Travel Destinations - India

Rajasthan: Royal Welcome

You don't need blue blood in order to live like a maharaja for a few days-just Tom Vater's guide to the best of India's heritage hotels

In 1947, when India gained independence from the British, the maharajas had mostly gone to seed following 100 years of indulgence by their foreign masters. Their land and privileges gone, unable to find a new role in India's burgeoning democracy, the former kings soon ran out of cash to maintain [ read more ]

Darjeeling: High Tea

A roadside tea seller
Makaibari Tea Estate was already one of the most respected tea plantations in the world, even before it opened its doors to eco-tourism. Tom Vater heads up into the misty mountains to take a look

"Life is chaos, the world is chaos. The only constant is change. I like chaos and the way you position yourself in it. Where do we come from? What are we doing here and where are we going? We need to answer these questions to be free, to find our [ read more ]

Jaisalmer: Sand Safari

Lone footprints in the Jaisalmer sand
Steve Davey's been through the desert (of Rajasthan) on a camel with no name (that he could remember)

If camels are the ships of the desert, then I must be on the Titanic. There's rolling, lurching and pitching – not to mention belching and farting. I could do with an iceberg though: it is already far too hot a couple of hours after breakfast, and it's only going [ read more ]

Hampi: The Legend that Time Forgot

Banana plantations, coconut groves, ruined temples and marketplaces all set in a dramatic landscape of giant boulders - this is the essence of Hampi
Keith Mundy finds out how India's greatest city became one of its least-known tourist attractions

A giant must have made it – a giant modernist sculptor. How else did these enormous piles of finely-formed boulders come to rest in such decorous patterns?

Nothing can quite prepare you for Hampi's surreal landscape. As you start down the road from the nearby railway town of Hospet, the [ read more ]

Sikkim: Taking a Peak

The road less travelled
Trekking in Sikkim offers a refreshingly different perspective on the Himalayas - and a refreshing cup of tea into the bargain, as Rick Hudson finds out

Breathe in. Breathe out. Each step up the faint track brings us closer to the stone cairns. The colourful prayer flags hang limp on their lines. Breathe in. Breathe out. The air is cold and crisp. Apart from the lack of oxygen, it is pleasantly invigorating. Breathe in. Breathe out. [ read more ]

Goa: It's A Goa

Nothing changes, nothing stays the same in India's mellowest state. Ron Gluckman takes a look at this infamous coastal paradise and asks whether Goa's time has come

Loved and lost, fought over, isolated, divided, united, abandoned, rediscovered. Few beaches in Asia, or anywhere else for that matter, can claim even a fraction of the history of Goa. Once undeniably grand, this old resort seems to have slipped from memory in recent times. But Goa is back on [ read more ]

Ladakh: The Earth's Umbilical Cord

The Tibetan residents of Ladakh in northwest India believe their holy mountains connect the Earth to the universe. Victor Paul Borg joins them for a heavenly time at their largest summer festival.

"I walk for money. What do you walk for?" asked Yaqoob, my guide, one day when we stopped at a stream to wash.

We had been walking for four days, up and down dusty mountains, through isolated valleys, over 5,000-metre-plus passes. The Ladakhi Mountains, brownish and purplish among muddy or [ read more ]

Rajhastan: Live like a King

When India's maharajahs fell on hard times many were forced to transform their palaces into luxury hotels. Damien Leloup checks in for a taste of life in the Raj.

Rajhastan was once the land of the maharajas, the famous princes who ruled over the land and people in northern India. They were fabulously rich, often with their own private armies, and even when Britain colonised much of the country they remained semi-independent. Only when India escaped British rule for [ read more ]