Once a year, on the full moon of Kartik, the ghats of Varanasi are lit with lamps from one end of the river to the other, and the Ganga aarti is performed at its largest scale. Wikipedia describes it as a festival of lights on the Ganges, associated with Shiva, on which the gods are […]
Most people picture cherry blossoms in spring, but in India the best-known bloom is in autumn. The wild Himalayan cherry turns the hills around Shillong pink in the weeks before winter, while Kashmir’s spring bloom comes in March and April. This guide to the Cherry Blossom Season in India covers five places and their months, […]
Oman rewards people who drive. Roads run from Muscat’s coast to turquoise wadis, from a sea of dunes in the Wahiba Sands to a turtle beach on the Arabian Sea, and up into mountain villages near Nizwa, with a long road south to Salalah for the committed. This guide to the Oman road trip covers […]
Egypt’s calendar runs on three clocks: the Islamic lunar calendar that sets Ramadan and Eid, the Coptic calendar behind Sham el-Nessim, and the sun itself, which lights a temple sanctuary at Abu Simbel on two days a year. Layer on festivals inherited from the pharaohs, and the result is a country where celebration has been […]
Paris is known for tasting menus, but plenty of its tastiest snacks cost around ten euros or less and are eaten standing up, on a bench or beside the Seine. Paris Street Food is a mix of French staples such as the ham-and-butter baguette and the buckwheat crêpe, plus falafel, kebabs and dim sum from […]
Sri Lanka’s ghost stories are layered: colonial bungalows with a lady in a locked room, a waterfall that locals avoid after dark, a Dutch hospital with noises in the attic and an older tradition of spirits and demons that exorcism rituals still address. This guide covers the best-known Haunted places in Sri Lanka: five to […]
Few Himalayan treks pack forest, meadow and a 360-degree ridge view into six days with an easy-to-moderate grade, and the Phulara Ridge Trek is one of them. It starts from Sankri in Uttarakhand’s Uttarkashi district, climbs through forest to high campsites, crosses a ridge at about 3,700 m and drops to the village of Taluka. […]
Mauritius is a small island with a big menu. About two-thirds of its 1.2 million people are of Indian descent, around 28 percent are Creole, and smaller Chinese and French communities add their own cooking. The result is that Mauritius food is a blend you will not find anywhere else: flatbreads stuffed with split peas, […]
Czechia packs an unusually busy summer into a small country: a fortress hosting extreme metal, a former steelworks turned dance-music campground, a castle-grounds metal weekend and a lakeside beach party. The best festivals in Czech Republic run from early June to mid-August, and 2027 dates are already out for most of the big ones. This […]
Jammu is often treated as a stopover on the way to Vaishno Devi or Kashmir, which undersells it. Sitting on the Tawi river among the Shivalik hills, the old city is full of Dogra-era temples, palaces and a hilltop fort, and its day trips reach lakes, caves and snow. This guide lists the best things […]