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Take The Indian Railways Quiz!

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

‘A New History of India’ by Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Shobita Punja & Toby Sinclair

For this special edition of Sarmaya Talks, our founder Paul Abraham was in conversation with two of the three authors of A New History of India – From Its Origins To The Twenty-First Century, Prof. Rudrangshu Mukherjee and conservationist Toby Sinclair. Art historian Dr Shobita Punja lent her brilliant insights to A New History…:… Read more »

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: 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

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

Shatrunjaya pata

Painted on cotton cloths, Shatrunjaya patas map the physical and divine characteristics of the sacred hill in Palitana, Gujarat

Maps of devotion – The Jain art of Shatrunjaya pata

Painted on cotton and imbued with piety, Shatrunjaya patas map the physical and divine characteristics of the sacred hill in Palitana, Gujarat

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: 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: 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

Pristine views of the Ganga – World Environment Day 2023

The Ganga is one of the largest contributors to plastic pollution in the world’s oceans. But this wasn’t always the case

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

India, G20 & the repatriation of cultural artefacts

Conversations on the repatriation of museum objects continue to evolve and encounter new complexities

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

Destination India, a reading list

Five books that showcase how the world once saw India

‘Searching For Ashoka’ by Nayanjot Lahiri

“I found myself going back to the different ways in which Ashoka was remembered and trying to understand how memories of him had been accumulating and eroding like the slabs of rocks on which he had left his words. I then decided to combine this with the fun and feel of his forms in Thailand,… Read more »