• English - Travel

    Echoes in the Silence

    June 16, 2025 - By 

    Kirit Thakur Chapter 1: The sky above Mumbai was a thick grey shroud as Arjun Sen stood beside the smoldering pyre, his hands clenched loosely around a copper urn still warm from the priest’s touch. The funeral had been quiet—his mother silent behind dark glasses, a few distant relatives murmuring awkward condolences—but Arjun barely registered any of it. His father’s sudden death from a cardiac arrest had stunned him into a kind of passive numbness. Only the sound of the fire crackling in the crematorium pierced the quiet of his thoughts. He’d never imagined this moment coming so soon, and…

  • English - Travel

    Miles and Pawprints

    June 16, 2025 - By 

    Karan Mehta The Road Begins in Mumbai The smell of old books and rain hung in the air of Arjun’s flat as he sealed the last cardboard box. It was strange how quickly a life could pack itself away—eight years of a job, two failed relationships, a pile of unread journals, and a dog who never left his side. Simba watched quietly from his corner, tail swishing slowly across the tile. The golden retriever was almost six, with a slight limp in his left leg from a puppyhood injury. Arjun liked to think that limp made Simba more human, more…

  • English - Travel

    The Colours of the Desert: Three Souls, One Story

    June 15, 2025 - By 

    Deepayan Roy Chapter 1: It was one of those mellow Kolkata afternoons in early December when the winter sun bathed everything in a soft, golden glow. The city hummed lazily outside, trams clanged their way down College Street, and a faint aroma of roasted peanuts drifted in from the street vendor downstairs. Inside Deep’s room, the three friends sat sprawled on the cool mosaic floor, the ceiling fan lazily creaking above. The room had a lived-in warmth—walls lined with bookshelves, posters of travel destinations, a dusty guitar in the corner. Deep, always the thoughtful one, leaned against the wall, his…

  • English - Travel

    The Days We Wandered

    June 14, 2025 - By 

    Ritoban Mukherjee  The Escape Begins It started with a silence between four friends who had known each other since college but hadn’t spoken properly in months. The kind of silence that grows not out of absence but the slow sediment of routine. It was Pramit who broke it one humid Kolkata afternoon by posting a message in the group chat none of them had used in weeks: “I’m losing my mind. Let’s leave.” The others didn’t ask where or why. Only Tushar replied with a thumbs up emoji. Ranjan added, “I’ll bring the flask.” And Neel, the most reluctant of…

  • English - Travel

    The Forgotten Tribes of the Northeast

    June 13, 2025 - By 

    Prithvi Mukhopadhyay Chapter 1: The aircraft trembled slightly as it descended through dense rainclouds. From the tiny window, Armaan Roy caught fleeting glimpses of green — endless forests, swollen rivers, and distant ridgelines lost in mist. The runway came into view like a wet ribbon stretched across the wild earth. With a final lurch, the wheels kissed the ground, water spraying out in silver arcs beneath them. Armaan inhaled deeply, as if trying to drink in the unfamiliar air through the tiny vent. Even inside the cabin, he could smell the monsoon — wet earth, woodsmoke from distant fires, and…

  • English - Travel

    The Ganges Chronicles

    June 12, 2025 - By 

    Prakash Tripathi The Invitation Raghav had spent most of his life chasing stories, following leads across cities, through crowded streets, quiet villages, and hidden corners of the world. But Banaras was different. Banaras had always fascinated him. The city’s name alone carried an aura of mysticism, an invitation to a deeper understanding of life, and death. Known as the City of Light, Banaras promised stories that were not written in books but lived in the very air, in the sacred flow of the Ganges, in the faces of the sadhus, in the temples that stood still while time passed by.…

  • English - Travel

    Whispers of the Himalayas

    June 12, 2025 - By 

    Rinchen Lama 1 I hadn’t planned to go to Sikkim. In fact, Sikkim was a word that had only floated around in conversations—half-remembered from childhood geography classes or heard during travel shows playing in the background of my mother’s living room. What I had planned, after six years of numbing spreadsheets and artificial smiles in a Mumbai office, was to disappear for a while. Not forever, but long enough to breathe air that wasn’t laced with ambition or dust. The idea came quietly, like mist crawling over a windowpane. I was sitting in a mind-numbingly boring client pitch when my…

  • English - Travel

    Windswept Roads

    June 11, 2025 - By 

    Ishani Sen The Road to Leh The plane shook with a sudden jolt as it dipped through clouds, drawing a quick gasp from the passenger in seat 14A. She gripped her window armrest instinctively, then laughed at herself under her breath. “Relax, Tara. You’ve been through worse,” she whispered. Below, the Himalayas looked like a sea of frozen waves, pale under the morning sun. Tara Mukherjee had seen many corners of the world—Peruvian rainforests, Icelandic black beaches, the neon chaos of Tokyo—but India, in all its chaos and contradiction, always called her back. This journey wasn’t like the others. It…

  • English - Travel

    Echoes of Delhi

    June 11, 2025 - By 

    Rahul Kumar The sun had barely risen over Delhi’s hazy skyline when I stepped off the train at New Delhi Railway Station, my backpack slung over one shoulder and a nervous excitement buzzing through me like static. I’d heard stories about the city, each one painting it as a place of endless motion, where ancient empires still whispered in the wind and the present rushed forward like a river in flood. My first steps onto the platform were met with a collision of smells and sounds that hit me like a tidal wave—chai brewing in metal kettles, the sharp tang…

  • English - Travel

    The Desert Compass

    June 9, 2025 - By 

    Suchandra Mishra The train from Ajmer screeched gently into the sun-bleached station of Pushkar just past noon. The air outside shimmered with heat, and even through the dusty glass panes, Mira Sen could see why they called it the Golden Throat of Rajasthan. The sand blew like whispers across the platform, and the light had a peculiar weight — ancient and unmoving. Mira stepped out, one foot in her worn sneakers and another in purpose. She adjusted the strap of her camera bag and slung her leather-bound notebook tighter under her arm. Her hair, which she’d braided tightly earlier that…