By Vahishta Mistry
It’s about 5.30 AM and I’m woken from my slumber by the sound of a tapping. It sounds for all the world like an impatient man rapping with his knuckles at a restroom door. TAP-TAP-TAPTAP-TAP. As I struggle to come to terms with this rude awakening, and just as I decide it must be a …
Everyone has a preferred pace of travel. I love a good road trip, I’ve found. I also have friends who love boarding airplanes, and who find they’re most at home in the sky, to whom getting on a plane in one continent and alighting in another world is the pinnacle of romance. On the other …
In 2012, I sold my house, and set off on an adventure that would end up spanning multiple continents, two and a half years and many, many miles. It’s 2017, now, and I find myself in somewhat similar circumstances. Neha and I are moving to Kodaikanal, to work for at least a year, maybe …
The light from the headlamps of my car picks out the yellow lines in the road and, a moment later, a strange white glow on the sides of the road. Everything else outside my windscreen is black: the tar on the road and the dark of the night have merged into a single opaque mass. …
I freeze, at what could have been the slight sound of a twig snapping. Was it just my imagination? Sweat beads on my brow. As I wait, I sense the clincher: the woodland noises have all stopped and I can hear, in the distance, guttural German voices drawing closer. My hand goes up, signaling Iris, …
If you think Amsterdam is the star attraction of the Netherlands, you have another think coming. While the canal city is probably the most popular tourist destination, I found that Utrecht, a smaller city (it’s actually the 4th largest city in the Netherlands) about 20 minutes away, was the real deal when it comes to …
There are many New Yorks, hidden away in the five boroughs that make up the geographical area of what we call the Big Apple – the city that never sleeps, New York City. Some of these iterations of the city take on a more flamboyant avatar, borrowed from the styles of its denizens. These are the …
I’m sitting in the front seat of a large van with Lukaz, who’s driving me to Prague – we’re discussing veganism and dal, and how dal is an amazing dish for vegans, even in Prague, which is where Lukaz is from. In the back, a few other people who ‘ve just met for the first …
Budapest is a pretty city – straddling the Danube, it grew up as two separate cities: hilly, rich Buda and flat, poorer but more artistic Pest. This state of affairs remained until the denizens of the city built the first of many bridges – the Chain bridge – across the Danube and united the two …
Prague in the summertime is glorious. It’s a city of spires and ancient towers, so when the sun is out, all those famous 1,000 points are glistening and glinting in the sun. The bright red and orange and yellow roof tiles are clean after the rain and the entire population of the city seems to …