Category Archives: India

When I think of northern India, it is the incredible Rajput (Hindu) and Mughal (Islamic) architecture of Rajasthan that I remember: fortified walls and sandstone edifices climbing across hillsides; exquisite turrets floating in the hot, dusty air; delicate lattice work shielding windows and casting intricate shadow patterns in the cloistered rooms behind them. But, I also think […]

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That direct, forthright gaze! Eyes red from the ubiquitous dust and the smoke from the dung-fires; skin weathered by time and the elements; teeth broken and stained by hard-living and tobacco – but still happy to stare at the foreigner’s camera with a complete lack of self-consciousness. For me, one of the many joys of […]

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India is a sensory feast: a multilayered tapestry of sights and sounds in colours that pulsate, wrapped in a rich weave of smells, where the aromas of flowers and cardamon battle with the stink of dust and refuse and the unwashed. Even the air has tangible depth. Nowhere is this better epitomised than in Chandni Chowk, one […]

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“I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them […]

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Trip Advisor gives it a good rating. “Fort Khejarla offers guests an enlivening experience,”says the official website. I still think of it as the hotel that tried to kill me. Well, shock and asphyxiate me; “kill” might be a bit extreme. I was looking forward to our stay at the heritage “resort”, Fort Khejarla Hotel, 85 km east of Jodhpur in […]

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