Stories, Books & Me :)

People know me as an unhinged, seasoned adventurer, always out in her 4x4, raving through the mountains. But deep down, I am actually a Central Asian history nerd. I love being in my den, reading, writing and sharing my travel experiences. It's what keeps me rooted in my connection with this world, and with you.

So what can you expect from this page? How I see these places, how I curate tours around them, my in-depth study of a route or a place, and the writer in me sharing my versions of these places through semi-fictional stories. I have always been very private about this side of me, but I think I'm ready to share it with you now!

Pick a route, settle in, and read one story at a time. If one stays with you, save it, share it, or leave me a comment. And if you ever want to step into one of these stories for real, come travel with me.

Summer Is for Winter: A Year Inside Spiti, the Middle Land

In 2018, my brother and I rode a motorcycle out of Kota and didn't come home for 40 days. Most of those days were spent in Spiti. Not passing through it, not ticking it off. Actually living in it. We slept in family homes in Kibber. On the way in, we stayed in Chitkul long enough to teach at the village school. And in Mud and Kaza I sat with the village panchayats, listening to elders argue about grazing land, water turns and what the valley could and couldn't afford to lose.

kanupriya raniwala

1 day ago8 min read

Snow, Silk & the Land That Wouldn't Let Me Leave

You know? The relationships that last are the ones where they let you become a better version of yourself? Well that's my relationship with Sikkim because its hands down the 'safest' space one can be in - atleast once in a lifetime. My Sikkim Tale | Let's Explore Sikkim Naps at Gurudongmar is part of the privilege I read about Sikkim before I ever saw it — on a flight from Ahmedabad to Jaipur in 2010, in an old copy of Travel XP magazine that someone had left in the seat poc

kanupriya raniwala

5 days ago8 min read

The Road That Replaced My River - Story | Nimmu Padum Darcha Road Zanskar | Chadar Trek History | Ladakh

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

kanupriya raniwala

Sep 305 min read

The Road Built for Tea: A Silk Route Story from Zuluk to Nathula

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 —

kanupriya raniwala

Sep 238 min read

Mayel Lyang: The Hidden Land Behind Sikkim's Oldest Story | Dzongu - North Sikkim

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

kanupriya raniwala

Sep 238 min read

Kargil — The Bazaar Where the Roads Met | The Pashmina Route Market

#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

kanupriya raniwala

Aug 235 min read

The One Book That Made Me Move to Manali | Foreign Devils on the Silk Road

#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

kanupriya raniwala

Aug 85 min read

The Pashmina Route - Story | Road trip from Manali to Srinagar via Zanskar & Kargil | Old Silk Route Road of India | History of India | Indian History

#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

kanupriya raniwala

Jul 319 min read