Originally, Mahabaleshwar was created as a summer capital so that British sahibs and memsahibs, stationed in the Bombay Presidency, could escape the heat of the Indian summer. Now, except for the monsoons when some hotels down their shutters, Mahabaleshwar is a round-the-year holiday destination. In fact, it is something that you are expected to do over a weekend. At the beginning of January this year, we took a short break and drove off to Mahabaleshwar. We decided that we were not going to drive around from one ‘point’, as the various peaks are called, to another. Instead we were going…
-
-
I first visited Kerala (a State in South India) in the early nineties, much before the Keralites discovered that they lived in God’s Own Country. And having discovered God’s Own Country, on my own, I have kept returning. Again and again. But my enchantment with the natural beauty of Kerala blinkered me and I gave the cultural aspects of the place and its people a miss. As a result, I missed out on Kalaripayattu, a martial art form indigenous to Kerala. In Malayalam, the word ‘kalari‘ means a practice ring or a training centre and ‘payattu‘ means duel. Although I…
-
Last summer we had a family reunion cum holiday in Wellington, a quaint Cantonment town in the Nilgiris (South India) straight out of the British Raj, which hosts The Madras Regimental Centre and The Defence Staff College. And just outside Wellington is Coonoor, a lovely hill station that does not get the attention it deserves because nearby Ooty tends to attract the tourist traffic. If I were asked to chose between the two towns, Coonoor would win, without a shred of doubt. But even a day spent in Coonoor will make you want to come back, again and again, to…