Travel is very rarely only just about the place and the beauties it has to offer. It’s also about the food, the culture, the architecture. Central to all this are people. To truly understand a city, you need to understand its people and what makes them tick. What drives their ambitions or causes their lack of them. Whether they believe in working hard, or in partying equally hard. Read more

Do all travel accounts have a fictional element to them? I started wondering about it after reading this piece, courtesy: Madhu. It raises an interesting point, one that’s not just true of travel books, but also of some travel writing that we see in magazines and newspapers. I realised this soon after the Rickshaw Run that I went on two years ago. One of the participants wrote a piece for a UK publication that conflated the events of the entire trip into a single day - making it sounds like one helluva 24 hours. Read more

All that talk a couple of posts back about taking so many photos that we’re too busy recording the moment to actually enjoy it, made me think about the other things that have become an essential part of our connected world. We talk on our phones with friends while we’re sitting with friends, check for messages even when we don’t have any, need 24-hour internet access, and the coolest new software is the one that lets you simultaneously update your status on Facebook, Twitter and GTalk. Read more

I got a travel pitch this week, here’s the text (the full text) below. I want you to sit in my place and evaluate it, and tell me what you think of it.

“hey you want me to work on bhutan? could cover paro thimpu n punakha …the charm n simplicity of the country…have grt pics as well.” Read more

Last year I went to China. Since I’m not vegetarian, food wasn’t a big issue. So the next thing everyone wanted to know was: How did you deal with the language problem?
Now, language certainly was an issue. After being floored completely by the impressive infrastructure that the country has, I realised that the only real edge we have over China is the large number of people in our country who speak English so fluently (that and of course, democracy, as my more politically correct friends keep reminding me). Read more

Being a travel editor, I get all sorts of submissions from people claiming to be travel writers, from the very good to the absolutely scary. Different things go into making a great piece – good writing, an unusual experience,  a certain perspective, etc, etc – but one of the absolute essential basics, according to me, is that a person have actually visited the place. Read more

The other day, I read in the paper that an American law firm had offered its associates an year of paid leave, at one third their basic salary. This was their way of coping with the recession, one that allows them to retain talent at lesser cost while their employees get a year to study or travel, and are happy too.

For many in the west, this period of recession has become a time to take a year off or take advantage of being laid off to travel. Andrei, a German I met in the Andamans, was at the beginning of a year-long trip around the world. Read more

When I was first offered the opportunity to handle a travel section, I felt I’d struck gold. Getting paid to travel and write about it sounded perfect, so I enthusiastically quit my old job, ready to embrace the challenges of the new one. (New places, unknown languages, strange foods – no problem – bring them on.) Read more