I've walked out on a frozen river more times than I can count. Not for the photograph, not for the thrill everyone assumes it's about — because for most of my life in these mountains, that river was the only door out of Zanskar in winter. No road could survive that gorge. Barely five metres wide in places, walled in by cliffs climbing 600 metres straight up — there was never a question of a path along the bank. So when the Zanskar River froze hard enough to hold weight, usual

I've spent most of my adult life driving old trade roads, and I think it goes back to my first life as an architect — I've never been able to look at a road or a border post without asking who built it, and why there, and why like that. A mountain doesn't hand you a route. Someone surveys it, argues over it, sometimes bleeds for it, and only much later does it become the pretty thing you photograph from a car window. That curiosity is what took me across the Pashmina Route —

I spent eight years living in Sikkim before I ever thought of it as a subject to write about — long enough that it stopped being a place I was visiting and started being a place with its own memory, its own long list of things nobody had gotten around to telling me yet. Architecture trained me to ask what decision built any structure I stood in front of: a road, a monastery, a border post. Sikkim kept handing me a different kind of structure to ask that question about — a res

#kargil1999 #centralasia #Silkroute #historyofkargil #thepashminaroute #travelwithkanupriya The Pashmina Route Journal Present Kargil Market Before Kargil became a name associated with war, it was a name associated with movement. Imagine Kargil a century ago: caravans arriving from Ladakh with wool and salt, traders coming from Lahaul and Punjab, Kashmir sending goods northwards, and routes towards Baltistan and Central Asia bringing carpets, stones, horses and stories from m

#silkrouteindia #triptoindia #thingstodoinmanali #foreigndevilsofthesilkroad #roadtriptozanskar #manalitokashmirbyroad #besttravelitineraryforladakh Gulshan Book Store, Srinagar I feel, book shops of a place really hold the pulse of the region. And, i reached the Gulshan Book Store in Srinagar, as soon as i landed in Kashmir for the first time of my life in 2021. My interest in regional history to orient myself better in the present context, lead me into a prompting conversat

#Silkroute #Silkrouteofindia #roadtriptoladakh #Manalitokashmir #manalitokashmirbyroad #Ladakhcircuit #zanskarfixeddeparture #ladakhfixeddeparture #thingstodoinmanali Route to Shinkula "If there's one thread, quite literally, that ties these four places together, it's wool. Not folklore, not religion, but the Old Silk Route trade. A goat in Tibet grew it, only a trader in Ladakh could buy it, a merchant in Kargil housed it, and a weaver in Srinagar spent a year and a half tur

This a semi fictional story on the life & culture in Zanskar, with a Buddhist young girl as the protagonist and how she deals with love

Gangtok City | Monsoons in Gangtok | Travel to Sikkim | Stories from Sikkim | Stories from Gangtok | Moody Story | Fictional Writing |...

A short story on the culture and traditions of Dev Bhoomi, Himachal Pradesh. Its folklore and superstitions woven with mythology and belief.

Short, Entertaining, Fictional Story on Uzbekistan for the inquisitive reader... Bukhara | Central Asia | Uzbekistan | Silk Route |...

Short, Entertaining, Fictional Story from Uzbekistan for the inquisitive reader.. Uzbekistan | Samarkhand | Samarkand | Central Asia |...