travel shorts: georgia, birthplace of wine and the toastmaster

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When the word for ‘cheers’ [Gaumarjos] translates to ‘to victory,’ it tells you a lot about the role of wine drinking in a country that has been racked by attacks for millennia.

Wine in the Caucasian country of Georgia is not just a drink. It is an integral part of elaborate feasts called ‘supra‘ led by a ‘tamada‘ or toastmaster, who makes fiery toasts using scooped-out animal horns without ever getting drunk. It is a celebration—of a people holding onto their own identity. Hoping for wins at war. Winning those wars. Rejoicing in those wins. Whether the borders expanded or shrunk.

On a spiritual level, Georgia’s Christian orthodox monks have been making bread and wine for its liturgy from the time Christianity landed on the country’s doorstep in 326 CE. The bread and wine symbolising Christ’s flesh and blood.

Wine routes crisscross the entire nation, at times leading to small family-owned wine cellars, and at others to gigantic corporations. At times the wines find their way into exclusive branded high-end glass bottles and at others into ordinary plastic containers with gaudy caps. Each area in Georgia, except for the soaring Caucasus mountains, produces an indigenous wine. The most famous region being Kakheti. Continue reading →

photo essay: remnants of soviet georgia

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The relationship between Georgia and Russia is, well—complicated. Irrevocably woven, yet defiantly independent, Georgia’s past avatar as the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic still peeps through across the country. You only need to look. A brutalist masterpiece. A colossal deserted mine with cable cars still frozen mid-air in space and time. Poker-faced apartment blocks sliced with horizontal walkways and plunging lifts. Magnificent abandoned sanatoriums built over healing springs that have given way to tall overgrown trees, moss, and wildflowers.

An urbex paradise. A lesson that nothing lasts forever.

Twice, Georgia proclaimed its independence from Russia’s rule. First, albeit briefly, in 1918, and then again in 1991. Tbilisi’s Museum of Soviet Occupation, housed in the national museum, pays an evocative homage to local resistance and the snuffing out of Georgia’s creative elite during the 70 years it was part of the Soviet Union [USSR]. Meanwhile Moscow still celebrates its ex-Republics at the VDNKh Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy and modern-day Russians throng the historically familiar streets of Tbilisi in search of the perfect weekend getaway.

Soviet Georgia took birth in 1921, post the Russian Civil War, and ended abruptly under former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991. During these 70 long years, Georgia’s fertile lands and mineral-rich mountains were a key source of food and manganese for the world’s largest country. It was a contribution that warranted the construction of the Soviet Union’s 4th metro station in 1966 in Tbilisi, and the large-scale expansion of Georgia’s railway line to export its agricultural produce en-masse.

But these years also saw forced famines and abject poverty, ironically because of a son of its own soil.

Entrance to the Joseph Stalin Underground Printing House Museum in Tbilisi.

Entrance to the Joseph Stalin Underground Printing House Museum in Tbilisi.

Continue reading →

travel shorts: home at the kutaisi family house museum

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I am
what inspires me.
You are
what you love.
If you set your heart
upon a purpose,
you shall arrive there—
and believe me—
there,
you will find me.
~ Mari Berdzenadze, Excerpt from LAK’ECH

Deep in the heart of Kutaisi’s oldest neighbourhood is Mari’s home. Number 39 on Dato Berdzenadze Street—the street is named after her brother who died aged 21. He was the bodyguard of Eduard Shevardnadze, foreign minister during the Soviet-era, and independent Georgia’s second president. Dato was killed during elections. The house goes by the name Kutaisi Family House Museum.

Descended from the royal nobility which once ruled Western Georgia, 56-year-old Mari is a doctorate in law, published poet, and painter all rolled into one.

She has, like the four generations behind her, lived her whole life in this 150-year-old house bursting in the seams with artifacts that have held a special place in its residents’ hearts. A tiered four-season twinkling contraption that accompanied the family Christmas trees stands proudly next to a gleaming piano. Chinese cabinets and European figurines vie with a row of exquisite stringed musical instruments propped up on a damask sofa, whilst family photographs and paintings sheath the wall right up to the ceiling. Continue reading →

usgalimal, south goa’s 30,000-year-old geoglyphs

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I am often asked what is my favourite travel destination. High up on the long list is India. Just when I think I have figured the travel scene out here, it throws me a googly. Now look at Goa for instance. Top layer: beaches and Portuguese-era culture and churches. Second layer: pristine tropical nature and ancient Hindu temples. Third layer? Prehistoric geoglyphs.

Yes, even I was taken by surprise. Far from prying eyes is a collection of some 125 rock carvings spread over 5,000 sq. metres on a laterite shelf dated between 20,000 BC and 30,000 BC in South Goa. They are known as the Usgalimal rock engravings, named after the nearest village.

When Goa’s monsoons arrive, the entire shelf gets buried under the adjacent river. When the waters recede, it is often covered in mud. A quirk of timing that contributed to its anonymity in archaeological circles till May 1993. Continue reading →

museum visit: piprahwa relics—the light and the lotus

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By oneself indeed is evil done and
by oneself is one defiled, by oneself
is evil not done and by oneself is one
purified. Purity and impurity
depend entirely on oneself; no one
can purify another.

~ Dhammapada, Verse 165

The story of Buddha’s Piprahwa relics is as unusual as the story of the man himself—a 6th/ 5th Century BCE prince, Siddhartha Gautama from the Indo-Gangetic plain, who renounced worldly life and possessions to find a faith built on compassion and self-discovery.

Throughout his life, he was adamant he be treated only as a teacher and not God. Because there was no God. Only our karma.

When Gautama Buddha [a Sanskrit term meaning the ‘enlightened’ or ‘awakened’ one], passed away in Kushinagar, his bodily remains were divided into eight initial portions amongst North India’s kings to be interred in stupas.

The part that went to his own clan, the Sakyas of Kapilavastu, was buried in a gigantic stupa in Piprahwa, close to Lumbini, his birthplace. Two centuries later, the newly converted Mauryan Emperor Ashoka added an offering of around 1,800 intricately carved gemstones and gold objects and further enlarged the stupa. Continue reading →

72 hours in chennai: colonial history, an apostle, and hindu gods

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Chennai had long been on my wish-list. Even though I have travelled extensively through Tamil Nadu, including its magical temple towns’ route, the southern state’s capital had somehow evaded me.

When I got an opportunity earlier this year to explore the city whilst on a personal philanthropic project [I run pro bono workshops in development communication skills for the social sector], no surprises that I grabbed it with glee! The weather was perfect. It was February. I was going to be based in Alwarpet, right next to the city’s historical centre, Mylapore. And I was in no rush.

A bastion of Dravidian culture, British East India Company’s very first military stronghold in India, final resting place of St. Thomas, Jesus Christ’s Apostle who took it upon himself to spread the word in India, and home of Kollywood, India’s second-largest film industry—Chennai is many things rolled into one.

Here, Tamil social, cultural, and religious traditions coexist with a colonial history, and movie stars and politics are irrevocably entwined. It’s a heady mix of contradictions sans any friction.

Would you like to explore this city too? Deep-dive into its well-known landmarks and hidden away gems? Then read on.

Note: The itinerary below is thematic, rather than area-based. This is to allow Chennai be understood holistically, one layer at a time, rather than as a mishmash of sites. I hope by the end, you too have Chennai on your own wish-list. ❤ Continue reading →

travel diaries: one traveller, mount shada, and happiness

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I stare, first in awe, followed by disbelief. There are massive granite boulders around me, everywhere. Climb these? Heck, no.

But then every time I stand stuck, wondering how to traverse a massive crevice, or slide across a cliff topped with a rock that stood precariously over it, my guide Saeed’s hand would be there. And I’d make it. Higher and higher up the barren Lower Shada till I am looking down at the avalanche of rounded buttery stones till as far as the eye can see. The two accompanying villagers, who call these craggy heights their home, settle down on a sloping plateau. One plays his flute. Just like his ancestors did, and his children maybe will. And I find myself beaming with happiness.

I am deep inside south-west Saudi Arabia, on the Lower Shada [Shada Al-Asfal] in the Sarawat range. The mountain rises over 1,500 metres, filled with 3,000-year-old rock art and entire villages built into its 763 million-year-old caves. Towering next to it is the 2,200-metre-high Upper Shada [Shada Al-A’la], peeping through the clouds. Most of the villagers have now moved to the cities, their cave-homes morphed into holiday-homes or homestays. The prized Shadwi coffee bushes and iridescent flowers continue to grow unfettered in the wilderness.

Come along with me, up the Lower Shada, and let me share with you its incredible breath-taking beauty. Continue reading →

adobe fortresses and futuristic skyscrapers: 72 hours in riyadh

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Riyadh, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s capital in the middle of the Najd desert is a city of contrasts. Mud-brick fortresses from the ruling family’s yesteryears, and steel and glass skyscrapers reaching for the sky jostle next to each other in seamless ease. It is a city where the country’s past, present, and future have agreed to coexist.

If perchance you find yourself in Riyadh, here is how to make the most of 72 hours in it. Taking in the obvious, and some lesser-known gems.

But first, a little crash-course on the country’s modern political history to put things in context:

– The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world named after its ruling family. ‘Saudi’ is derived from the the ‘House of Saud,’ who are originally from Diriyah next to Riyadh. Continue reading →

5 reasons why jeddah needs to be on your saudi arabia bucket-list

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Jeddah Ghair!

If you wondering what it means, it is the city’s motto, and means “Jeddah is different.”

And it is. Cosmopolitan, liberal, capitalistic.

Most countries, over time, are seen to end up with two megapolises—the traditional, political heart and the commercial wheeling and dealing hub bursting with an eclectic art and food scene. Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh. Delhi and Mumbai. Washington and New York. Beijing and Shanghai.

In Saudi Arabia, it is Riyadh and Jeddah. But Jeddah is not just different from the country’s capital in the arid Najd desert. It is different from the whole peninsula. A difference it celebrates with a self-congratulatory pat. Continue reading →

thee ain and ushaiqer: saudi arabia’s heritage villages

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Looking in, Looking out. Ushaiqer heritage village in Saudi Arabia's Najd desert has been around for 1,500 years.

Looking in, Looking out. Ushaiqer heritage village in Saudi Arabia’s Najd desert has been around for 1,500 years.

Before Saudi Arabia’s settlements transformed into steel and glass extravaganzas, they used to be made of mud-brick and rock-shards, built out of the earth they stood on. Not surprising then that very little remains of them. Over time they crumbled back into the alluvial oases or rocky outcrops on which they once stood.

Their styles were regional, with architectural features adapted to climate and available material, stamped with motifs distinctive to the local tribes. Two of the Kingdom’s most picturesque surviving villages [amongst very many] are Thee Ain and Ushaiqer. One is in the Al-Baha mountains, and another in the Najd desert. And they could not be more different from each other! Continue reading →