Open Roads

Seeing India through a traveller's eyes

/ read / May 15, 2023 / Spotlight

For our 36th edition of Sarmaya Spotlight, we bring you the most picturesque destinations, thrilling travel stories and colourful souvenirs from across the Subcontinent. Watch for new updates every week from 15 May to 15 July, 2023.

Take The Indian Railways Quiz!

Test your knowledge about the earliest days of Indian railways and some milestone train journeys

Object of the week: Behind-the-scenes of a royal Indian tour

By ship, by yacht, by elephant and by camel. We follow the heir to Queen Victoria on an elaborate tour of India in 1875

Song of The Palanquin-Bearers

Let’s tackle some FAQs to better appreciate this fascinating, historical mode of travel and the people who made it possible.

Object of the week: The diplomat & the dodo

Thomas Herbert's best-selling 17th-century travelogue details an enchanting encounter with a dodo, only years before the bird went extinct

Quiz: How well do you know the ancient caves of India?

In ancient India, cave complexes sheltered travellers and traders too besides priests and monks. Take our quiz to learn about these rock-cut rest-stops

Object of the week: Jagannath’s Puri temple inspired this art form

Odisha’s Pattachitra paintings are rooted in the culture of the seaside town of Puri and, more specifically, in its legendary Jagannath temple

Indian maps, myths & travel legends

In conversation with professional geographer Dr Manosi Lahiri about the ways in which travellers have helped to draw the map of India

Object of the week: A Frenchman’s view of Princely India

Over six years spent travelling around India, Louis Rousselet learned photography and captured some of the most beautiful scenes of the Subcontinent, from the Himalayas to the Nilgiris and from coast to coast

Object of the week: Pilgrims to Nathdwara take these paintings home

Pichwai paintings were born in the temple town of Nathdwara in Rajasthan and centre the 8-year-old deity, Shrinathji

Destination India, a reading list

Five books that showcase how the world once saw India

Object of the week: A rare photo of Dal Lake in the 1800s

On the banks of the Dal Lake with a physician-turned-photographer-turned-mountaineer

Summer Holidays: The origin of India’s hill-stations

From the Himalayas to the Nilgiris, the mountain slopes of India are home to hill-stations. Built by the British, these were sanctuaries designed to get them through sickness and long summers

Object of the week: Notes from a solo woman traveller in India

Fanny Parkes's richly illustrated journals give us a sense of the freedom that the author experienced as a woman traveller in 19th-century India

Mughal Sarais, where caravans & cultures mingled

Along the ancient Silk Road and the historic Grand Trunk Road lay a series of rest-stops and inns called sarais where caravans of travellers, pilgrims and traders could break their journey