States
Rajasthan’s travelling year turns on night temperature, not on the daytime heat
A dry climate under clear skies loses at night everything it gained at noon, and that swing decides what is…
· 4 min read
Nadia Haddad
Contributing editor, Traveology
Nadia writes about states, hills, coast & islands, mostly the parts other people skip and prefers a plain explanation to a clever one.
19 articles
States
In the Northeast the road decides your day, not the distance
Hill gradients, shared vehicles and a time zone that does not fit the longitude matter far more here than…
· 4 min read
States
Karnataka changes climate three times between the sea and the plateau
A wet coast, a drenched hill belt and a dry interior sit within a few hours of each other, and the…
· 4 min read
Trains & Permits
Waitlisted, RAC and confirmed are three different promises
The letters in front of a waiting list number say more about your chances than the number itself does, and…
· 4 min read
Trains & Permits
Permits in India are a border instrument and the rules are not the same twice
Inner-line and protected-area permissions exist because of frontiers and protected communities, not tourism…
· 4 min read
Festivals
The Kumbh is run as a logistics operation on a riverbed
A temporary city with sectors, pontoon bridges and one-way crowd flows is built for the gathering and taken…
· 4 min read
States
Maharashtra’s hills fill up during the monsoon, which reverses the national pattern
The Sahyadri escarpment turns into waterfall country for three months, and weekend traffic out of the big…
· 4 min read
Hills
An Indian hill station is a nineteenth-century idea and it still behaves like one
These towns were built on ridges as hot-weather retreats, and the ridge layout that made sense for a few…
· 4 min read
Coast & Islands
Tidal range varies enormously around India and it decides what a shore looks like
The gulfs of the northwest have some of the largest tides in the country while much of the peninsular coast…
· 4 min read
Trains & Permits
Most travellers’ stomach trouble is a water and handling problem
The usual route is contamination somewhere between a source and your hand, which is why the practical…
· 3 min read
States
Sanctuary, national park and tiger reserve are three different legal things
India’s protected areas sit in a ladder of designations with different rules about rights, access and…
· 3 min read
Trains & Permits
Crossing a big Indian city is a choice between four different systems
Metro rail, suburban trains, auto-rickshaws and app cabs each solve a different part of the urban journey…
· 3 min read
Festivals
Ganesh Chaturthi ends with a city carrying its idols into the water
A ten-day festival built around household and neighbourhood images concludes in immersion processions that…
· 3 min read
States
Half the Deccan is old lava and the other half is old granite
The plateau reads as one flat interior on a map, but its northwestern half is stacked basalt and its…
· 4 min read
Hills
The forest changes about every thousand metres you climb in the Himalaya
Vegetation zones stack up a mountainside in a predictable order, which means the trees outside the window…
· 4 min read
Coast & Islands
A sea fort was built to control a harbour, and the tide decides when you visit
The forts along India’s coasts exist because several powers were competing for the same trade at the same…
· 3 min read
Trains & Permits
An itinerary for elderly parents is built around fewer bases, not fewer sights
Most of the difficulty in travelling with older relatives in India comes from the moving rather than the…
· 3 min read
Trains & Permits
A state border changes the road, the rules and sometimes the vehicle
Crossing from one Indian state into another is administratively invisible for a private traveller and…
· 3 min read
Festivals
Ramlila is weeks of street theatre that end in ten minutes of fire
The north Indian enactment of the Ramayana runs in nightly instalments across a town, performed largely by…
· 4 min read