inside the bedrooms. I peek through the windows and get a glimpse of the cosy, carpeted spaces. The living room has a fireplace, plush carpets, and two wrought-iron chairs. Another room has a huge study table with a Russian paperweight, a wooden stamp, a slab of thin stone with Tibetan motifs, and a fish-shaped brass pen stand. Wooden chairs laid out on the balcony overlook majestic Kullu Valley. Three rooms on the ground floor make up the art gallery, containing mesmerising paintings by Roerich and Svetoslav. Strangely eerie and captivating by turns, the art displays dramatic mauve skies, the luminescence of the Himalayas in soft post-dusk light, and puny figures framed against lofty mountains. A strange calmness and deep reverence for the mountains emanates from each painting.

Soft classical music wafts out of the gallery and follows me as I make my way down the winding path leading to a green hill, with Nicholas Roerich’s samadhi laid out in the middle. A brown Buddha sits under a headstone. White and yellow wild flowers overrun the place. There’s a bench under a huge banyan tree at one end. A gentle, rainkissed wind whispers in the pines below.

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Nicholas Roerich’s house has been turned into a museum (top) which chronicles his life, and displays paintings made by him and his son Svetoslav; The weeping willow in the courtyard of the 15th-century Naggar Castle adds atmosphere to this historic building (bottom).

As per tradition, I leave a pine cone at the grave as a sign of respect. The memorial of his son Svetoslav, who has a story of his own, is also part of this estate.

Married to yesteryear superstar Devika Rani, he made India his home, travelling its length from Naggar to Bengaluru.

Apart from Himalayan landscapes, the younger Roerich is known for his paintings of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, and other leaders of the time.

As the day draws to a close I walk back to my guesthouse. The last shaft of sunset bathes the mountaintops in a golden hue and cotton-white clouds are aglow.

Distant snowy peaks slowly fade into a

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | DECEMBER 2015

horizon of colours, and I realise that I am witnessing a sight that might very well be one of Roerich’s paintings. THE VITALS Naggar is located in Himachal Pradesh’s Kullu district 280 km/ 7.5 hours north of Chandigarh and 22 km/30 min south of Manali. Overnight Volvo buses ply between Delhi and Manali, from where taxis to Naggar are available (HRTC Volvos leave from ISBT Delhi, tickets `1,400; taxis from Manali to Naggar charge `250 one-way). The museumcum-gallery is open Tues-Sun, 10 a.m.5 p.m.; entry `30.

SAIKO3P/SHUTTERSTOCK (HOUSE), BLAINE HARRINGTON III/ALAMY/INDIAPICTURE (TREE)

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SMART TRAVELLER 58

money manager Serenity and serendipity on Sri Lanka’s southern coast

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checking in Starry skies and cosy desert camps in Rajasthan

Chaotic Gangaramaya Temple is Colombo’s most significant Buddhist shrine. An extension of the temple, in the middle of Beira Lake, offers a more meditative experience.

Southern Seaboard This is National Geographic Traveller India’s handy guide for a couple’s holiday to the southern coast of Sri Lanka. Here, you get prices for everything to help you plan your trip and modify it depending on your budget. This three-day itinerary for two costs `60,000 (without airfare) but can cost less depending on the accommodation/activities chosen.

Options are also available to make this a six-day holiday which would then cost about `90,000 (without airfare) but can also be done for less.

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J

ust a short flight from most major Indian cities, Sri Lanka is familiar in ethos yet distinctly different from India. Despite its compact size, the Emerald Isle offers diverse landscapes and experiences, from tea gardens to wildlife, and quaint hill stations to beaches. While it’s possible to cover most of that in a relatively short span of time, most tourists—rightly—make a beeline for the island’s southern coast, dotted with sunny beaches, good-quality accommodation to suit a range of budgets, and great eating options.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | DECEMBER 2015

A trip of three days to a week makes for the perfect tropical getaway.

GETTING THERE AND AROUND

The easiest way to get from Colombo airport to the city centre is via radio taxi (35 km/30-45 min via the Airport Expressway; Kangaroo Cabs +94-11-2588588; 2588588.com; is the most reliable; airport to the city costs LKR1,750/`800 with toll). You can also request for a Kangaroo Cabs chauffeur to pick you up at the arrivals hall when you reserve the cab on phone or online (LKR2,500/`1,160, plus toll).

PETER STUCKINGS/LONELY PLANET IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES

A COUPLE’S HOLIDAY ON SRI LANKA’S DREAMY COAST FOR `60,000 | BY VIDYA BALACHANDER

M O N EY M A N AGER

Sri Lankan crab (top right) enjoys a reputation among crustacean connoisseurs around the world—a great place to try it is Colombo’s Ministry of Crab restaurant; A typical Sri Lankan rice-and-curry thali (bottom right) is likely to include white or stubby red rice paired with an assortment of vegetables and meat or fish curries; Idiyappams or string hoppers (left) served with potato curry and a variety of sambols are a breakfast favourite.

Several radio cab companies operate within the city. From Nano cabs that are cheaper and better suited to quick jaunts, to Toyota Prius cabs that are more comfortable; you can choose from a range. (Nano cabs, call Budget Meter Taxis at +94-11-2592592; Prius cabs, call Kangaroo). Radio cabs cannot be flagged on the street. The easiest way to hire one is to call the company. Most drivers can speak English and are familiar with the major landmarks of the city. You can request your hotel to book you a cab.

Although train travel within Sri Lanka is picturesque and old-worldly, tickets may need to be booked in advance by visiting a railway station. If you’re on a short trip, hiring a private vehicle through a travel agency is the most convenient option. Rates vary according to destination, although a rough average is LKR25,000/`12,000 for a two-day trip to the south, inclusive of the driver’s stay and daily allowance.

VISA Indians can apply for a 30-day tourist visa to Sri Lanka online at

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YOUR EXPENSE STATS This couple’s holiday through Sri Lanka’s southwestern coast is planned with three-star accommodation, a private taxi, and several meals at fine restaurants.

Travellers can save significantly on the cost of this trip by staying in a budget place and eating at less expensive restaurants serving local food. Since stay and food accounts for over half the budget, choosing cheaper options can halve the cost of this trip, or extend its duration by several days.

27%

30%

FOOD

STAY

25%

18%

GETTING AROUND Budget

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | DECEMBER 2015

SIGHTSEEING AND ACTIVITIES Mid-Range

Expensive

www.eta.gov.lk. The visa takes a maximum of two days to process and costs $15/`986. You can also apply for a visa on arrival at Colombo airport. The processing fee for a visa on arrival is $20/`1,315.

STAY CONNECTED It is easy to procure a SIM card upon landing in Sri Lanka at Dialog, Hutch, or Mobitel counters in the airport arrivals hall. Dialog, the service provider with the widest network also offers special tourist plans (www. dialog.lk/tourist-plans).

SLEEP WELL Located on the arterial Galle Road, the Cinnamon Grand is a popular luxury hotel with a vantage point of the sea and excellent eating options (www.cinnamonhotels.com/ cinnamongrandcolombo; doubles from $170/`11,089). Compact and quirky, Casa Colombo is a boutique property dotted with waterbodies. It also has a rooftop bar and restaurant (www.casacolombo.com; doubles from $90/`5,870).

No less central in terms of location, the newly opened Cinnamon Red offers com-

GEOGPHOTOS / ALAMY/INDIAPICTURE (CURRY MEAL), SIMON REDDY / ALAMY/INDIAPICTURE (STRING HOPPER), LUCA TETTONI/CORBIS (CRAB), SURANGASL/SHUTTERSTOCK (PIE CHART)

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M O N EY M A N AGER

fortable rooms, has an infinity pool and a rooftop bar on the 26th floor, at a more wallet-friendly price (www.cinnamonhotels.com/cinnamonredcolombo; doubles from $80/`5,217).

charm in a firmly south Asian setting, Colombo has come into its own in the years since Sri Lanka’s debilitating, decades-long civil war ended in 2009.

Picket fences have been replaced by parks and open spaces, and a number of the city’s landmarks have received a facelift in the past few years. Hugged by the Indian Ocean on one side, Colombo also boasts a long, vibrant coastline, extending all the way to the once-distant suburb of Mount Lavinia.

Begin your exploration of the city with a visit to Gangaramaya Temple. This 19th-century Buddhist shrine is located in the middle of Beira Lake, a sprawling water body ringed by tall towers in the heart of Colombo’s business district.

Enjoy a ride on the old-worldly swan boats (LKR100-150/`40-50 for an hour) followed by a stop for ice cream on the banks of the lake.

Island Life Refuel with a spread of Jaffna-style delicacies at Palmyrah, a popular restaurant in Renuka City Hotel on Galle Road. It specialises in the fiery cuisine of northern Sri Lanka. Order a stack of hoppers (like appams, but less spongy), to go with signature dishes like mutton pal poriyal (Jaffna-style lamb cooked with coconut milk), kanavai pirettal (cuttlefish curry), and a range of sambols (chutneys). Finish with a jaggery hopper served in a pool of treacle (www.renukahotel.com/dining/palmyrah-restaurant/; lunch for two approximately LKR4,000/`1,853). For a more straightforward Sri Lankan rice-andcurry meal in a clean, air-conditioned environment, head to Upali’s by Nawaloka. Located opposite the Town Hall, a ten-minute cab ride from Galle Road, Upali’s offers a satisfying set meal of the Sri Lankan lunch staple of rice (both red and white) with three vegetarian curries, pol sambol, the spicy chutney made of grated coconut, and pappadam.

At an additional cost, there’s a range of fish, meat, and chicken dishes (www. upalis.com; set meal LKR280/`130, plus taxes per person; crowded at lunch time, reservation recommended).

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Recently renovated, the heritage Galle Face Hotel in Colombo (top) is a perfect spot to unwind in the evening—their high tea is recommended; Paradise Road store (below) is a treasure trove of tasteful Sri Lankan souvenirs, crockery, and assorted homeware.

Retail Stop Work off the excesses of lunch with a spot of shopping at Barefoot on Galle Road, 1 km/10-15-minute

walk from Renuka Hotel. Something of a local institution, Barefoot is best known for promoting Sri Lankan handlooms and crafts through a range of colourful clothing, upholstery, toys, and eclectic housewares. Located in a beautiful heritage bungalow with an al fresco café and art gallery in the courtyard, this is the sort of place where you can spend several hours savouring the island pace of life (www.barefootceylon.com; Monday-Saturday 10 a.m.-7 p.m.; Sunday 11 a.m.-5 p.m.). Interior design aficionados should stop at Paradise Road on Dharmapala

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | DECEMBER 2015

Mawatha (2 km/10 minutes by cab), an eclectic store that stocks a fascinating array of souvenirs, crockery, spices, and assorted bric-a-brac within its dimly lit yet tasteful interiors. The brand’s range of mugs and plates printed with the Sinhalese and Tamil alphabets make excellent presents (www.paradiseroad.lk; daily 10 a.m.-7 p.m.; mugs from LKR550/`255 onwards; café open 10 a.m.-11 p.m.).

Park Peace From Paradise Road, hire a cab to Independence Square on Independence Avenue (2.2 km/5-10 min by taxi), a complex that includes lawns, cycling and walking tracks and a monument built to commemorate the country’s freedom from British rule. This

TIBOR BOGNAR/DINODIA (PARADISE ROAD), JOHN ELK III/ LONELY PLANET IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES (HOTEL)

COLOMBO (1-2 DAYS) Urban Renewal Exuding European

striking, lotus-shaped opera house built a few years ago. (www.colombocitytours. com; Glimpse of Colombo tours available Mon-Fri at 4.30 p.m. and 6.30 p.m.; adults US$ 25/`1,635, children US$12/`785. Heritage of Colombo and Colombo by Night tours also available.)

Seafood Central Located in the Dutch Hospital building in Colombo’s old city or Fort area, is Sri Lanka’s most famous restaurant Ministry of Crab which justifies its premium pricing with a standout menu showcasing its signature ingredient—crab. The restaurant is co-owned by former Sri Lankan cricket captains and local heart-throbs Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene with restaurateur Dharshan Munidasa (5.5 km/25 min from Independence square). Try the spicy, Sri Lankan-style curry crab along with the roast paan or crusty bread. (+94-11-2342722; www. ministryofcrab.com; daily noon-3 p.m. and 6-11 p.m.; prices vary according to size and weight; meal for two approximately LKR12,000/ `5,581.)

GALLE (1-2 DAYS) High on History Leave Colombo early and get on the four-lane Southern Expressway that links Colombo to the

port of Galle in just over an hour. If self-

driving, avoid speeding on this scenic road that offers a perfect Sri Lankan vista of blue skies and greenery (toll LKR400/ `186).

Head straight to Galle Fort, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that was first constructed by the Portuguese in the 16th century, and fortified and rebuilt by the Dutch in the 17th century. Located in colourful and chaotic Galle, the Galle Fort holds a tidy, self-contained town within its stone walls. With cobblestone streets and an unhurried air the fort is fascinating, as much for its multi-ethnic heritage, as for its striking architecture and unique, bohemian vibe. Enjoy an unhurried breakfast at Sugar Bistro, one of the best eateries within the Fort. Try the cinnamon-flecked French toast and any egg dish, and if it’s the weekend, the fully-loaded Sri Lankan breakfast. (sugarcolombo.com/sugar-bistro-galle; breakfast for two LKR2,500/`1,162.)

Stay Swarming with tourists in the busy season (Dec-Feb), Galle Fort has plenty of accommodations from charming homestays and budget hotels to boutique properties and exclusive hotels. Fort Printers is a boutique hotel in an 18thcentury mansion that was once a printing press. Its restaurant serves fresh, local seafood (www.thefortprinters.com; suites

TUUL & BRUNO MORANDI/CORBIS

is a great place to spend an evening in the breezy, tree-lined grounds walking or on a bicycle (bike hire LKR100/`46 an hour).

Arcade Independence Square mall at the northern end of Independence Avenue is good to visit for high-end brand shopping. Most Colombo residents however flock here for a cup of tea at t-Lounge by Dilmah where you can sample and buy a variety of highquality, locally grown teas. The modest menu includes toasties and treats like waffles topped with pol pani, grated coconut with treacle (dilmahtlounge.com; hot and cold teas from LKR300/`139 onwards).

If you’ve got more than one day, and would rather explore the city in a structured way, I’d recommend getting on Colombo City Tour’s Glimpse of Colombo hop-on, hop-off bus tour in the evening. Beira Lake is one of the stops on this open-top, double decker bus tour that flags off from Galle Face, the popular seaside promenade that is also a local landmark. The tour winds through some historic parts of the city, such as Slave Island, a rapidly evolving Britishera suburb with heritage architecture, before moving on to more recent additions like the Nelum Pokuna Theatre, a

An aerial view of the old town of Galle, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that dates back to the 16th century. Within the stone ramparts is a tidy, self-contained town with cobblestone streets, colonial architecture, and an unhurried vibe.

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from $190/`12,249 between Dec-April; $170/`11,121 during the rest of the year).

Mama’s Galle Fort guesthouse in an old bungalow within the fort is more wallet-friendly. It’s spartan but a good budget choice (www.mamas-galle-fort. com; doubles from $40/`2,627; rates vary in peak season).

In Galle town, outside the fort, Jetwing Lighthouse Galle is the most luxurious option. Overlooking a rugged beach, it offers comfortable rooms kitted out with standard mod-cons (www. jetwinghotels.com/jetwinglighthouse; doubles from $148/`9,682).

Away from the tourist throngs and offering vantage ocean views is Closenburg Hotel a colonial-era local favourite with a stunning pool (www.closenburghotel.com; doubles from $125/`8,177).

On Foot The best way to soak in the rich, multi-cultural history of Galle Fort is on a walking tour with Juliet Coombe, a spirited and knowledgeable British author and former journalist with the BBC, who has lived here for over a decade. From architecture and crafts to sampling street food, Coombe leads a variety of walks to suit diverse interests (+94-77-6838659; www. sriserendipity.com/walking_tours.html; from $20/`1,315 per person for a onehour tour).

Satisfy the midday munchies with a meal at Lucky Fort, a popular restaurant well-known for its Sri Lankan spread of rice and up to ten vegetarian and non-vegetarian curries. Look out for seasonal specialities like pineapple or ambarella curry, made with hog plums. (+94-91-2242922; meal for two LKR1,000/`464.)

Watch the sunset at the ramparts of the fort that overlook the ocean. The west end leads to a clean beach with clear waters. Smaller than more popular beaches such as Unawatuna and Hikkaduwa, which are located on the coast, Galle Fort beach is better suited for a brief dip than activities such as snorkelling.

Top Shop Galle Fort has edgy boutiques, jewellery stores, and well-known brands jostling for attention. Visit the Dutch Hospital, a colonial-era hospital that has been converted into a shopping destination, to browse multiple brands under one (high) roof. Sri Lankathemed souvenirs like T-shirts, mugs, bags, curios, and food are best at Luv SL,

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Galle (top) offers a variety of accommodations to suit every budget, from high-end boutique hotels to cosy homestays; Best known for its good value rice-and-curry meals, Lucky Fort (bottom) is a great spot for a Sri Lankan lunch in Galle; Sri Lankan yaka or devil masks (inset), said to ward off evil, make for memorable souvenirs.

a popular sub-brand of Odel, Sri Lanka’s best-known retail outlet.

End the day with a meal at Fortaleza, an elegant boutique hotel with a restaurant that serves good meze and fresh seafood (www.fortaleza.lk; meal for two LKR3,000/`1,383).

BEACHES (1-2 DAYS) Beach Bonanza Close to Galle, explore

the southern coast’s beaches, for gentle, romantic days spent in a serene environment. For snorkelling in shallow, coralrich waters, drive north from Galle to Hikkaduwa (21 km/35 min), one of two

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | DECEMBER 2015

designated national marine parks. The reef off Hikkaduwa supports a number of tropical fish species, even turtles on occasion. Poseidon Diving Station conducts scuba certification courses,

CATHERINE KARNOW/CORBIS (SHOP), PETER GIOVANNINI/IMAGEBROKER/DINODIA (PUB), IVOHA/ALAMY/INDIAPICTURE (ANTIQUE MASKS))

Smart Traveller |

ceviche and sashimi. After a leisurely lunch, settle into one of the beach chairs, overlooking the emerald ocean that is accessible by walking down a few steps.

Although the stretch of beach directly in front of Wijaya Beach is a tad rocky, there is a shallow pool of water just 500 metres away, which is great for a refreshing dip. The restaurant also has an open shower for a quick rinse afterwards (www.wijayabeach.com; pizzas from LKR1,400/`650).

If you’d prefer to go the fine dining route, Talpe Beach Restaurant (5 min south from Wijaya Beach) is a great option, set in an elegant bungalow which also offers accommodation. Here, try the fresh seafood dishes such as tuna tartare, coconut-crusted fish with tamarind sauce, and grilled calamari (www.talpebeach.com; meal for two LKR4,000/`1,860).

Lake Detour Continue to enjoy the easy pace of life with a boat ride on Koggala Lake, a 14 km/20-min drive from Wijaya Beach. Secluded and serene, the lake

is speckled with several small islands, which can be explored by hiring a motor boat that seats four (get there before 5 p.m.). Boat operators add on a few pit stops, including an island with a cinnamon plantation where farmers demonstrate how fragrant Ceylon cinnamon is extracted from the bark of the tree. Buy cinnamon sticks, powder, and oil to take home.

Over 200 bird species live at the lake, considered a biodiversity hotspot. While some aspects of the boat trip may feel like a tourist trap, it’s one worth falling for, simply for the unspoiled experience of Sri Lanka that it offers. (In Koggala town, after Koggala air field and the Martin Wickramasinghe folk museum, look out for signboards advertising “bird island boat tours.” A 90-min boat ride costs LKR4,000/`1,860 for four.)

After a leisurely time at the beach for one or two days, return to Galle, Colombo, or drive straight back to Katunayake airport (2.5 hours) to take your flight back home.

Spending long, quiet hours on Koggala Lake (top left) is a great way to savour the island pace of life; To steer clear of the tourist throng, spend a day or two exploring the aquamarine waters and excellent eateries that dot the beachfront in Thalpe (right); One of two marine sanctuaries in Sri Lanka, Hikkaduwa (bottom left) is the best southern beach for snorkelling and scuba diving.

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BEN WYETH/ALAMY/INDIAPICTURE (MAN ON ROCK), KAT KALLOU/ALAMY/INDIAPICTURE (BEACH), IRYNA RASKO/SHUTTERSTOCK (BOAT)

and is a reliable place to rent snorkelling gear and life jackets (www. divingsrilanka.com; snorkelling gear LKR1,000/`464 per person). Hikkaduwa has numerous accommodation options to suit every budget for those who want to linger.

If your idea of a good time is enjoying a beer on the beach, give popular and crowded beaches like Hikkaduwa and Unawatuna a miss. Head instead to Thalpe, a small, nondescript village best known for its wide swathe of clean sand and aquamarine waters (11 km/25-min south of Galle).

My destination of choice when I make the trip down south is Wijaya Beach, a guesthouse and restaurant on Dalawella Beach in Thalpe. It enjoys a well-deserved reputation as one of the best spots to spend a relaxed Sunday. A bright, airy restaurant exuding a Mediterranean vibe, Wijaya Beach serves some of the best thin-crust, wood-fired pizzas anywhere in Sri Lanka, along with super-fresh seafood dishes like tuna

YOUR TICKET TO

Madhya Pradesh RESULTS OF THE PHOTOGRAPHY CONTEST Here are the results of the MP Tourism - National Geographic Traveller India Photography Contest. We asked readers to submit one travel photograph taken in Madhya Pradesh and win a holiday in the State.

THE WINNER IS...

KUNAL GUPTA

WILDLIFE (FIRST PRIZE) TICKETS AND A 3-NIGHT/4-DAY HOTEL STAY FOR TWO IN MP

WINNER

PROMOTION

Explore the heart of Incredible India where a magnificent past meets a rich heritage. Experience a mystical land of forts, forests, and age-old temples with their unmatched natural and cultural bounty.

2ND PRIZE

Prizes courtesy Madhya Pradesh Tourism (stay at MP Tourism hotels, only lodging and boarding) Also, winners get an annual subscription to National Geographic Traveller India magazine.

Read more about your destination and other interesting places on the Madhya Pradesh website:

mptourism.com

PEOPLE: PIYUSH SHARMA TICKETS AND A 2-NIGHT/3-DAY HOTEL STAY FOR TWO IN MP

CONSOLATION PRIZES COURTESY MP TOURISM

3RD PRIZE

● Animesh Kumar ● Anirudh Ranjan ● Himanshu Rastogi ● Jaishree Khamesra ● Paresh Paradkar ● Saumit Deshpande ● Shashank Birla

WILDLIFE: MANISH KUMAR TICKETS AND A 1-NIGHT/2-DAY STAY FOR ONE IN MP

Smart Traveller |

C HEC KI N G I N

Dunes and Desert Dens UNDER STARRY SKIES, IN THE COMFORT OF A RAJASTHANI DESERT CAMP | BY RUMELA BASU

ROHET WILDERNESS CAMP

MANVAR DESERT CAMP

OSIAN SAND DUNES RESORT CAMP

The biggest lure of Rohet’s desert camp is surely the handsome Marwari horses and equestrian programme. Guests can ride through the desert on 1-4 day itineraries, which often yield blackbuck and chinkara sightings. Those not too keen on horseback adventures can sign up for birdwatching or village tours and outdoor picnics. The site, 17 kilometres from Rohet (40 km south of Jodhpur), has seven luxury tents. Meals are served in a traditional mud cottage with a tiled roof.

All the quintessential delights of a Rajasthani desert camp are on offer at Manvar. Located on a patch of the Thar, it has a main camp with 30 safari tents encircling a low stage that hosts nightly folk performances. A smaller deluxe camp is 400 metres away. Couples can request a romantic private camp with a well-kitted out tent and gourmet meals, far from everyone. If visiting between Oct and Mar, going to Khichan (45 min away) to see migratory birds is a must.

The history of Osian town, where this camp is located, dates to the Gupta period. Then a thriving trading centre, it is now known for the ruins of circa 6th century carved Hindu and Jain temples. The resort on the Jodhpur-Jaisalmer highway is designed like a small fortification and has 21 tents within its walls as well as al fresco dining around a bonfire. Guests can ride out to the desert on a camel, tour the surrounding village, or delight in sightings of chinkaras and birds.



ROHET, RAJASTHAN; 0291-2431161;



SHERGARH, RAJASTHAN; 94141 29767,

84472 27002; manvar.com; doubles from



OSIAN, RAJASTHAN; 0124-6460909; www.

osianresortcamps.com; doubles from `7,000,

rohetwildernesscamp.com; doubles `15,000,

`12,000, including breakfast, dinner, and

including breakfast, dinner, camel safari, and

including breakfast, dinner, and village tour.

cultural performances.

cultural performances.

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PHOTO COURTESY: MANVAR DESERT CAMP AND RESORT (CAMELS & SUITE), PHOTO COURTESY: ROHET HOTELS & CAMP (HORSE), NEERAJ DAHIYA (TENT)

Manvar Desert Camp, Shergarh

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karnataka Rediscovering Bengaluru’s avenues and alleys, one step at a time

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france Lessons in flânerie, the art of people-watching in Paris

BEW AUTHORS/DINODIA

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europe Putting the spotlight on the Continent’s lesser-known places

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■ EURO PE In Split, Croatia, the Riva promenade brings the action to the Adriatic seafront.

EUROPE’S

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Yes, it’s touristy, but Munich’s Hofbräuhaus piles on the charm—and the litres of beer.

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MUNICH, GERMANY

Playing to the Stereotypes FOR ALL ITS PROGRESSIVE THINKING,

Munich tends to look to the past when it comes to lifestyle. The capital of meat-eating, beer-swilling Bavaria is a place where dinner takes the shape of knödel dumplings and pig’s trotters, washed down with local beers by the litre. And although the residents ham it up for Oktoberfest, you’ll catch them breaking out the trachten—as they call their traditional outfits—for special occasions year-round.

It’s all done with such a sense of Gemütlichkeit (neighbourly friendliness) that there’s nothing cloying about Munich—and nothing fake about it, either. Some of the woodpanelled, hangar-like beer halls date back 200 years, and as the days grow warmer, their expansive beer gardens become the meeting places of choice.

BEST FOR Traditions. MAIN EVENT

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Starkbierzeit, or “strong beer time,” is Munich’s lesser known but more authentic spring beer extravaganza.

It runs annually two weeks near Lent.

ALSO TRY Salzburg, Austria, possibly the only other city in the world where lederhosen (leather shorts) are considered acceptable formal attire and apple strudel is widely sold.

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A fine Finnish figure in Tampere

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TAMPERE, FINLAND

Hottest When It’s Cold HELPED

Tampere, once nicknamed “the Manchester of Finland,” grow into Finland’s second largest urban area, now a 90-minute train ride northwest of Helsinki. The cotton mills closed in the 1990s, and offices, restaurants, and cultural attractions, such as the Finnish Labour Museum, moved in.

The Spy Museum here displays Cold War curiosities: miniature cameras and several cunningly disguised weapons.

Summer draws out locals for canoeing, swimming, and hiking, but winter may be the time to experience the city at its natural best. Strap on a pair of sawtoothed snowshoes for a walk on frozen Lake Näsijärvi. Try your hand at ice-fishing. Steam yourself at a pinewood sauna on Lake Pyhäjärvi, then dare winter swimming at a section of the lake kept ice free.

BEST FOR Outdoor winter fun.

MUST-SEE MUSEUM Tampere

Lenin Museum, the building in which Lenin and Stalin first met in 1905. ALSO TRY Oulu, Finland, the self-styled “capital of northern Scandinavia,” ideal for summer canoe tours.

JENS SCHWARZ/LAIF/REDUX (BEER HALL), CUBO IMAGES/SUPERSTOCK (STATUE)

INDUSTRIALISATION

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Merry-go-round coat rack at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

ROT TERDAM , THE NE THERL ANDS

wiped off the map by the German airforce in World War II, Rotterdam bounced back with a creative confidence few European cities can match.

You see it in the Erasmus Bridge, which looks like a giant modernist swan, and in Piet Blom’s iconic cube houses—you can visit Number 70, but the rest remain occupied low-cost homes.

That innovative spirit also reveals itself in the alien-looking Shipping and Transport College, best seen from a water taxi as you speed along the Nieuwe Maas tributary. Other beloved old buildings enjoy a new lease on life, such as the Hotel New York, once headquarters of the Holland America Line. Its neighbours include Norman Foster’s glistening World Port Center.

In one of the city’s oldest districts, find the new Westelijk Handelsterrein, a glass-roofed arcade with some of the finest gallerAFTER BEING NEARLY

Zipping around Europe on planes was uncommon for the budget traveller before RYANAIR and EASYJET debuted their no-frills flights in the late 1990s. Today, flying TRAVEL BY PLANE

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ies, shops, and bars in Rotterdam. The Boijmans Museum here collects a treasure trove of contemporary art and design.

As the sun begins to set, take a walk across the Erasmus Bridge toward Renzo Piano’s KPN Telecom Office Tower and see it spring to life—its facade animated by a grid of 896 24-volt lights dancing in glittering patterns. Like Blom’s skewed houses, this exemplifies Rotterdam design at its best—bold, dazzling, and with a crackling sense of humour.

BEST FOR Cutting-edge contemporary design and architecture.

MAIN EVENT International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam opens

May 2016 in the Rem Koolhaas-designed Kunsthal.

ALSO TRY Copenhagen, Denmark, with its wealth of noteworthy

modern buildings.

within the Continent can be cheaper than taking the train, thanks to the slew of startups and legacy airlines that have riffed on the low-cost model. Most specialise in regional short hauls, such as the Barcelona-based

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | DECEMBER 2015

VUELING, which flies throughout Spain and to major cities like Brussels and Rome, and HOP!, a subsidiary of Air France connecting smaller cities within France, including Nantes and Lille, to the rest of Europe.

ELIAN SOMERS

3

That New Design Trend?

It Started Here

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LUCERNE, SWITZERLAND

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Bridges with Dancing Skeletons

VAN DER MEER RENE/PRISMA/DINODIA (BRIDGE), PETER VRABEL/SHUTTERSTOCK (CHOCOLATE)

EARLY TRAVELLERS to Lucerne, plagued by its heavy rain, regarded the city as Europe’s chamberpot. Locals however, call it a city of iridescent raindrops and have even modelled a delicious kirschfilled chocolate drop called the Lozärner Rägetröpfli after their weather. A late autumn afternoon in Lucerne is an Impressionist’s canvas. On one side of town, Mount Pilatus emerges from its cloud cover. On the other, a burnt sienna canopy of trees stands guard over the River Reuss and its army of trumpeting swans. The medieval bridge of Spreuerbrücke arches over the water and dappled light falls on its panels painted with gaily costumed skeletons, dancing, singing and even duelling in this strange suspension between death and a manic humour. A little further down the river, travellers wind their way across Kappelbrücke (Chapel Bridge) with bags of roasted chestnuts, towards the canopies and terraces of raucous pubs on the Rathausquai. Lucerne’s chic boutiques and byzantine lanes wrap around squares rich in stories. Paintings on houses record the quirks of drunk patrons of the carnival, and a poetic sculpture of a dying lion pays tribute to Swiss martyrs.

An old clock tower boasts the privilege of chiming the passage of time a full minute before the eight others in a city otherwise obsessed with precision. This precision is the cornerstone of every exhibit in the Swiss Museum of Transport, one of Lucerne’s proudest modern structures and an interactive experience through the history of man negotiating land, water, and sky.

BEST FOR Rambling walks. MAIN EVENT

The annual Lucerne Carnival before Ash Wednesday where nothing is at it seems.

Masked musicians and floats come out into the streets and revellers sing, dance and drink the famous Lucerne Coffee. ALSO TRY Basel, Switzerland, a curious mix of the old and the new with surprising street art installations and a vibrant life on the River Rhine.

The triangular arches inside Lucerne’s 13th-century Spreuerbrücke (Spreuer Bridge) has paintings representing the Danse Macabre. The paintings inside this covered wooden bridge feature different aspects of medieval life. What is common to all of them is a grinning skeleton reminding passersby of the inevitability of death.

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At The Chocolate Line shop in Antwerp, chocolate lipstick remains a bestseller.

ANTWERP, BELGIUM

When Fashion Met Chocolate A WELCOME understatement infuses the northern Belgian city of Antwerp, though it has plenty to shout about: its Gothic cathedral; the ornamented guild houses lining the Grote Markt; and the Museum Plantin-Moretus, home to the world’s oldest printing presses.

Even those who don’t enjoy clothes shopping might have a change of heart here, where one-off boutiques such as glove purveyor Huis A. Boon line cobblestoned streets and grand designer stores— including those of local fashion stars Dries Van Noten and Ann Demeulemeester—display a refreshing lack of attitude.

In Antwerp, it pays to ditch the sightseeing checklist and just wander. Walk north of the centre to explore the regenerating docklands area of Eilandje; head south to reach Zuid, with its Parisian-style café culture.

Whichever way you go, there will be chocolate. Chocolatier Burie makes palaces out of the sweet stuff for its famously creative window displays. And Del Rey, near the train station, produces a not-as-innocent-asthey-sound line of “chocolate milks” spiked with liqueurs, like Grand Marnier.

BEST FOR Clothes, culture, and confectionery. MUST-SEE MUSEUM The Red Star Line

Museum tells the story of the thousands who set sail here for the New World. ALSO TRY Bruges, Belgium, brimming with Belgian culture and chocolate.

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SPLIT, CROATIA

claim Roman ruins, but a town that has inhabited, reworked, and centred itself around those ruins as the centuries roll by is—outside Rome itself—something rather special. Perched on a stocky peninsula jutting out from Croatia’s mainland, Split came to prominence thanks to the emperor Diocletian, who built an enormous palace here as his retirement project. Bars, shops, and even hotels now flank the palace’s peristyle, or central courtyard, its tall archways and symmetrical lines forming the old town’s most spectacular square.

Split hasn’t roped off Diocletian’s settlement; rather, it’s built into and around it. The 13thcentury cathedral incorporates the emperor’s mausoleum, while the Roman temple of Jupiter is now a baptistery, its carved Romanesque font guarded by a headless sphinx. The Riva seafront promenade begins outside the palace walls. Completed in A.D. 305, the palace took Diocletian ten years to build. But not even the most egomaniacal of Roman emperors could have imagined that, 1,700 years later, it would still occupy centre stage.

MANY EUROPEAN CITIES

BEST FOR Living history. MAIN EVENT Split

Summer Festival, with superlative theatre, music, and dance in venues around town, including the palace. ALSO TRY Thessaloniki, Greece, with its historic Byzantine and Ottoman architecture.

A sculpture in Brno, Czech Republic

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BRNO, CZECH REPUBLIC

Cheap Tricks Beyond Prague IT’S ALMOST COMPLETELY overshadowed by big sibling Prague, but that’s no fault of Brno, the Czech Republic’s captivating second city, which combines Renaissance, baroque, and modern architecture with vibrant nightlife at affordable prices.

Hearty traditional meals hover around $4/`260, while dinner in a white-tablecloth establishment will rarely take you over $30/`1,950. The all-important price of beer? About $1.50/`100.

BEST FOR A budget break.

MAIN EVENT The annual spring

Jazz Fest, with performers from all over Europe and the U.S. ALSO TRY Krakow, Poland, a second city as enticing as its capital sibling.

Sunset in Split, Croatia

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CHRISTIAN KERBER/LAIF/REDUX (WOMAN), DOUG PEARSON/AWL IMAGES (LANDSCAPE), KEN SCICLUNA/AWL IMAGES (STATUE)

The Emperor’s New Groove

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WHEN IN ROME

POPE FRANCIS ROAMS the globe, but although

Catholics may look forward to his trip to their country, a Roman holiday to the Vatican remains the best way to get close to the pope.

GARDEN The Vatican’s 800-year-old gardens—filled with classical statues, exotic flowers, and graceful fountains—are now open for tours (www.museivaticani.va). Don’t miss the miniature copy of the Lourdes Basilica and Grotto, given to the pope by French Catholics in 1905.

SECRET

YOUR OWN SISTINE CHAPEL

The home of the papal enclave is as famed for crowds as it is for Michelangelo’s frescoes. Luckily, some tour companies, like Dark Rome and Walks of Italy, can bump you to the front of the line to enter the chapel, while others, including Italy With Us, offer an intimate evening tour.

sumptuous vestments—or to scoop up church fashion for the layman: the shop’s famed knee-high socks in cardinal red or bishop purple.

For the quirkiest photo op of St. Peter’s, leave Vatican City for the Aventine Hill headquarters of the Order of Malta.

Peek through the entry door keyhole to see the perfectly framed dome, taking in three sovereign states (the Order, Italy, and Vatican City) in one glance.

PICTURE PERFECT

SPOT THE POPE You don’t need to be Catholic for a papal audience. Anyone can apply for (free) tickets for his gen-

eral audience, held Wednesday mornings at St. Peter’s (in summer at Castel Gandolfo), by writing to the Prefecture of the Papal Household. No tickets? Head to St. Peter’s Square on Sunday at noon for a glimpse of the pope instead; he gives a blessing from his residence window.

The Prati neighbourhood just beyond the Vatican walls has upped its culinary game. Recent arrivals include Romeo (its a menu boasting everything from rigatoni carbonara to a hamburger with fontina cheese and apricot chutney), gelateria Fatamorgana, and a bakery from bread master, Gabriele Bonci, which also serves pizza by the slice.

PRATI’S NEW EATS

Sixty years before Michelangelo

MICHELANGELO WHO?

painted the Sistine ceiling, 15th-century genius Fra Angelico decorated Pope Nicholas V’s private chapel with stunning frescoes. A deeply devout friar later beatified by Pope John Paul II, Fra Angelico was also an artist of extraordinary sensitivity and storytelling ability, as shown in his frescoes here from the lives of St. Lawrence and St. Stephen.

VEIL While walking around the baldachin of St. Peter’s Basilica, pause before the statue of St. Veronica. The chapel above holds the veil believed to be imprinted with Christ’s face; usually under lock and key, Veronica’s veil is displayed to the faithful during evening service on Palm Sunday from the small balcony in front of the chapel.

VERONICA’S

AN UNCONVENTIONAL STAY

During his 26-year papacy, Pope John Paul II couldn’t resist the temptation of gelato from Rome institution Giolitti. The shop regularly delivered his favourite flavour—marron glacé (candied chestnuts)— directly to the Vatican.

PAPAL GELATO

TAILOR MADE Six generations of the Gammarelli family have outfitted bishops, cardinals, and at least six popes.

Even if you don’t need a cassock measured, stop at the 141-year-old shop, near the Pantheon, just to admire its

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Pope Francis greets a crowd assembled for his weekly audience.

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Located on Rome’s loveliest square, Piazza Farnese, the 15th-century Casa di Santa Brigida is a convent with simple guest rooms with parqueted floors and antique furniture. You’re even welcome to join the Brigidine sisters for meals and services, which include daily Mass at 7.30 a.m.—or, if you’d rather, you can head up to the rooftop at 4 p.m. to sip wine and listen to the sisters singing vespers below. Make sure to peek at the rooms of the Swedish St. Bridget, who lived here in the 14th century.

ALBERTO PIZZOLI/GETTY IMAGES (POPE), APERTURE SOUND/SHUTTERSTOCK (ROSARY) FACING PAGE: IAN COLLINS (BASILICA), ANDREW MEDICHINI/AP IMAGES (MAN), E RISTINA GILL (FOOD), SIME/ESTOCK PHOTO (FRESCO)

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In and Around the Pope’s Vatican

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Clerical garments at the Gammarelli shop, Rome.

Pizza in the Prati neighbourhood, Rome.

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A keyhole view of St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City.

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Dom Luís Bridge, a Porto icon, spans the Douro River in Portugal.

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Pasta-making at a Bologna cooking class.

PORTO, PORTUGAL

A Surprise of a City?

We’ll Drink to That

BOLOGNA, ITALY

Pass the Tortelloni, Per Favore

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FRIDAY NIGHT IN BOLOGNA, and the central Quad-

BEST FOR All things port. The

rilatero district is heaving. But it’s not the trendy bars or boutiques that have brought what feels like half the city to these ancient streets; the biggest line, spilling out into Via Drapperie, is at delicatessen Salumeria Simoni, where customers are stocking up on great wedges of Parmesan and piles of prosciutto before the weekend can really begin.

Often overlooked by visitors, Bologna magnifies and mixes the best Italian clichés. Historic architecture? Check—these Renaissance palazzos, terracotta roofs, and winding streets seem barely changed in centuries. An intrinsic sense of style? Of course— from meticulously kept bars serving frothy cappuccinos to shops selling handmade shoes or designer labels. Friendly service?

Absolutely—Bologna has yet to develop tourist fatigue, unlike Rome and Venice.

And great food? Well, there’s a reason why Bologna is called la grassa, or “the fat one.” All Italy acknowledges: The food here ranks second to none.

drink is produced exclusively in the Douro Valley. MAIN EVENT Fireworks-filled Festa de São João (June 23). ALSO TRY Faro, another underrated Portuguese city, with a charming old centre.

BEST FOR The essence of Italy. MUST-SEE MUSEUM Palazzo Fava, a medieval villa formerly home to one of Bologna’s most prominent families which hosts top-notch temporary art exhibits. ALSO TRY Bergen, Norway, another small-city gem with historic buildings and great views of fjords and mountains.

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MICHELE FALZONE/AWL IMAGES (BRIDGE), CATHRINE STUKHARD/LAIF/REDUX (PASTA)

IT’S THE START of a dazzling sunset in Porto, a sequence that will throw the iron arch of Dom Luís Bridge into silhouette, make its river, the Rio Douro look like treacle, and finally turn the riverside town houses the colour of tawny port. Which is appropriate because Portugal’s Douro Valley is renowned for its fortified wines—those unique white, ruby, and tawny ports created by arresting the fermentation process with the addition of brandy (which sweetens the results).

You can’t visit Porto without noticing the warehouses, restaurants, and bars emblazoned with names such as Quinta do Noval, Taylor’s, Croft, and Ferreira.

So go ahead and taste the port. It’s good. But that’s just the beginning.

Porto’s real thrill lies in the magnificent mash-up of traditional and modern—for example, those brand-name boutiques next to stores selling wax body parts, which are left in churches as pleas for divine intercession.

At the art nouveau Majestic Café, the endless mirrors are starting to age. The clientele read newspapers, keeping one eye on the tourists ogling this belle époque beauty.

If Lisbon is the meal, Porto is the sweet and storied digestif.

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BORDEAUX, FRANCE

A New Vantage on Premier Vintages

LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND

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Got to Get This Into My Life

WITH MORE THAN A LITTLE DOSE of nocturnal naughtiness and a waterfront to rival any in Europe, Liverpool has emerged as one of England’s most convivial and cosmopolitan cities.

The Tate Liverpool, in the Albert Dock, allows visitors to ponder art—Jean Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst—without having to do battle with the crowds at the Tates in London. The Merseyside Maritime Museum argues that boats, far more than the Beatles or football, elevated Liverpool to global renown.

The city of about half a million is walkable. The area between the docks and the city centre, known as the Baltic Triangle, used to be where all the dock depots clustered—a few shipping agents remain—but has evolved into a creative hotspot, with industrial buildings housing design studios, Internet start-ups, bistros, and the inevitable bike shop.

Have lunch on Hope Street, one of the city’s preeminent dining strips. The London Carriage Works serves up locally sourced dishes, such as Liverpool Bay sea bass. Then down a postprandial pint of Strongheart ale at the Phil (aka Philharmonic Dining Rooms), one of the most beautiful pubs in Britain. The pub’s two rooms are ideal for cosy chats.

For something more rock-and-roll, check into the centrally located Hard Days Night hotel, with a lively cocktail bar and pop art in the rooms, or check out funky Parr Street Studios, in the Ropewalks district. Its Studio2 bar is as glamorous as any in town after dark, and the studios are still fully functioning.

BEST FOR Pop culture and pubs with history—Baltic Fleet, Philharmonic Dining Rooms, Ye Cracke, Ye Hole in Ye Wall. MUST-SEE ART A working Merseyside ferry

painted in “dazzle” camouflage by the godfather of British pop art, Peter Blake, at the Tate. ALSO TRY Hull, another great northern English city—too often passed over, but fun and friendly.

With stations in the hearts of cities and routes through some of the most scenic landscapes on the Continent, riding the rails in Europe can be both practical and romanTRAVEL BY TRAIN

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tic. Most high-speed international trains, like the EUROSTAR and TGV, subscribe to airline-style ticketing, which guarantees you a seat. Others sell open tickets that are good anytime; seat reservations are optional and

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VISITORS ONCE just glanced over this UNESCO-listed city’s stately 18th-century squares and harmonious architecture before heading out of town. The Route des Châteaux, running north from Bordeaux’s centre, winds through the Médoc wine region, past a roster of famed chateaus—Latour, Margaux, Lafite Rothschild.

But Bordeaux now uncorks more reasons to linger in the city. A revitalised riverfront makes it an increasingly popular port of call for international river cruise lines such as Uniworld and Viking. The Musée du Vin et du Négoce gives historical context to Bordeaux’s winemaking industry and includes a wine tasting in the price of admission. Capping it all off, the daringly swirl-shaped Cité des Civilisations du Vin will be a cultural hub— with interactive exhibits, performances, and food and wine experiences—when it opens on the banks of the Garonne in spring 2016.

BEST FOR All things wine. MAIN EVENT

The biennial Bordeaux Wine Festival, 23-26 June, 2016. ALSO TRY Galway, Ireland’s most Irish city, full of fine drinking establishments.

With reporting by Mark Baker, Julia Buckley, Stuart ForSter, Suzanne king, Margaret loFtuS, chriS MoSS, Pol Ó conghaile, Mark c. o’Flaherty, aManda ruggeri, and diya kohli.

cost extra. You can buy them last-minute at any train station, but you’ll find a better deal if you scout the websites of national railways and retailers like Rail Europe (www. raileurope.co.in) a few months in advance.

HEMIS/AWL IMAGES

The Fab Four in neon in Liverpool, England

Bottles spiral around the staircase at L’Intendant wine shop, in Bordeaux, France

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y

Reinventing the

MODERN Past and present in Panjim as it negotiates the 21st century

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By Vivek Menezes

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Most cafés, boutiques, and inns in old Panjim display painted azulejos (facing page), the traditional hand-painted tiles of Iberia; With its chunky jewellery and edgy design, Sacha’s Shop in Panjim is quintessentially boho-chic. The little store also stocks designs by the renowned Goabased designer Savio Jon.

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We bought an apartment just footsteps from the beach at Miramar, and, as with every previous home, I began to explore our new surroundings with camera and notebook in hand. I ventured out again and again, to try and peel back the dense overlays of social and cultural history that make India’s smallest state’s pocket-sized capital feel so instantly, palpably different from any other city in the country.

From our first days as new residents, Panjim’s effect was eerily transcendent. Where I once raced feckless from point A to B, now my pace blurred to a languid, circuitous stroll. Instead of ducking my head to issue curt nods of recognition, I found myself almost involuntarily engaged in gracious, elaborately mannered exchanges, often with total strangers. All of us became inveterate ramblers. My kids clamour for long walks in town like other children in other parts of the country beg for mall visits.

We grew utterly devoted to the abiding joys that have always made Panjim special. There are routinely breathtaking sunsets on the beach near our home at Miramar, where fishermen still wade waist-high into the water to pull in huge perch and mullets. The lingering hundred-year-old café courtesies at Tato and Bhonsle. Bacchanalian revelry at the Carnival, and languid peoplewatching on the criss-crossed steps of the church square. Frugal magic and pure exhilaration of a free monsoon ferryboat ride across the Mandovi River, and the welcoming outdoor midnight mass on Christmas Eve in historic Fontainhas, where residents of the neighbourhood hospitably lay out coffee and cake for all visitors.

But at roughly the same time that we arrived in the city, Panjim began to undergo a remarkable

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metamorphosis, which continues to polish its architectural heritage to a 21st-century sheen. The trigger was the International Film Festival of India, which made the city its permanent home in 2004. The splendid old Goa Medical College precinct—it housed the first medical college in Asia—was beautifully restored for this purpose. The following decade has seen an impressive range of art galleries, restaurants, hotels, boutiques, and start-ups decanting sparkling new fizz into the gorgeous, vintage 19thand early 20th-century localities.

All that new energy fits particularly well with this decorous little riverside city, because of the little-known paradox that underlies its considerable charms. All of the sun-dappled, seemingly quaint Latinate architecture and old-fashioned atmosphere is deceptive. Goa’s capital is actually the first rigorously modern city of India. Panjim was originally constructed with great care by technocratic, highly globalised natives of the 19th century, who travelled back and forth between Europe, North and South America, and sought to build a city back home that articulated their ambitions and unique world view.

Thus, the fundamental reason for Panjim’s difference from other Indian cities lies in the profound dissimilarity of the Goan experience of Portuguese colonialism and the rest of India under the British. Briefly, the 450-year-old Estado da India’s (State of India) heyday was in the 16th century, when it was the richest trading port in the world, but Portugal’s ability to protect power within its own empire crashed soon thereafter. It only managed to retain nominal control through a set of compromises with increasingly assertive Hindu and Catholic Goan elites. By the 19th century, a full-scale internal rout was underway, signalled by the abrupt shifting of administrative power from priest-dominated “Old Goa” to the native-built “New Goa” in Panjim.

You can feel the contrast in the course of a half-hour walk.

This is the first city in India built on a grid, with pavements constructed along all of its main roads. Shade trees were imported from South America, engineering blueprints for drainage and sewerage from Germany, and concepts for park gazebos and bandstands from England. Panjim is where the first non-Western “world citizens” asserted themselves, selfconfidently brought Hinduism back into the public sphere, created a range of modern institutions for their own use, and sought what the passionate historian of Panjim, Vasco Pinho,

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en years ago, I fulfilled a boyhood dream by moving to my native Goa, to live in Panaji (Panjim) with my wife and two sons (our third son was born in the city) after a lifetime cleaved between giant metropolises: Bombay, New York, London, Paris.

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Panjim’s iconic Abbe Faria statue depicts the Goan priest hypnotising a woman (facing page). Faria, who played a role in the French Revolution, is also believed to have invented the 100-square draughts game while in prison at the Bastille; Patrons love Hotel Venite (top) in Fontainhas, Goa’s Latin Quarter, for its old-world charm and overhanging balconies full of music and laughter; Every December, locals in Panjim flock to watch fireworks and celebrate the three-day-long feast (bottom) held at Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception Church.

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describes as “freedom from fear the like of which has existed perhaps nowhere else.”

This is why I like to begin the impromptu Panjim walking tours I conduct for culture-minded visitors at the entrance to the Institute Menezes Braganza. Situated in a corner of the Quartel— the imposing compound facing the riverfront opposite the ferry wharf—this is where the first public library in Asia was inaugurated in 1832, giving all Goans access to a huge, multilingual collection of books and periodicals in French, German, English and Portuguese, but also in Marathi and Konkani. Over the century before 1947, the library and companion public institutions signified the first independent republican impulses in India.

Formerly called the Instituto Vasco da Gama, Institute Menezes Braganza neatly illustrates both the taste and aspirations of globalised Goans of the 19th and 20th centuries, who endowed their beloved centre of culture with the most extraordinary collection of contemporary art in India, including original works

by Renoir, Cézanne and Pissarro. The entranceway is itself a marvel, lined with panoramic azulejos, the emblematic painted ceramic tiles of Iberia. These depict scenes from Luís de Camões’ epic poem Os Lusíadas, about the departure of Vasco da Gama for India, his rounding of the Cape of Good Hope, and his encounter with the Zamorin of Calicut.

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Like Dante in Italian or Shakespeare in English, Camões is by far the most significant writer of Portuguese, and is credited with helping to create the modern language. But most of this poet’s greatest work was not written in his country. Instead it was produced in Goa. His most recent translator, Landeg White, writes, “it was the experience of being in India that changed [Camões] from a conventional court poet into one of the most original…”

Now we head to Jardim Garcia da Orta, where Panjim commemorates another little-known connection to global intellectual history. This pleasant park, where senior citizens cram themselves four-a-bench at dusk to gabble volubly in Portuguese and Konkani, is named for the brilliant Renaissance-era doctor, botanist, and scientist (and closeted Jew) who first communicated the wealth of India’s medicinal and commercially valuable plants to Europe. Every Sunday evening, musicians perform in the park’s bandstand, while locals dance, lounge, and reminisce.

Right above is Clube Vasco da Gama, a century-old social club that encapsulates the living traditions of Panjim. Still frequented by the great-great-grandchildren of its founding members, it is also wonderfully welcoming to walk-ins and visitors, who can sit under high ceilings and enjoy the constant breeze from floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the gardens below,

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Masked revellers, folk singers, and giant, colourful floats spill into Panjim’s streets during the Goa Carnival (top and facing page) every February.

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The 19th- and 20th-century architecture of Panjim High Court (bottom) and structures in the Latin Quarter (top left and right) may have acquired a 21st-century sheen, but retain the elegance of their Indo-Iberian roots; Over the years, even Panjim’s road signs have embraced the ubiquitous azulejo (facing page).

while enjoying the house favourite chouriço pao, the emblematic, vinegary Goa sausage with hand-kneaded bread.

Back to the waterfront, where an eye-catching, dramatic sculpture depicts one of the most ambitious 19th-century Goans, Abbé José Custódio de Faria, who made an unprecedented, outsized reputation for himself in post-revolutionary France. A controversial priest who preached at the Vatican and Portuguese courts, and schemed with Tipu Sultan’s agents to depose the colonialists, he became a Parisian sensation for his public battles with Anton Mesmer (whose name is the root of the word “mesmerise”), about the true nature of hypnotism. Faria’s insight about auto-suggestion is considered to be the origin of scientific hypnotism, and he was immortalised by Alexandre Dumas in The Count of Monte Cristo.

Directly opposite Faria’s statue is a valuable palimpsest of the city. At first glance, in the shorthand drivel of the tourism and real estate marketplaces, it is a “Portuguese house”. But look just beyond the facade, and the Mhamai Kamat house unfolds into a Konkani village, classically arrayed along courtyards with fruit trees, ancient kitchens and a timeless, laterite-lined well. The architect Raya Shankhwalker, who grew up in a part of this building, describes the indigenous fusion of building styles in Goa as a “unique architectural expression”, an “appropriate climatic and social response” that resulted in a “stunning collection of well-proportioned houses.”

Only now, more than 50 years after decolonisation, is it becoming apparent that these old houses of Panjim are an irreplaceable cultural treasure that merit preservation, rather than the wholescale destruction that has ravaged heritage districts in other parts of India. While some protection has come via city ordinances, most of the remaining buildings have survived simply because their owners consider them a part of their identity.

A new cultural hub for Old Panjim is steadily taking shape in the heart of Fontainhas, the “Latin Quarter”, where the Panjim Inn family of boutique hotels has spread itself between three old buildings (and a new one) including the popular Gitanjali Gallery. A few steps away, the Fundacao Oriente, headquartered in Lisbon, has opened a jewel-like gallery in a century-old villa to showcase a selection of masterpieces by Antonio Trindade, the “Rembrandt of the East” who was the first Indian faculty member of the J.J. School of Art in Mumbai. Opposite is another new venture in an old building, the vibrant Traveller’s Café with its excellent coffee and free Wi-Fi. Fontainhas, like the rest of Old Panjim, is best explored on foot through its bylanes and broader paths. Here, you stroll past the house where local priests conspired to overthrow the Portuguese in 1787—the first war of Indian independence!—to a chapel housing the notorious cross of the Inquisition, in front of which hundreds of Goans were condemned to flames. But Panjim is never all distant past. Right in front, in the middle of a 19th-century block of houses, are the headquarters of the Charles Correa Foundation, a miraculous cube of light brimming with the great man’s archives, and smiling, young acolytes dedicated to “the betterment of Goa’s built and natural habitat.”

That habitat is in better shape now than it has been in many decades, as a new generation of innovations moves into halfabandoned or empty structures. Even as the state mostly sits on its hands, the citizens of Panjim are steadily burnishing their city with unexpected new delights sheathed in lovely classic surroundings. The young designer Syne Coutinho has opened a little boutique in a cottage by the river in São Tomé. Sacha’s Shop is an eclectic mix of clothes, jewellery and bric-a-brac in a side room of an imposing mansion near the Boca da Vaca spring.

Near where I live in Miramar, a Milanese native, Maria Grazia Raschi, has opened an astonishingly good Italian restaurant that turns out hand-made pastas and brick-oven pizzas in a room dominated by large black-and-white photographs of Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. Just below, Frenchborn Lucie Masson’s Patisserie Delicieux serves up an array of cakes, croissants, and snacks made fresh every day from topquality ingredients.

In the aristocratic neighbourhood of Campal, which is filled with huge old houses, the activist-minded fashion designer and writer Wendell Rodricks showcases his one-of-a-kind collections in the upper storey of a tree-shaded residence. Very close by, the Fisherman’s Wharf restaurant has rebuilt a vast, crumbling villa to become the most family-friendly establishment in town, with a seafood-dominated menu that includes some of the best Goan fare in Panjim.

High up in Altinho, where the archishop and chief minister live near each other, a stately, typically Goan home has been renovated into Sunaparanta, a centre for the arts with a charming café nestled in its courtyard. Called Bodega, the café is owned and operated by Vandana Naique, a native of Margao who spent many years in New York as a pastry chef, and who r e m a i n s obsessive about quality. It’s one of my favourite places to grab a quick lunch in the city.

But no place in Panjim better epitomises its deeply rooted contemporary revival than Black Sheep Bistro, an unexpectedly thrilling new restaurant in the same mansion which accommodates Sacha’s Shop. The venture is an immediately appreciable labour of love from Prahlad Sukhtankar, who grew up just a few yards away down the road, and his wife Sabreen. The couple met at hotel school in Switzerland.

Panjim’s generations mingle agreeably all day at BSB, as Goans have inevitably come to call it. Regulars drop in from the neighbourhood, and visitors from all over the world pore over the menu’s several pages, which prominently notes “we are proud to support a ‘farm to table’ philosophy.” Thoughtful experiments abound, including poha-crusted chicken laddoos, paper-thin medallions of raw fish cured with paan-infused olive oil, and a wildly inventive deconstructed puran poli. My sons always go for Goa sausage, smeared on homemade poi bread, enlivened with molten dark chocolate shavings. An enduring classic, but irresistibly revitalised. That is my Panjim, today. ViVek Menezes is a writer and photographer, and founder and cocurator of the annual Goa Arts + Literary Festival. He lives next to Miramar Beach in Goa, with his wife and three sons.

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Carlos Meneses and Schubert Cotta are skilled accompanists for the new generation of fado singers in Goa, who specialise in the evocative, Moorishtinged soul music of Portugal.

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THE GUIDE

Stay

Don’t Miss

Panjim (Panaji) lies on the tip of Tiswadi island, at the centre of Goa’s coastline. You can reach any corner of the state in less than two hours drive from the city. The beach strips of North and South Goa are equidistant and are 1-2 hr away. Just upriver is the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Old Goa.

Within the heritage district of Fontainhas, the Panjim Inn family of hotels offers a range of quirky, characterful options (panjiminn.com; doubles from `3,400). Nearby is the similarly tastefully repurposed Hospedaria Abrigo de Botelho (hadbgoa.com; doubles from `2,100), the distinctly swankier La Maison Fontainhas (lamaisongoa.com; doubles from `4,100) and, right opposite, the incredible value-for-money, family-run Afonso Guest House (afonsoguesthouse.com; doubles from `2,500). More budget options are available from thehostelcrowd (thehostelcrowd.com; doubles from `1,400). Looming over the Latin Quarter is the five-star The Crown (thecrowngoa.com; doubles from `6,500), with unbeatable views of River Mandovi. On the verge of the aristocratic neighbourhood of Campal, the Vivanta by Taj-Panaji (vivantabytaj.com; doubles from `11,900) is the most luxurious hotel in Panjim, while the Goa Marriott Resort & Spa (marriott.com, doubles from `13,950) sits riverside where the Mandovi meets the ocean at Miramar. Another excellent option is across Dona Paula hill at the beachfront Cidade de Goa designed by Charles Correa (cidadedegoa.com; doubles from `9,500). All rates are starting rates and for low season.

Trindade Gallery at Fundação Oriente (www. foriente.pt) for its small but important collection of masterful oil paintings by Antonio Xavier Trindade, an important early 20th-century Goan artist. Heritage Walks It is difficult to get the best out of this many-layered cultural gem without an expert guide. Great tours of the city are regularly organised

by Goa Heritage Action Group (goaheritage.in).

Individual tours can also be arranged from Jack Sukhija of Panjim Inn, and Dr. Luis Dias (luisdias. wordpress.com). Kala Academy At one end of the city’s riverfront cornice, this small architectural masterpiece by Charles Correa houses conservatories for western and Indian classical music, and hosts concerts and plays almost every day. Abbe Faria statue One of Goa’s most intriguing public artworks, it also occupies a very significant place next to Clube Nacionale, the Mhamai Kamat household, and the superb Palacio Idalcao. Velha Goa Galleria This iconic store (velhagoa. net) near Panjim Inn has a vast selection of products crafted from tin-glazed ceramic tiles called azulejos.

Don’t miss their gorgeous jewellery boxes and replicas of Goan shell windows.

Eat Acclaimed new restaurant Black Sheep Bistro (blacksheepbistro.in) is a culinary highlight of Panjim. Another is Horse Shoe (0832-2431788), an extravaganza of Luso-Indian fare. For sandwiches, cupcakes, and lunches on the go, you can’t beat Bodega (facebook.com/bodegaGoa) on Altinho hill, and first-rate Italian food is available near Miramar beach at Baba’s Wood Café (facebook. com/babaswoodcafe). Just below is French-run Patisserie Delicieux (delicieux.co.in). For goodies and an old-world atmosphere go to the century-old cafés Bhonsle (opposite Cine National), Tato (near municipal garden) and bakeries Confeitaria 31 de Janeiro (0832-2225791) and Mr. Baker (08322224622). For Goan food in a family-friendly setting, The Fisherman’s Wharf (thefishermanswharf.in) in Campal is unbeatable. Finally the local favourites are Clube Vasco da Gama (0832-2423768), Venite (0832-2425537), or Viva Panjim (0832-2422405) in Fontainhas, serving up delectable Goan curries and local pork specialities.

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Orientation

Horse Shoe restaurant, Panjim

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Tipu Sultan has been an iconic figure in the Bengaluru and Mysore area ever since his fierce wars against the British in the 18th century. He was known as the Tiger of Mysore and his great love for art is reflected in the construction of his summer palace (facing page) in Bengaluru.

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City THIS

Walking WAS MADE FOR

Strolling through Bengaluru’s avenues and alleys leads to new information, creative inspiration, even a broken leg

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lady guides a motley group of people interested in architecture and local history into Bengaluru’s Krishna Rao Park, at the centre of which

is a curious, abandoned pavilion. A chowkidar unlocks it and lets us in, and we discover a grand conference hall covered in cobwebs and bird droppings, like a scene out of a scary movie. I never knew that such a place existed

right in the heart of town. In that setting, Dr. Rachel Lee narrates the riveting story of German architect, Otto Koenigsberger, who designed

I’d never heard of him before this day, but I’m learning a lot of new things on this walk organised by the Centre for Contemporary Studies at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). Koenigsberger, who was Jewish, escaped Nazi persecution and found a safe haven in India. Around 1940, he was appointed the Chief Architect and Town Planner of the princely state of Mysore.

The walk in his footsteps ends at the leafy IISc campus, where Koenigsberger designed several interesting buildings that are still in use as offices and lecture halls. Unfortunately a number of Koenigsberger’s fine constructions, such as a bus terminus at Kalasipalyam, and tiffin mantaps in Malleswaram, have been demolished. But some of the cities he was involved in planning elsewhere, such as Jamshedpur and Bhubaneswar, still stand as a legacy to his vision of a well-organised modern city.

This is the second heritage walk I’ve been on in this past week, and I suspect I’m becoming something of a walk junkie. A few days earlier, I had joined another tour organised by Bengaluru by Foot, which traces the history of Tipu Sultan, a betterknown name than Koenigsberger when it comes to the shaping of Bengaluru’s history. I had heard about Tipu’s birthplace at Devanahalli, just next to the new Bengaluru International Airport, but going there seemed like an ordeal. Besides, how would I interpret whatever I saw? For that purpose, Ameen Ahmed, a PR man turned wildlife enthusiast and heritage lover, is a great guide and I get to see much more than I’d bargained for. After climbing the ramparts of Devanahalli’s impressive fort, which is rarely visited by tourists but often used for film shoots, we drive on to Sultanpet, a small town at the foot of Nandi Hills, named after Tipu. We stroll inside a 1,000-year-old temple and then to an abandoned British burial ground with spooky tombstones. Nearby is a tiny mosque, now completely crumbling, that Tipu built at the point where steps lead uphill. We then drive to the top of the hill to explore Tipu’s hunting lodge and walk along 18th-century fortifications that are still standing.

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All this hectic walking made me recall the time 15 years ago when I first moved to the city. Then there were no such heritage walks on offer, but I walked around a lot, figuring it was the best way to get to know my new hometown. Bengaluru, which today grows at an estimated rate of 600 square feet per minute, was a smaller city then. It was completely feasible to walk the 7-8 kilometres from where I lived to M.G. Road or City Market.

I especially enjoyed strolling in the Majestic area, where I first set foot as a backpacker ages ago. It was rich in character, with its cheap old-style lodges, even cheaper eateries, eccentric shops, and grey markets. It was there that I acquired a fascination for seedy bars, gobi Manchurian, and art deco cinemas. Majestic fulfilled all the criteria for an interesting microcosm through which to view the world, so for me, a novelist, it became an unending source of inspiration. Gradually I began planning a series of detective novels and decided to name my fictional hero, what else, but Mr. Majestic. He was based on my encounters with the neighbourhood’s touts, and in the first novel Mr. Majestic! The Tout of Bengaluru, the tout becomes a detective who walks through the city in search of a lost tourist. The research required a lot of walking.

My friends thought me totally spaced out whenever they spotted me walking about. Trying to usher me into their air-conditioned cars, they told me of how V.S. Naipaul complained, in A Million Mutinies Now, about the poor pavements in Bengaluru. I pooh-poohed their warnings.

Then one day, 10 years ago, heading home after one of my epic walks, in pouring monsoon rain, I fell into a drain through a hole in the pavement and broke a leg. Alert fellow city-dwellers rescued me, brought me to a hospital, and I spent the next four months laid up in bed. The friends tut-tutted, told you so.

After that, the city didn’t quite seem like it was made for walking anymore. But then, about a year after breaking my leg, I discovered the possibility of going on organised city walks. My first walk was a memorable tour of the old fort in Bengaluru

PHOTO COURTESY: INTACH BENGALURU CHAPTER

this pavilion while he lived and worked in Bengaluru from 1939 to 1948.

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MANOHAR PHOTOGRAPHY TRAVEL/ALAMY/INDIAPICTURE (FORT)

Bangalore Fort (top) was originally a mud fort around which the oldest parts of the city grew. It is poorly signposted, so go on a guided walk to explore the dungeon and other features; Walks to city landmarks like St. Mark’s Cathedral (bottom), founded in 1808, focus on aspects like design and civic spaces, and provide new ways of engaging with the city.

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To see the City Market’s flower sellers in all their glory, take an early morning walking tour of the petes.

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Pete, the node around which the city originally grew, organised

by INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage). The fort is often closed to tourists but our guide took us down into the dungeon where Tipu Sultan kept British prisoners. I was hooked. The next INTACH walk took me to the Gavipuram cave temple and its surroundings, through which we were guided by the erudite architect and INTACH convener Sathya Prakash Varanasi. The same walk included a visit to one of the towers built hundreds of years ago by Bengaluru’s founder, Kempegowda, to mark the city’s westernmost point. Of course, the city has grown well beyond that landmark now, and the small tower stands lost in the middle of habitation.

My appetite to learn more about my own city grew, for I was reminded how walking is a mode of transport particularly suited to the discovery of edifying detail. The INTACH walks were a great start, but they were sporadic. But then, around that same time in 2005, my prayers were answered when a company called BangaloreWALKS was started by Arun Pai. I heard about them a year or two later, signed up for one of their heritage walks, and was told to arrive at the meeting point at an ungodly hour on a Sunday morning. The meeting point was Trinity Church, which I had never heard of despite having lived in Bengaluru for half a decade. It turned out that the Trinity Circle, right on M.G. Road, is named for this slightly forlorn building and it just went to prove that the very places I thought myself familiar with still held secrets worth discovering. The church’s walls bore witness to some of the peculiar hardships of British life in India: memorial plaques mentioned Englishmen falling down Jog Falls or getting eaten by tigers in Shimoga. Expat life for us foreigners in India has clearly improved since then. After giving us some his-

tory of the church, our guide for the day, Arun’s wife, the author Roopa Pai, took us down the length of M.G. Road, known as South Parade in British times. Every 50 steps or so, we stopped to look at something interesting such as the site of the bungalow where the young Winston Churchill had supposedly lived.

At that time, I remember wondering whether there’d really be takers for this kind of activity—getting up early, battling Sunday shoppers, listening to outdoor lectures on local history.

To my surprise, ten years on, BangaloreWALKS has played host to 30,000 walkers on more than a thousand walks. These have included a variety of destinations, including the ever popular “Green Heritage Walk” conducted by Vijay Thiruvady in the Lalbagh Botanical Gardens.

When I contact Arun Pai and congratulate him on their success story, he tells me that ten years ago, most people described DECEMBER 2015 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA

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Mosque Road in Fraser Town is also known as Kebab Avenue because it is lined with restaurants (top) serving a variety of grilled Indian non-vegetarian fare (bottom).

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Bengaluru as a place with “nothing much to see.” Tourists were advised to go to Mysore instead.

This approach troubled Arun and led to a brainwave. Let’s take the most famous road in Bengaluru that everyone thinks they know well, and conduct a walk there, Arun decided. And the Victorian Bangalore Walk that I had taken emerged as an experiment in 2005. Though first started with foreign tourists in mind, their biggest surprise was that locals flocked to the walk in huge numbers.

A decade later, there are many heritage walking companies mushrooming in the city, and there’s room for many more, thinks Arun. I agree and am especially happy there are now walks to suit all tastes. Recently, I went on one that combined two of my passions, exploring the city and good food: A Biryani Walk in Fraser Town organised by Unhurried, a company that conducts walks that specifically look at food traditions and architectural history. The biryani walk involved trying many versions of the dish at half-a-dozen speciality restaurants around Mosque Road, an area of Bengaluru known for its non-vegetarian eating habits. As a certified glutton, I wasn’t disappointed by the offerings. Foodie and architect Mansoor Ali guided us through the local dakhni biryani (also known as Bengaluru biryani), a delicious Gujarati Kutchi Memon style mutton dum biryani, a rare kofta biryani, and then the totally unique Bhatkal style shaiya biryani made of rice flour vermicelli. Many more snacks were included: grilled quail, delectable kulfi, and a bag of goodies with treats I had no idea existed, from the 100-year-old Albert Bakery.

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Zac O’Yeah’s latest novel on his fictional Bengaluru detective Hari Majestic is called Hari, a Hero for Hire and is just out from Pan Macmillan India.

Bengaluru by Foot Despite having recently started operations, they already have 28 different tours on offer (www.bengalurubyfoot.com; `1,500 for the full-day Tipu Sultan tour, including lunch).

INTACH Great walks, but highly sporadic and very popular. They’re often fully booked within 15 minutes of announcement on their mailing list (www.intachblr.org/ parichay.php; walks are sometimes free or there’s a nominal charge of a few hundred rupees).

BangaloreWALKS This veteran walking tour company has a walk every weekend of the year led by well-informed guides who share their love for the city (www.bangalorewalks.com; aims to be affordable and still charges only `500 per walk, as it did in the beginning).

Unhurried Founded with the intention of conducting heritage tours around food traditions (there’s a “Masala Dosa Walk” in Basavanagudi, for example) and architectural history such as bungalows in the old British cantonment. (Unhurried.in; the biryani walk costs `1,000 per mouth, including six biryani tastings and too many snack samples.)

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1 Tipu’s Mosque at Sultanpet at the foot of the Nandi Hills dates to circa 1780 or 1790, but is in a dilapidated condition. 2 The carved arch and spiked doors of the Delhi Gate at Bangalore Fort are a great example of Islamic military architecture. 3 Pillars and walls inside Sri Bhoganandishwara Temple, which dates to A.D. 810, have intricate stone carvings.

4 Walking tours can help highlight interesting heritage buildings like Trinity Church, which stands right next to Trinity Circle on M.G. Road. Though it is in the centre of Bengaluru, few know of it. 5 A large tank that has been beautifully restored at the Sri Bhoganandiswara Temple complex, affords great views of the Nandi Hills.

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Cafe´ Society Parisians have elevated strolling, lingering, and people-watching to an art. They even have a word for it: flânerie

B Y TA R A I S A B E L L A B U R T O N PHOTOGRAPHS BY PETER TURNLEY

Whether spending time with good friends or enjoying a solitary meal, much of Parisian life takes place in the capital’s ubiquitous cafÊs.

In Focus |

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U

NE PLACE, MADAME?” Seated on one of the mismatched chairs at the café La Bourse ou La Vie (“the money or your life”), his yellow suspenders holding in a roll of flesh, my interrogator peers at me through round-rimmed spectacles, waves me past, and turns back toward his companions.

He is telling a story, ostensibly to them, but from the bombastic way his voice echoes off the yellow ceiling, he clearly wants me to hear it too.

It’s a folk tale, drawn from the works of the 17thcentury fabulist Jean de La Fontaine, of a heron that refuses to eat anything but the finest food.

The man spreads his arms in imitation of the bird—nearly knocking one hapless diner off his feet—and begins to chirp wildly. Then he stops.

He has spotted someone he knows, driving down Rue Vivienne.

On this balmy June afternoon, the café doors are wide open; nothing separates us from the pavement and street outside. He calls to his friend, who brakes in front of the café. They chat—about work, life, politics—oblivious to the motorists honking around them. At last he waves his hand. The friend drives on, and the raconteur resumes his storytelling.

It is only when I glimpse the painting on a nearby wall—of an almost naked man posing, pin-up style, in round-rimmed spectacles—that I realise he is Patrice Tartard, the owner.

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Next, a young man arrives. Effusive in his greetings, he shakes his host’s hand with what looks like a mix of reverence and terror. He picks up a menu; his host yanks it away, barking, “Un autre poulet—another chicken.” The waiter hustles off.

Someone else now catches Tartard’s eye, a motorcyclist riding by, chatting on his cell phone. This Tartard dislikes. He lets loose a stream of epithets—colourful to profane—until the rider has passed. He returns at last to his tale, winking my way as he again poses like a heron. His dining companions look at me helplessly across the table.

“Typical French,” one sighs.

FEW THINGS ARE more French than the artful interplay of voyeurism and performance that takes place at a Parisian café. People-watching is, after all, among the most entrenched of Parisian pastimes.

In the 1800s, as industrialisation transformed Paris into one of the world’s great metropolises, flânerie—a word meaning to stroll around aimlessly but implying an attention to passersby—was raised to an art form. Flâneurs such as novelist Honoré de Balzac and the poet Charles Baudelaire would promenade down the newly constructed grands boulevards of Paris’s Right Bank, where broad sidewalks and proliferating cafés provided a perfect vantage point from which to cast a glance at memorable passersby. Some flâneurs, gossip has it, promenaded with pet turtles to ensure a slow pace. Whole books were devoted to “la ville spectacle,” the city of entertainment, as Paris was known then, urban field guides to particular types of passersby one might spy en flânant.

As a child growing up on Paris’s Left Bank, I dreamed of living in the 19th-century Paris of flâneur writers like Balzac, Baudelaire, and Émile Zola. I rode my bicycle through the warren-like streets of the city’s 9th arrondissement, home of

â– FRAN C E

In Paris, a flâneur gets ample opportunity to observe people going about their daily routines, from sipping coffee with a croissant to taking a moment to catch up on the news.

A summertime spectacle, Eiffel Tower visitors crowd the wide Esplanade du TrocadĂŠro.

In Focus |

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In Paris, a kiss is more than just a kiss—it’s a shared moment in the city’s story.

Zola’s courtesans and Baudelaire’s degenerates, and up the cobblestoned streets of Montmartre, in love with the Paris of the novels I had read and the centuries in which I had never lived. That led me to my doctoral studies in 19th-century French literature— and, now, back to Paris, where I am about to become a 21stcentury flaneuse.

I begin where I cycled as a child, the 9th arrondissement boulevards once paraded by a burgeoning bourgeoisie. To my dismay, I find little echo of the world Baudelaire and Balzac described. Globally branded stores glitter under wrought iron balconies; the Parisians hurrying past them don’t look up from their phones. If anyone should chance to bring a turtle here, it would soon be crushed underfoot. Undeterred, I turn off Boulevard Haussmann and head toward Galerie Vivienne, one of Paris’s famous passages, or glass-roofed shopping galleries.

Few structures evoke the 1800s like these galleries inspired by

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Middle Eastern souks. Parisians added a vital element—glazed roofing—which allowed light to flood the interior, creating what 20th-century social critic Walter Benjamin called “a city in miniature.” Forming a nearly continuous trail from the grand boulevards to the artists’ haunt of Montmartre, the galleries were places where people, like wares, could advertise themselves. In other words, a flâneur’s natural home.

Under Galerie Vivienne’s glass ceiling, set off by painted nymphs flanking neoclassical archways, I linger by an antiquarian bookshop, ready to practice a little flânerie of my own. The shop’s windows reflect nearby café tables, allowing me to observe a charismatic young man and an impeccably dressed 40-something blonde who sit at adjacent tables, their eyes purportedly on their books. I watch their reflections as they glance at each other in turn, as they smile. I reach back to grab a book I can pretend to read as I peep at them, realising too late I’ve opened

■ FRAN C E red wine. He may be a widower, unaccustomed to solitude—or he may have dined this way for 65 years. Every character in this city where everybody is watching is an unanswered question. Their stories are left to my imagination.

I finish my walk through the 9th arrondissement at the Musée de la Vie Romantique, devoted to the lives and loves of such 19th-century bohemians as the author George Sand—nom de plume of Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin, famous for her feminist novels and tempestuous affair with the composer Frédéric Chopin—and the painter Eugène Delacroix, flâneurs in their own right. A pinch-nosed matron leads schoolchildren around the museum, reciting facts about Sand, who was “great at many things. A great writer. A great intellectual. A great amoureuse.”

But here, as in the galleries, it is the present, not the past, that seizes my attention. The lovers who interest me are not the ones behind glass. An elderly couple meanders through the museum, whispering and holding hands so devotedly that at one point they trip over an antique chair. When I spot them later in the garden, he’s showering her hand with kisses—an intimate moment only a flâneur would be privy to.

I a volume of erotic nudes. By the time I swivel back, they’ve set their books down and are making small talk. By the time I leave, they’re laughing.

Each of Paris’s galleries, I’ll discover, has its own stories, only half-told by the time I pass through. In the Passage des Panoramas—famous, in Zola’s novel Nana, as the place where his titular courtesan meets her lovers—the story may be missed opportunities. I spy a woman of a certain age, overdressed in blue chiffon, sitting alone on the terrace of L’Arbre à Cannelle, a traditional brasserie with a 19th-century facade of delicately carved wood.

She sits straight-backed in her chair, her dyed blond hair arranged in a flapper style. Passersby jostle her on their way to Noglu, a gluten-free takeout spot next door, but she takes no heed.

She appears to be waiting for someone. No one comes. Across the passage, in a dealership of rare stamps, the elderly proprietor sits alone at his register, nursing a steak tartare and a glass of

IF THE BOULEVARD CAFÉS and the galleries represent two of the great urban theatres of the ville spectacle, the third is the department store, what Balzac called “the great poem of display, [chanting] its stanzas of colour from the Madeleine to the gate of SaintDenis.” In the 19th century, these establishments, innovative at the time, were more than places to buy goods; they were venues in which to see and be seen, runways where one would compare sartorial choices. Studio 54 with cash registers.

I meet my childhood friend James Geist—a Parisian law student of Franco-Algerian descent—at Le Bon Marché, Paris’s oldest department store, which inspired Zola’s novel of commerce and seduction, The Ladies’ Paradise. While Printemps and the Galeries Lafayette are better known, Geist tells me, it’s only at Le Bon Marché, farther from the tourist hordes, that one finds remnants of old Paris, including the interplay of flânerie and showing off that defines so much of Parisian culture.

“In this city, it’s all about seeing and being seen,” Geist says.

Today is a perfect day for flânerie, he informs me. The soldes, a government-determined period for sales, are taking place; all Parisians, rich and poor, are coming out to shop—and see who else is shopping. “Everything is a symbol,” Geist says. “In New York or London, labels are what matter.” Here, he notes, distinctions are more subtle: the construction of a shoe, the stitching on a handbag, the design on a scarf—all form a complex visual language through which Parisians communicate.

As we ascend an escalator to the women’s section, light from the stained glass ceiling illuminating wrought iron balustrades, Geist points out Parisian character types. There’s a man he identifies as a dandy from the trendy Marais district, with a long beard, sailor shirt, turquoise scarf. Near him, a balding businessman hunts for a suit with his mother, a dowager with lips that signal contempt.

“But maman, this one isn’t as good as the Saint Laurent!” he whines as we pass. “Just get it,” she snaps without changing her expression.

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Then Geist spies our target. Barely five feet one, with immaculately highlighted hair and a face moisturised into agelessness, she represents the ultimate Parisienne of eras past. Her understated Hermès bag and high-waisted trousers signal her identity as a matriarch of the 7th arrondissement, Paris’s bastion of vestigial titles and inherited wealth. She roves through the shop floor at right angles, picking up and then discarding scarves, blouses, shoes. She is mechanical in her search for that single object that will bring her outfit together.

Geist laughs. “In Paris, even leisure is a craft,” he says.

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HE NEXT DAY, Geist ferries me to Café de Flore, on Boulevard St. Germain. If the boulevards of the Right Bank were the prime locations for flâneurs of the 19th century, the café terrasses of Boulevard St. Germain became the spiritual home of the café dwellers of the Lost Generation, who came of age during the First World War. The art deco interior of Flore once welcomed intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus. Today, despite the influx of tourists, Geist tells me, Flore—with its neighbour and rival, Les Deux Magots—remains one of the city’s great places to practice flânerie.

No sooner do we arrive than we find our “theatre.” Three gentlemen in their 60s, bellies bulging through their blazers, read newspapers around a table. They are, Geist and I both decide, perfect subjects, managing that delicate balance between eccentricity and self-awareness that is so necessary in this city of performers.

A cocker spaniel rummages for leftover pieces of croissants beneath their feet. Its owner, a man with a white beard flecked right now with coffee, raps the dog, Caliphe, on the nose with a newspaper for overindulging in croissants, then announces his departure. “Je vais lire mon roman—I’m going to read my novel.”

Rumbling to his feet, he bids his companions farewell.

He proceeds five steps along the boulevard before we see him shrug and turn back, resuming his place, no explanation.

His companions require none. Caliphe jumps up to claim an adjacent chair.

The man holds court for two more hours. His companions leave; more arrive. The waiter brings a note, on Café de Flore stationery, from another patron. A young man stops to pet Caliphe, greets the man affectionately. A co-worker brings files, and is persuaded to stay.

“How,” she asks him, “do you know all these people?”

He shrugs and smiles. “I know everyone.”

Behind us, a young man with prematurely white hair and tortoiseshell glasses is leaning in, eavesdropping, just as we are.

When the man takes out his camera-phone to snap a discreet photograph, Geist whispers, “Now that’s a real flâneur.” We stifle a laugh. But soon my friend grows serious. Flânerie is more than a source of amusement, he says.

“It’s a philosophy, an ideal. We’re all such egoists nowadays, at least in Paris. People-watching is a way for us Parisians to get outside of our heads and be reminded that others exist.”

As he speaks, we catch a glimpse of the patrician woman from Le Bon Marché. Her outfit is identical to what she wore the day

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before, with the addition of a shining silver bracelet. She catches Geist’s eye, and for a moment I think she smiles.

ONE OF BAUDELAIRE’S most famous poems is “To a Passerby,” about a momentary connection with a woman he spots and then soon loses in the crowd. “I know not where you fled, you know not where I go, O you whom I would have loved, O you who knew it!”

As I continue wandering the streets of Paris, Baudelaire’s refrain haunts me. I find myself entering a world not of Balzac or Zola novels but of unfinished fragments, encountering characters whose beginnings and endings I will never know.

There is the man who is strolling along the Canal St. Martin reading a treatise by the philosopher Simone Weil, the book obscuring his face. There is the American girl in an expensive raincoat sobbing in the arms of a French nun on the steps of the

■ FRAN C E

Basilique Notre-Dame des Victoires. I catch only what echoes off the church’s facade: “… the right person. But I’ve waited so long!” There is the middle-aged man at the small café in Montmartre, nervously clutching a bouquet of pink and yellow roses, who downs a glass of pastis and hurries on. There is the old man on the yellow steampunk bicycle near Boulevard de Sébastopol, with a series of vintage umbrellas fastened to the handlebars.

“What is that?” I ask him. “Ça?” He laughs as he cycles off. “Ça, c’est la vie!”

ON MY FINAL DAY in Paris, I visit the resting place of one of my idols, Oscar Wilde, who spent his final months in the city and whose essays on artifice and performance made me fall in love with the idea of a ville spectacle. His sphinx-like tomb at the Père Lachaise cemetery is behind glass: So many admirers have kissed it that its surface has begun to decay.

As tourists arrive, leave flowers, and depart, I spy a young woman in black, who remains behind. Her long blond hair falls over her notebook. I watch as she sits, sketches, looks up at the tomb. I take note of her dark glasses, her copper-red lipstick, the way she sighs with relief when each passing tour group departs.

When I get up to go, she stops me.

“Madame!” Her English is halting. “I love your dress.” She nods to the grave. “I feel sure he would have loved it too.”

Only then do I look down at her sketchbook.

There, next to her rendition of Oscar Wilde’s tomb, I see a portrait of me. Writer Tara Isabella burTon is working on a doctorate in theology and 19th-century French literature at Oxford University. Indianaborn photographer PeTer Turnley divides his time between Paris and New York.

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PETER TURNLEY/CORBIS NEWS PREMIUM/CORBIS/IMAGELIBRARY

In Paris, joie de vivre is seen in the small, everyday moments one encounters: like dancing to music in the streets, or watching the world go by.

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Seasons

Flâneur Venues

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Spring (late-Mar to early-June) is when Parisians are most outdoorsy, strolling and cycling along the city’s avenues that are abloom with flowers. March is chilly with averages of about 9°C, but the weather turns pleasant by May (16°C). In summer (late-Jun to Sept) temperatures range between 13-24°C and locals love to bask in the sun in Paris’s parks and on café terraces. The city’s trees take on lovely, mellow colours in the autumn (Sept to late-Dec) when the temperature fluctuates between 8°C and 16°C. Paris is off-season in the winter (lateDec to early-Mar), when the mercury can drop to freezing point.

Stroll France’s capital and you’ll see human nature on full display, from doyennes taking their café to lovers cooing by the River Seine. As poet Charles Baudelaire put it, in Paris “the spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito.”

Since the mid-1900s, the Boulevard St. Germain, on Paris’s Left Bank, has been a preferred thoroughfare for flânerie. Its twin titans of café culture, Café de Flore (+33 1 45 48 55 26; 172 Boulevard SaintGermain) and Les Deux Magots (www.lesdeuxmagots.fr), attract visitors interested in literary history; the cafés’ tables hosted such luminaries as Simone de Beauvoir and Albert Camus. Look closely today and you’ll spot patrician dowagers and long-time locals who resist change, often occupying their “usual” tables for hours at a time even on busy nights. For a cosier flânerie experience, cross the boulevard to Brasserie Lipp (151 Boulevard Saint-Germain), Ernest Hemingway’s haunt. Favoured customers here score the high-profile front table, but all patrons enjoy front-row seats to the local scene.

Few restaurants evoke the glamour of 19th-century Paris like L’Arbre à Cannelle (+33 1 43 31 68 31; 14 Rue Linné), in the Passage des Panoramas; actresses and courtesans from the nearby Théâtre des Variétés would rendezvous here with their lovers. Flâneurs can park themselves in the restaurant’s frescoed interior or at “outdoor” seating under the glass-covered arcade, both good vantage points for observing the gallery’s parade of shoppers. People-watching isn’t restricted to cafés, of course. Get past the bouncers at Le Baron (+33 1 47 20 04 01; 6 Avenue Marceau), a jewel box of a nightclub housed in a one-time brothel near the Arc de Triomphe, and you’ll find yourself rubbing elbows with Parisian socialites and such international celebs as Beyoncé and Björk.

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Right Bank

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Getting There and Visa

Daily non-stop flights connect Delhi and Mumbai to Paris Charles de Gaulle airport.

Indian travellers to France require a Schengen visa. A short-stay tourist visa costs `5,824 (including service charge) and requires confirmed return flight tickets and other documents. The processing time is 15 working days. For a complete list of documents and addresses of the visa centres visit www.vfsfrance.co.in.

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Stay Creative types from Jean-Paul Sartre to Miles Davis to Salvador Dalí have convened at Hôtel La Louisiane (www.hotel-lalouisiane. com; doubles from €82/`5,900, excluding meals), just off the Boulevard St. Germain. Dating to 1823, the hotel has 80 modest but comfy guest rooms. Fin de siècle bohemia once thrived on Paris’s now trendy Right Bank—and still does at the Hôtel d’Albion (www. hotelalbion.net; doubles from €95/`6,900, including breakfast), not to be confused with the Hotel France Albion), where 26 colourful rooms sport such themes as “Poetry” and “Dance”. Prefer avantgarde digs? Then head east to the Belleville neighbourhood, where the Paris-born designer Philippe Starck has transformed a parking garage into the gleefully playful Mama Shelter (www.mamashelter. com/en/paris; doubles from €89/`6,400, excluding breakfast), equal parts restaurant, nightclub, and “concept hotel.” Guests may don masks (provided) and take selfies with guest room computers.

The images upload to a server, offering an innovative way to people-watch from the comfort of your room.

INTERNATIONAL MAPPING

Orientation

France’s capital Paris is its largest and most populous city. It is lies in the northern part of the country with the Seine River gliding through it.

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from delhi Centuries-old palaces and other curiosities in Jhalawar, Rajasthan

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stay Secluded Kerala beaches and a taste of a Malayali home

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stay An erstwhile haveli in Gujarat becomes a heritage homestay

Forgotten Land

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long, bumpy road leads to dusty Jhalawar in the Hadoti region of southeastern Rajasthan.

At first, the remote town seems largely nondescript, a highway-pit stop at the most. But beneath the dust that blankets this region are rare architectural and cultural gems. Its monuments aren’t in the best condition, but their heritage value is undeniable. There are eighth-century sculptures, a hill fort that is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and medieval, rock-cut Buddhist caves, the only ones in the state. To the traveller, these are clues to deciphering the many communities that have lived here.

Jhalawar town was named after the Jhalas, a clan of Rajput Chauhan warriors. Founded in 1791 it was initially part of the kingdom of Kota. The Jhalas also built the trading village of Jhalrapatan on Jhalawar’s outskirts. This walled village rose atop the ruins of the me-

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dieval city of Chandravati, which was destroyed in the 18th century, save for a few seventh-century temples.

An English officer who visited Jhalrapatan in December 1821 noted in his travel journal, that it had 108 temples. Even today, the few travellers that make it here encounter carefully tended to vermilion-smeared deities at every corner. In winter, the countryside between Jhalawar and the nearby city of Bhawani Mandi is flush with orange-laden orchards and fields of dancing poppies, perfect for leisurely walks.

History apart, Jhalawar yields a rich experience of Rajasthani culture. Untarnished, its restaurants still serve traditional food, rather than generic North Indian fare. Its monuments and bazaars are free of camera-toting travellers. This is its biggest draw: In a world where nearly every place has been visited and extensively documented, Jhalwar still feels like a discovery.

Jhalawar has a rocky but waterladen landscape fed by the Ahu and Kalisindh rivers that form a natural defence for the eighth-century Gagron Fort.

GUIZIOU FRANCK/HEMIS.FR/GETTY IMAGES

IN A LITTLE CORNER OF RAJASTHAN, LIES THE HISTORIC TOWN OF JHALAWAR | BY AMBIKA GUPTA

EXPLORE GLORIOUS PAST Sprawling Garh Palace is at the centre of Jhalawar.

Built between 1838 and 1864, the resplendent cream and terracotta palace is currently undergoing renovation so some sections are closed to tourists. I enjoyed strolling through its endless corridors, walking in its peaceful grounds, and visiting the museum located on the first floor.

At first glance the museum doesn’t seem like much, but it houses a spectacular collection of sculptures excavated from the lost city of Chandravati, over which the present-day village of Jhalrapatan stands (7 kilometres south). They date from the 8th to the 18th centuries. For me the most striking among them were the frightening representations of goddess Chamunda brandishing skulls and decapitated heads. Glass cases display antiquated artillery, illustrated leaf-based manuscripts, and miniature horses and elephants dressed for battle. One of the delightful curiosities I saw was a vintage penny-farthing, the wobbly bicycle that was all

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The village of Jhalrapatan has numerous temples, among which the ancient Chandrabhaga temple (top right) and Sun temple (bottom right) hold pride of place; The latter has intricate carvings that look especially beautiful at dusk.

the rage in Europe in the 1870s. It has a comically large front wheel and a tiny back one (museum open 10 a.m.4.30 p.m., closed Monday; entry `10).

Don’t miss Bhawani Natya Shala, a theatre located on the palace grounds, that is an eccentric indulgence built by Maharaja Bhawani Singh in A.D. 1921. It’s patterned on grand European opera houses and though it has fallen into disrepair, visitors can wander through its cavernous hall. The grand opera hall with its arched galleries and private balconies is a rather odd sight in the middle of rural Rajasthan.

ONCE A STRONGHOLD Gagron Fort (14 km/20 min north of Jhalawar) is one of

Rajasthan’s six hill forts that together form a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The fort is surrounded by the Ahu and Kalisindh rivers on three sides, and guarded by a deep moat on the fourth. To reach it, we cross a narrow bridge. It’s a rare example of a jal-van durg, a fort protected by both water and forest. An astounding feature of the fort is that it has no foundation: It is simply seated on a hillock of the Aravalli range without any DECEMBER 2015 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA

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roots to tether it to the ground. A fringe benefit is the blue-green panorama visible from the ramparts.

Spread over three square kilometres, the fort is enclosed within triple fortification walls. The innermost boundary is built in the form of a labyrinth. Successive occupiers between the 8th and 18th centuries added to its fortifications. But even so, Gagron was not impregnable. As a result, it was the site of two grim incidents of the practice of jauhar, in which the women of the palace immolated themselves to avoid capture by enemy armies. Visitors can see the macabre jauhar kund (tank) right next to the palaces and pavilions of the deserted citadel.

CITY OF BELLS Jhalarapatan (7 km/10 min south) is an ancient vil-

lage that was built in 1792 by Jhalawar’s founder, Jhala Zalim Singh. It was an important junction on a caravan route and he was keen to turn it into a flourishing centre of trade. To protect the village’s residents from pindaris or local dacoits who haunted the trade route, it was enclosed within walls.

Walking through a giant arched gateway to enter the village I can see temples everywhere. It’s easy to see

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Jhalawar’s highlight is the lovely Garh Palace, with beautiful sitouts (top left) which overlook the busy market where you can get flavourful Rajasthani red chillies (top right); The palace also has a museum that contains rare manuscripts decorated with beautiful calligraphy and drawings (bottom left) and the doublestoreyed, Europeaninspired Opera Hall (bottom right).

why a visiting British colonel nicknamed it the “city of bells”. The evening air reverberates with the peal of bells from scores of temples.

It is impossible to walk even 10 metres without passing a shrine. Few are very old and date to the city of Chandravati which existed at this spot before. Some of the temples are big, while others are small corner shrines or a single statue under a tree. Regardless of size, each one is attended to and looked after, decorated with silver foil and surrounded by diyas.

High up on a hill east of Jhalrapatan is Navlakha Fort, built in 1860 by Jhalawar’s second ruler, Jhala Prithvi Singh. It is one of the last forts constructed in Rajasthan and is now abandoned save for the pretty, white Anand Dham temple with saffron banners fluttering in the wind. Though little remains of the once handsome fort, visitors can still see and admire the lovely floral motifs and detailed, if damaged, elephant carvings on a gate that still stands.

At dusk, when the sky is shot with burnt orange and mauve streaks, take a boat ride on Gomti Sagar Lake, with the sound of chiming bells carrying on the rippling surface (opp. Herbal Garden; `50 a head for a 15min ride; 10 a.m.-6 p.m.).

AMBIKA GUPTA (PALACE, BOOK, & HALL), OLAF KRÜGER/IMAGEBROKER/DINODIA (CHILLIES)

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One of Jhalrapatan’s most striking sights is the Padmanabh Mandir or sun temple, a spot of serenity in a busy square choc-a-bloc with flower sellers and shops selling religious paraphernalia. It has a spire that’s 97 feet high, and astonishingly detailed carvings of celestial beings and floral patterns adorn the façade, interiors, steps, and 52 ornamental pillars. Its three side entrances have carved torans—decorative gateways distinctive of Hindu and Buddhist architecture. Long stemmed bells carved in stone snake down walls, and at the back of the temple is a statue of Lord Padmanabh donning knee-high boots.

Nearby is another heavyweight, the Chandrabhag or Chandravati temple, located on the bank of the seasonal Chandrabhag River. The seventh-century structure, which is located in a garden near a huge banyan tree, is nearly in ruins, yet it commands an impressive following. Five shivalings stand in a row at the front. Locals come here for walks or to sit on benches and soak in the peaceful atmosphere.

In contrast, the entrance to Sri Shantinath Digambar Jain temple is painted in bright pink and turquoise colours. Built in A.D. 1046, it is located on a narrow road in the heart of the village and has a towering 92-foot-tall spire. Fine murals decorate the walls and two life-size elephant statues stand guard at the sanctum sanctorum, their glazed, white trunks raised in salute.

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JHALAWAR RAJASTHAN

Gomti Sagar Lake

JHALRAPATAN Anand Dham Shantinath Digambar Jain Temple Sun Temple

THE GUIDE ORIENTATION

Jhalawar is located on the edge of the Malwa Plateau, close to Rajasthan’s border with Madhya Pradesh. It is 233 km north of Indore, 330 km south of Jaipur, and 608 km south of Delhi.

GETTING THERE

By Air The closest airport is at Indore, which has daily connections with major cities. Taxis charge `3,500 one-way for the 233 km/4.5 hr journey to Jhalawar.

By Rail Trains from Delhi, Mumbai, and Jaipur travel through Jhalawar Road, a small railhead 27 km/40 min from Jhalawar (taxis charge `1,000 one-way; buses leave every hour).

By Road Jhalawar is 608 km/11 hr south of Delhi on NH8 and NH12, via Jaipur and Kota.

GETTING AROUND

Unmetered autos are a convenient way to travel from Jhalawar to Jhalrapatan (`100 one-way) and within the town. There are local buses from Jhalawar to Jhalrapatan every half hour (`10 one-way).

SEASONS

The weather in Jhalawar is most pleasant between September and March. In the winter (Oct-Feb) days are comfortable though nights are chilly at 1°C. Summer (Mar-Jun) is scorching with average highs of 45°C. From July to September the area gets about 95 cm of rain, which is more than most of Rajasthan, turning the countryside green.

DWARIKA HOTEL is conveniently located in the heart of the city on NH12. Rooms are basic but clean, and the staff is hospitable (NH12, near Medical College; 07432-232626; bharatjwr@rediffmail.com; doubles from `990.)

EAT

Jhalawar has only a few restaurants, but they dish out authentic Rajasthani meals of dal bhati churma and sev tamatar. The rooftop restaurant at Prithvi Vilas Palace offers a wonderful dining experience. Try their ameen ki dal, a variation of moong dal named after its “inventor” chef Ameen (`1,000 for a meal for two). DECEMBER 2015 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA

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AASHNA JHAVERI (MAP)

STAY

PRITHVI VILAS PALACE is the magnificent residence of Jhalawar’s erstwhile royal family who are the hosts. The mansion is over a century old and located in a quiet corner of Jhalawar, about a kilometre from Garh Palace (Civil Lines; 98913 49555; jhalawar1@yahoo.com; doubles from `8,500, including meals).

Short Breaks |

STAY

CATCH THE WAVE SECLUDED BEACHES AND LIP-SMACKING MALAYALI FARE IN THE SEASIDE VILLAGE OF MARARIKULAM | BY NEHA SUMITRAN

Life’s a beach when you’re on a sunbed at Mararikulam, Kerala.

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ting that prompts the spontaneous booking of air tickets, preceding a long weekend.

Marari Villas is designed to provide guests maximum privacy. The resort combines the perks of renting a bungalow with the advantages of checking into a resort. Each of its five villas has its own housekeeper, chef, and manager to make sure guests have everything they need. Then there’s Olga and Rupert, the chatty Russian and Brit couple that run this place. They arrived in India six years ago on holiday, and were seeking change and looking to shake off the monotony of their lives. They fell in love with India’s fierce spirit, spent the better part of the next year scouring the country looking for the perfect place to start a resort, and finally, smitten by balmy nights and tempestuous monsoons, settled on Kerala. Their enthusiasm for their new home is infectious, and they’re always happy to help plan excursions to villages in the area, boat rides cruising the backwaters, and even day trips to Kochi. But most guests, they say, prefer to spend their time taking dips in the ocean, snacking on

beach

romantic

family-friendly

PHOTO COURTESY: MARARI VILLAS

K

erala is no stranger to tourist throngs. Scan an India guidebook at any second-hand bookstore, and Kerala is likely to be the most weathered section (along with Rajasthan). Its emerald backwaters, palm-fringed cities, and manicured tea plantations are the stuff of Instagram legend. It’s great for the state’s economy but travellers in God’s Own Country are often faced with an annoying problem: Too many other tourists!

That’s not a problem in Mararikulam. The seaside village (about an hour’s drive south of Kochi) is blissfully free of travellers, or so it seemed on the morning we strolled over to the beach after breakfast. There wasn’t a footprint in sight, except tiny little ones made by groups of crabs and seagulls going about their morning routines. Mararikulam is a spectacular beach, a snaking strip of sand wedged between deep-green backwaters and the Arabian Sea. The only signs of human habitation were welcome ones: a hammock tied between two coconut trees and a shack (four wooden poles and thatched roof ) shading three beanbags. It’s the sort of set-

■ K E RALA meal we wanted before a swim. Lunch, on the other hand, was far more elaborate. Marari’s fiery toddy shop meen (a no-coconut fish curry) with kappa (boiled tapioca, traditionally served in place of rice in homes around the state) would have met the approval of my snootiest Malayali relatives. Plus, there were plates of beef fry, bowls of coconut-flecked stir-fried veggies, and piles of pappadams. We barely made it back to the sunbed outside my cottage, spending the rest of the afternoon staring into the ocean, and trying to decipher the few snatches of Malayalam I overheard when a group of fishermen hauled in their catch. Around dusk, when the sun’s fury had mellowed, we went on a catamaran ride on a perilously small vessel that drenched us in minutes. Faced with what seemed like no other alternative, we happily abandoned ship, jumped into the ocean and floated on our backs while the captain of our catamaran watched in amusement.

It was the most spectacular view of a sunset I have ever had.

KERALA

Kochi

ì

Marari Villas, Mararikulam

THE VITALS Getting there Marari Villas is in Mararikulam, a beachside village about 72 km/2 hr from Kochi airport and 48 km/1 hr from Ernakulam Junction (South) railway station.

The hotel organises pick-ups and drops from Kochi, the airport, and station.

Accommodation Marari has five spiffy villas, some for couples, and others for families of six or more. Hibiscus and Orchid are both a short, pleasant walk from the beach. Palm, Bougainvillea, and Lotus are on the beach, better for those seeking ocean views. Marari also has Ayurveda, family, and romantic packages.

Booking the entire villa is not mandatory; double room reservations can be made in larger cottages (www.mararivillas. com; 2-person villas and double rooms from `9,000-17,500 depending on the season).

Cottages with plunge pools (top) are suited to couples seeking privacy, while the larger beachside accommodations (bottom) are good for family vacations.

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PHOTO COURTESY: MARARI VILLAS

plates of fried prawns, and sipping tall glasses of chilled coconut water.

Marari has two inland villas: Hibiscus and Orchid, that are a few minutes’ walk from the beach.

Each has a plunge pool and sunbeds, surrounded by a private garden where meals are served. We arrived late at night from Kochi to find a candle-lit dinner set up in the garden, with bowls of prawn curry, rice, pappadams, and avial, vegetables in a coarse coconut gravy. In our room were shelves of novels and DVDs of movies and television shows.

A phone connected us to the manager, should we have needed anything else. I could see why guests who arrive here find no reason at all to leave this bubble—it is ideal for a secluded couple’s holiday.

The larger accommodations (Palm, Bougainvillea, and Lotus) are bang on the beach, but on a strip of shore that few locals visit. The villas are designed like vacation homes, with kitchens, dining areas, and living rooms that blend contemporary touches with antique wooden furniture. Bougainvillea, the most handsome of these cottages, has three bedrooms, a central courtyard, and a living room with couches, a refrigerator, and a flat-screen TV that’s perfect for movie nights with the family. Palm, on the other hand, has an airy lounge area that opens to the beach, which might be better suited to a large group of friends. Then there’s Lotus, which has a yoga deck on the roof, for the peace-seeking traveller.

Food is definitely among the resort’s highlights. Our breakfasts were light—fruit, banana crêpes with honey and sesame seeds, and cups of strong, south Indian coffee—just the sort of

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Short Breaks |

STAY

LINGERING GRANDEUR A HAVELI AND ERSTWHILE ROYAL GUEST HOUSE BECOMES A HERITAGE HOMESTAY | BY RUMELA BASU

Much of the furniture and artefacts in the living room have been salvaged from Balasinor Palace, the old family home, which was destroyed in a fire in the 1940s. Aaliya Babi is passionate about the dinosaur fossil site at Balasinor and has many well-preserved fossils in her collection (bottom).

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sherwani and a gold turban, with a large jewelencrusted sword placed before him. My hostess, 41-year-old Aaliya Babi, tells me it’s a portrait of her father, who inherited the title of nawab when he was just 11 months old, and held it till 1947, when he was about three years old.

The house I’m in was built in 1883 to accommodate the royal family’s guests. But it became their home in the 1940s after the palace, which was close by, burnt down. Relics salvaged from the palace are dotted around the haveli and its gardens: semi-circular glass frames and floral grills atop the door to my room, stone carved railings tucked into corners in organised heaps.

Not surprisingly Aaliya has a wealth of stories that she shares jovially over a cup of tea. My room, which opens onto a little garden with a swing on one side and a street on the other, is built on what used to be the erstwhile diwan’s vegetable patch,

heritage

family-friendly

JOY FERNANDES (LIVING ROOM), RUMELA BASU (PERSON)

G

arden Palace Heritage Homestay’s buttery yellow exterior gives away little about its lavish interiors. About an hour’s drive from Ahmedabad, in the town of Balasinor, the haveli is the private residence of the area’s erstwhile royal family. It’s located just off a busy street, but wears an air of calm because of the gardens that surround it.

It’s only when I step inside that I understand the affluence and history of this small town. Every corner of the pistachio-green living room is filled with memorabilia belonging to the family of the former nawab of Balasinor. The furniture is French Louis XIV style and the walls are covered with gilded photo frames showing generations of royals. There’s even a stuffed leopard in a corner. The haveli has an air of opulence but I also detect hints of wistfulness in the way everything is crammed together.

One painting shows a toddler dressed in a dark

■ GUJARAT Maharajas’ Express, which stops at Balasinor.

Travellers are greeted with a royal welcome that includes floral showers and a chance to meet the ex-royals dressed in their traditional best. The grand welcome sounds fascinating, but I cherish the informal interactions I’ve had with Aaliya and her family. They’ve given me a glimpse of the other aspects of royalty, a sense of hospitality and tehzeeb (courtesy) that linger though the titles and way of life are now gone.

GUJARAT Ahmedabad

ì

Garden Palace Heritage Homestay, Balasinor

THE VITALS Accommodation The homestay has six large, well-appointed rooms.

Three deluxe rooms are furnished with antique furniture. The Darbar room is where the nawab’s secretary once stayed. The rest are smaller, more recently built, but decorated with pieces saved from the old palace. The rooms are a mix of old and new, with dark four-poster beds, and mahogany coloured, old-school clothes racks in modern bathrooms.

There are also tented accommodations that are available in winter (98253 15382; gardenpalacebalasinor. blogspot.in; doubles from `5,750 including meals; fossil site tours `350 per person).

Getting there Balasinor is 87 km/1.5 hr east of Ahmedabad and 91 km/2 hr north of Vadodara (Baroda).

The closest airport and railway junction is Ahmedabad (taxis from Ahmedabad charge `800 one-way).

Old photographs of generations of the Babi family (top) offer an insight into the life of royalty—from clothes to social events and customs; The family now lives on the first floor of what was once the royal guest quarters (bottom).

Th hotel’s guest rooms are on the ground floor.

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RUMELA BASU

while the bathroom was a former pantry for his wife’s favourite snacks. The haveli’s dining room is filled with artefacts from brass and silver samovars to hookahs, big and small, that belonged to her grandmother. When she travelled, Aaliya says, her grandmother would trade her hookahs for cigarettes. The story makes me smile, because the idea of a sari-clad woman with her head covered, smoking a cigarette would surely have raised many an eyebrow.

Despite its sense of grandeur, Garden Palace has a relaxed, informal vibe. Conversation with Aaliya flows easily as we settle on an ornate sofa after a nawabi meal that included seekh kebabs, chicken in white gravy, veg biryani, and a decadent motichoor halwa. The meals are personally supervised

by Aaliya’s mother, the former begum, and include traditional family recipes. Though I couldn’t get a one-on-one cooking class with the chef, I did manage to coax her to share her recipe for the delicious halwa we had at lunch.

Chatting with Aaliya, I learn more about Balasinor. In the 1980s, geologists found a large dinosaur fossil site only a short distance away, in the village of Rayoli. Aaliya was a little girl then and the discovery sparked her interest. She started studying the fossils and later, when she was older, invited palaeontologists to document and study the site. Today, she conducts tours and displays a small fossil collection at her homestay. The exhibit’s centrepiece is a fossilised dinosaur egg that her brother acquired from a village home where it was being used as a pestle to grind spices.

Interest in the fossil site has grown in recent years, drawing visitors from nearby Ahmedabad including groups of Harley-Davidson riders, and passengers on IRCTC’s luxury train

Inspire |

CA NA DA

CANADA

Abraham Lake

U.S.A.

ABRAHAM LAKE,

Every winter, nature lovers and photography enthusiasts flock to Abraham Lake in Alberta, Canada to witness a strange phenomenon.

Stacks of eerie, bluish-white bubbles lie trapped under the frozen surface of this lake in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies. They are pockets of methane gas released from decomposing plants and animals, which rise and freeze on contact with the cold water surface. Abraham Lake looks utterly bewitching, frozen in time amid the jagged mountains of the Rockies, but it isn’t for the fainthearted.

Visitors to the area are advised to avoid carrying anything flammable because methane is a highly combustible gas. Since the lake isn’t covered by snow, travellers can look into the depths of the lake, at its web of cracks, ridges, and frozen patterns. Sometimes booming and cracking sounds can be heard emanating from the lake, which is actually the sound of shifting ice. Photography workshops organised by the owners of an eco-lodge overlooking the lake are a popular way to get to know the surroundings intimately.

Hikers to the Rockies make the most of the scenic trails in the Kootenay Plains Ecological Reserve which lies to the south of the lake.

—Kareena Gianani

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ALBERTA, CANADA

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Inspire |

CHI NA

RUSSIA MONGOLIA

Five Flower Lake INDIA

CHINA

FIVE FLOWER LAKE,

Submerged plants, colourful algae, and travertine—a form of limestone—give the Five Flower Lake in China’s Sichuan province its mesmerising hues of blue, green, and yellow.

This vast waterbody is part of the rugged UNESCO World Heritage Site of Jiuzhaigou Valley in southwest China.

Jiuzhaigou means “nine villages” and only about 1,000 residents live across the 720 square kilometres of its distinctive conical karst landscape punctuated with roaring waterfalls. The ecosystems of Jiuzhaigou Valley are as diverse as they are spectacular: Coniferous forests, limestone terraces, and craggy mountains that are home to many endangered species of plants and animals such as the giant panda and the goat-like takin. Travellers who visit Five Flower Lake are able to witness the unique traditions and way of life of the valley’s locals who practice the Benbo Sec religion, a sect of Tibetan Buddhism. As seasons change, Jiuzhaigou’s deciduous trees change colour and alter the landscape dramatically.

Little wonder then that the valley is known as the “Land of Fairy Tales” and the “King of Waterscapes.”

—Kareena Gianani

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SICHUAN, CHINA

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Inspire |

NEW Z EA L A N D

AUSTRALIA

Champagne Pool TASMANIA

NEW ZEALAND

CHAMPAGNE POOL, WAI-O-TAPU, NEW ZEALAND

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Tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide rise from the waters of Champagne Pool, as if vast amounts of bubbly were poured into this site in WaiO-Tapu, one of New Zealand’s active geothermal areas.

These hot springs, which are a 20-minute drive south of Rotorua on North Island, are nothing short of fantastical: Mist hangs dreamily above the pool, which is emerald green at the centre and a deep, burnt orange towards the edge thanks to mineral deposits.

Visitors can walk on tracks beside the natural wonder (no dips though), created thousands of years ago due to volcanic activity in the region.

Other geothermal attractions at Wai-O-Tapu are just as unique. The conical Lady Knox Geyser, for instance, is induced to erupt to a height of 10-20 metres daily at 10.15 a.m. for about an hour, by sprinkling organic soap over it. Another prominent attraction nearby is the Mud Pool, the remains of a large mud volcano that existed here until about a century ago.

—Kareena Gianani

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!

DIRE ST RA I TS H E L P SAV E T H ES E E N DA N G E R E D S P EC I ES. V I S I T T H E M .

THE BUFF-COLOURED, white-ruffed Indian vulture is a

formidable scavenger with a long, bare neck built to sink deep into a carcass. It eats as much as its body weight of about six kilos, but can go without food for up to 20 days.

Still, it is critically endangered, and has been fighting a long battle for survival.

Endemic to the Indian subcontinent, vultures declined by over 97 per cent by the 1990s. Most died due to consumption of livestock injected with diclofenac, an antiinflammatory drug. Today, less than 44,000 remain.

But there is hope. Since 2004, two captive breeding centres in Haryana and West Bengal have been trying to revive the species, and have bred 70 vultures. In 2006, India banned the use of diclofenac for veterinary purposes in an effort to protect these vultures. However, the drug still continues to be used though not as widely.

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Indian vultures roost in flocks and prefer nesting in colonies, which are few in these centres. Since they mate for life and lay only one egg per year, the breeding cycle is slow. A significant concern at the breeding centres has been the development of bacterial infections among the birds, according to Vibhu Prakash, principal scientist at the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), who is in charge of its vulture conservation programme.

Captive breeding centres do not allow visitors, but Indian vultures are found in large numbers at the Jor Beed Gadwala Conservation Reserve and Desert National Park in Rajasthan. Bandhavgarh National Park in Madhya Pradesh too has a sizeable population of the bird, which can also be spotted in smaller numbers in many other parks of the country. —Kareena Gianani

ADESH SHIVKAR

Vultures are a very important part of the ecosystem as they consume carcasses of dead animals thus cleaning up the environment.

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