• English - Travel

    Wanderings Under the Sky

    Maya Sen Part 1 — The Departure The morning I left, the city was still half-asleep, a pale wash of yellow light stretching over cracked pavements and shuttered tea stalls. My backpack, slung awkwardly over one shoulder, seemed heavier with every step I took, not because of the clothes and notebooks packed inside but because of the invisible weight of hesitation. I had never truly left home before—yes, there had been short trips to the mountains or the sea, always with family or friends, but never like this, never with no return ticket, never with the open road stretching like…

  • English - Travel

    Postcards from Patagonia

    Ira Sen Part 1 The bus rattled across the endless stretch of Patagonian steppe, its windows clouded with a thin film of dust that the wind seemed to scatter and replace in equal measure. Mira pressed her forehead against the cold glass, staring out at a world that felt larger than any she had known before, a land stripped bare of pretence, where the earth and sky met in an uncompromising line. She had been divorced for six months, though the word still felt sharp on her tongue, and this journey—half impulsive, half deliberate—was meant to be her own form…

  • English - Travel

    The Last Caravanserai

    Drishan Desai 1 The road to the caravanserai seemed endless, a ribbon of dust unraveling between the pale, desolate mountains. The solo traveler had been driving for hours, his jeep groaning under the strain of altitude and gravel, its wheels kicking up fine sand that swirled like smoke in the thin air. He had expected only silence here, a silence so vast it might collapse upon itself. Yet when he finally slowed before the ruins, the silence seemed heavy rather than empty, as if it were filled with the residue of countless footsteps, voices, and lives that had once passed…

  • English - Travel

    Clay Lamps of Joy

     Part 1 – The Departure The train screeched out of Howrah station, its wheels clattering like a restless animal tugging at chains. Rhea pressed her forehead to the cool window glass and watched the sprawling iron bridge dissolve into a maze of warehouses, smoke, and rust-colored walls. Behind her, the compartments were thick with the smell of fried luchis, boiled eggs, thermos-tea, and the constant drone of people talking, bargaining, gossiping as if no one on the train was a stranger. She hugged her sling bag tight, inside which her camera and notebook waited. A photo-essay project, her professors had…

  • English - Travel

    Under the Tuscan Rain

    Karan Sehgal Part 1: The Smell of Olive Pits The rental car smelled faintly of olive pits and cold metal, like someone had bottled last summer and left it under the seat to ferment. It was a squat white Fiat Panda, dented on one door and stubborn in second gear, the kind of car that looks offended by hills. The clerk at the Florence airport, a woman with a swift smile and a tattoo of an anchovy on her wrist, handed me the keys and said, “She hates rain but loves radio.” When I asked what station the car preferred,…

  • English - Travel

    Clouds Carry Their Names

    Leena Mishra The train wound its way through the folds of the mountains like an old memory refusing to fade, screeching at curves where the mist clung thick to the windows and blurred everything into water and white. Rhea Kapoor pressed her forehead to the glass, her phone long dead, her city life now just a bundle of buzzing silence inside her bag. Delhi had been too loud, too fast, too brutal, each day a race against something she could not name, and she had fled without much of a plan, booking the first guesthouse she found online in a…

  • English - Travel

    Across Skylines and Souks: A Travel Diary

    Raisa Choudhury Part 1: The Passport Window There’s something quietly electric about the moment just before a journey begins, that tiny pulse of anticipation you feel as you zip up your suitcase for the last time and check your passport compulsively even though you know it’s there, waiting like a silent witness to whatever this new chapter holds, and that’s exactly how I felt at 3:47 a.m. in my cluttered Delhi apartment, staring at the cab’s taillights as I locked my door behind me with a rush of both fear and freedom, not yet knowing that this trip would be…

  • English - Romance - Travel

    Saffron Kisses

    Ira Devyani Sen It was the kind of evening that carried warmth on its skin — not from the sun, but from the longing that hung in the air like unspoken words. The rain had stopped just an hour ago, leaving behind a breathless hush. The windows were still misted, half open to the scent of soaked earth and hibiscus. She stood by the sill, fingers tracing the wooden frame, her saree a soft rustle of maroon and gold wrapped tightly around her curves, as if the fabric itself remembered touch. Down below, the courtyard glistened — bricks slick with…

  • English - Travel

    Terracotta Trails: A Journey Through Bishnupur

    Bhaskar Majumder 1 The attic of Daipayan’s ancestral home in North Kolkata smelled of old books, mothballs, and the faint aroma of his grandfather’s pipe tobacco — a scent that clung to the wooden trunks and rusted almirahs like a memory too stubborn to leave. Dust motes danced in the slanting beam of afternoon light that filtered through a broken ventilator, casting long shadows on the faded floor mats. He wasn’t supposed to be here — just a short trip home for his cousin’s wedding — but the pull of nostalgia had dragged him up the creaky stairs to explore…

  • English - Suspense - Travel

    Echoes of the Deccan

    Devendra Joshi Chapter 1: The Call of the Deccan Vikram Roy had spent the last five years of his life chasing fleeting successes in the dusty archives and half-excavated ruins of India, always just one breakthrough away from recognition. An ambitious archaeologist from Kolkata, he had always dreamed of discovering something monumental, something that would put him on the map. But the years had not been kind to his career. Vikram had slowly become disillusioned with the field, his excitement replaced by a mechanical pursuit of academic accolades and citations. The phone call from his superior was unexpected, yet not…