Express News Service Walking through the tree-lined hillside of the army cantonment of Dagshai in Solan, Himachal Pradesh, one comes across lush pine forests, winding roads and quaint cafes—features characteristic of a quintessential hill station. In the midst of this calm, however, rests a stark reminder of India’s colonial past, the Dagshai Jail

Express News Service Exiles can be long if they have a cause. Nupur Tron, founder and director of ‘Foundation Frison Horta’ in Brussels, Belgium, has a cause fired by passion. She is an Indian woman in a foreign land, using European legacy, heritage and aesthetics to get the Indian message across. After having lived in Paris as part [&h

Express News Service A temple dedicated to Lord Shiva in Siddipet, 100 km from Hyderabad, is teeming with crowds, thanks to it being the auspicious Karthika maasam (month of Karthik). But it’s no ordinary temple. The garbha gudis (sanctum sanctorum) have been made using 3D printing. Netflix documentary Print the Legend gave a glimpse of what 3D [&h

Express News Service When in Stockholm, set stock by Swedish design. It pervades everything and every place—the cafes and museums, the castles and parks, the streets, metro stations, and even public toilets. Characterised by a minimal, clean approach that combines form and functionality, Swedish design is simple: it strips back the superfluous to r

Express News Service Uttarakhand’s most revered city—Haridwar—is surprisingly a case study in art and architecture. Aside from the temples and ashrams that dot the town, there are age-old havelis and ancestral bungalows that whisper secrets of its antique past. Most of them have striking arches and frescoes that may have faded with time, but, nonet

Express News Service Bio entrepreneur Arpit Dhupar lives in Delhi. Sometime in 2019, a year before the clouds of Covid-19 spread its wings, he was watching his three-year-old nephew paint a cityscape. To his shock, the skies were grey, instead of blue. The young artist was merely translating on paper what he is used to—the ugly […]

Express News Service In the quaint village of Nimmalakunta, in Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh, there lives a small guild of painters and performers engaged in preserving a dying tradition, Tholu Bommalata, or ‘the dance of leather puppets’. It dates back to 3 BC when itinerant storytellers travelled throughout India, using handmade puppets to

Express News Service There’s more to Philadelphia than the famous Philly cheesesteak. Pennsylvania’s most populous city is the cradle of art. Its public murals—the city is recognised as the Mural Capital of the World—make it nothing short of an open-air art museum. “With close to 4,500 murals and sculptures, art is all around you,” says […]

Express News Service It is a scenic drive to Turkestan from Shymkent in Southern Kazakhstan, about 680 km from Almaty, the country’s largest city. The sepia landscape is stark and generally unpeopled, with camel caravans lumbering along. Turkestan, the spiritual centre of Kazakhstan used to be home to the 11th-century Sufi mystic, Khoja Ahmed Yasaw

Express News Service Watching the northern lights is like seeing a miracle unfold. It’s as if the cosmos is dancing and a superpower up there is trying to tell you something. After minutes of pitch darkness, the sky suddenly lights up. First, there is a faint green line across the vast expanse, which slowly merges with brighter […]

Express News Service B for Bonn. B for Boring. So it has been said of West Germany’s former capital city, about which  A local politician once famously sniped that “the best thing about Bonn is the train to Munich”. Compared to the vibrant, eclectic, manic-paced Berlin of haute cuisine, edgy fashion and hipster vibes, Bonn […]

Express News Service Thirty golden figures mounted on blue mosaic pedestals in the middle of a traffic island form the majestic Colchis fountain, the showstopper of the city of Kutaisi in Western Georgia. Modelled on ancient artefacts—from lions and deer to horses—found in an archeological excavation in nearby Vani, the eye-catching fountain is a n

Express News Service Recently, I made a trip to Turkey. I share some of my impressions of travelling in the magical land. GAZIANTEP There is music. Not the kind we are used to but the body picks up its rhythm and my mood is upbeat. I am in the small town of Gaziantep. It is […]

Express News Service Alongside a murmuring brook, a gentle uphill trail dissolves from a brown, muddy one to a path flanked by willows, fields of peas and barley, and fruit-laden apricot trees. There is not a soul in sight, but the worked fields and the lit butter lamps at the monastery shrine indicate habitation. A short […]

Express News Service The hills were alive with the sounds of music. There was Australian rock-punk band Mannequin Death Squad, getting people to bang heads, and Farhan Akhtar belted out Bollywood hits like Zinda from Bhaag Milkha Bhaag and Sindbad the Sailor from Rock On!!, and a few from his album Echoes. Mohit Chauhan brought […]

Express News Service History whispers from every corner of the densely populated Kigali in Rwanda, Africa. It was under the German rule, Belgians and the Rwandan kings, before becoming the capital of independent Rwanda in 1962. A visit to the Genocide Memorial offers a glimpse into the nation’s dark past when in 1994, the Hutus […]

Express News Service Switzerland’s most populous city and its economic centre—Zurich—is best known for banking and business. Most travellers whizz in and out of Zurich Airport, but linger a little longer and you’ll find that the city goes from work to play faster than a Swiss train.   Sitting on the northern tip of Lake […]

Express News Service Famous as the site of the Potsdam Conference in 1945, when the UK, US and the Soviet Union decided the fate of Germany after World War II, there’s more to this tiny cosmopolitan town than just history. Founded around the seventh century and situated 24 km from central Berlin, Potsdam was the […]

Express News Service Long walks along winding roads, gabled colonial bungalows and magnificent churches, quaint cafés and bakeries drawing people in with the wafting aroma of freshly brewed coffee and cake… Landour, a cantonment settlement next to the hill station Mussoorie, has its obvious charms. There’s more waiting to be discovered in this Utta

Express News Service It is wild out there, but there are times when the boundaries seem to blur between the indoors and the outdoors. During the day, the tall grasses and trees surrounding an ethnically stylish collection of forest villas and pool residences come alive with birdsong. Tipai by Wildlife Luxuries, nestled amid the virgin […]

Express News Service Some 150 km from the cacophony of Goa, lies Sindhudurg in Maharashtra. The serene coastal district is not only home to the 17th-century sea fort built by Chhatrapati Shivaji, but also lush green forest, tranquil beaches, hiking trails, backwaters, quaint villages and temples. The place is alive with the sounds of birds [&hellip

Express News Service Are the Danes happier than the rest of the world? Perhaps; Denmark consistently ranks among the top 3 in the World Happiness Report. The Danes credit the higher rating to having achieved work-life balance by focusing on leisure, family, solitude, and a high quality of life. The practice of finding happiness in […]