travel diaries: hiking through the horton plains

There is a deafening silence as I enter the Horton Plains in the wee hours of the morning. Above me, the silver sun is still trying to find its way back into the sky. It is not an easy task.

A thick blanket of mist and cloud engulf me, the golden blades of montane grass, and the sand-spattered 3.5-billion-year-old Precambrian-era boulders. Every now and then a slight drizzle kisses my upturned face. I peer through the mist, strain my ears for another human sound. A footstep, laugh, threads of a conversation. All I can hear is my own breath. I look at my phone. There is no signal.

travel shorts: hill country—nuwara eliya to ella by train

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Most travellers are of the opinion that the only real way to see Sri Lanka is by train. And that of all the rail journeys through the sparkling tropical island, the most beautiful is the one from Nanu Oya [near Nuwara Eliya] to Demodara [near Ella] in the heart of ‘hill country.’ They are not wrong. 🙂

Built in the mid-19th Century by the British colonizers, the train’s primary purpose for the longest time was to transport crates of tea leaves and coffee from the mist-wrapped estates to Colombo Port. The segment from Nuwara Eliya, a colonial town, to Ella, a village steeped in Hindu mythology, is a tourism institution of sorts today.

global travel shot: seeing eye-to-eye with the sri lankan leopard at wilpattu

It was a bit hard for me to decide which to be more in awe of. The surreal deep red earth covered in lush jungle and sparkling pools [villu as they are locally called]. Or the Sri Lankan Leopard that sauntered past me, a mere hour into the game drive. Both, the leopard and I stared at each other. At some level, I guess, we saw eye-to-eye. He was the actual star of the show.

Wilpattu National Park on Sri Lanka’s north-west coast is not the country’s most popular game reserve. But, hands down, it provides the most authentic experience.

At 2 percent of the country’s land mass, it is Sri Lanka’s largest reserve. It is also one of the oldest—established in 1938 with around 40 Sri Lankan Leopards prowling through the heart of the national park. There are also Sri Lankan elephants, sloth bears, and a prolific bird-life, who I, however, think, fall a little short in comparison to the graceful feline. None of them stare back as piercingly as the latter.

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[Note: This blog post is part of a series from my solo independent travels to Sri Lanka. To read more posts in my Sri Lanka series, click here.]

jaffna: the unexplored north of sri lanka

Twenty-six years of civil war is a long time. A whole generation grows up exposed to the horrors of war, stripped of their right to education, health-care, and utilities. It is hard for one living in a ‘secure’ country to even fathom such dreadfulness day in and day out, year in and year out.

Sri Lanka’s LTTE-Sinhalese civil war started on 23 July, 1983 and ended on 19 May, 2009, during which an estimated 40,000 civilians died according to a UN Experts Report. Those who could leave, left the country. Root causes of the civil war were a series of anti-Tamil riots following independence in 1948 and the 1956 Government Act which recognized Sinhalese as the only official language.

Fuelled further by the government’s citizenship and education policies, it led to the creation of the LTTE or Tamil Tigers, as they were known, and their demand for a separate Tamil state ‘Tamil Eelam.’

Suicide bombers were a trademark of the Tamil insurgency. Even India, Sri Lanka’s neighbour, could not be immune to it. India’s ex-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in 1991 by a 22-year-old female LTTE suicide bomber.

Jaffna [Yalpanam in Tamil] on the northern tip of Sri Lanka, was the epicentre of this civil war which spread across the island’s northern and eastern coastlines. Mutilated factories, bombed homes, and walls pock-marked with gunshots are still scattered throughout the city and its surrounds. An echo of its turbulent past.

Three things, by some miracle, have survived from the nearly three decades of fighting: One, the region’s places of worship—magnificent colourful Hindu temples, poignant grand churches, and sacred Buddhist sites—two, its bygone colonial ruins, and three, a bunch of remote sleepy isles on the Palk Strait in the Indian Ocean.

the sigiriya frescoes: king kassapa I and his 500 damsels

477 AD. Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka.

29-year-old Prince Kassapa was filled with a deep burning desire to be king. So deep, it seemed to completely engulf him. To be the ruler of Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka’s ancient historical spiritual heart. How wondrous would that be!

And he would have been. Could have been. Except for one problem. His mother was the non-royal wife of Moriya King Dhatusena. The rightful heir to the coveted throne was his young half-brother Moggallana, offspring of his father’s chief consort.

Not to be deterred, Kassapa I, also known as Kashyapa I, decided to lead a palace coup with the help of Migara, the army commander who had a personal grudge of his own against the king. Young Moggallana, meanwhile, managed to escape, and took refuge in South India.

When Kassapa demanded to know the location of his father’s treasury, his imprisoned father responded saying Anuradhapura’s water tank was his one-and-only treasure. Miffed on hearing this, Kassapa had his father entombed alive.

For the rest of his life, Kassapa’s subjects and rivals, as well as the local Buddhist monks, would call him Pithru Ghathaka Kashyapa meaning Kashyapa the Patricide. It was a label he would not be able to shake off even after death.

In a bid to start afresh, away from public disgrace and the threat of a possible future retaliation by Moggallana, Kassapa moved his capital 75 kilometres south. Here, deep in Sri Lanka’s tropical plains stood a 180-metre-high monolith volcanic rock pillar with unhindered 360-degree views for miles on end.

photo essay: unravelling turkmenbasy, the rukhnama, and ashgabat

To know Ashgabat, Turkmenistan’s capital, is to know the country’s first President and dictator Saparmurat Niyazov. And to know the Rukhnama, his autobiography and ‘words of wisdom’ for his people, is to know both. 🙂

Here is a photo essay of the three, with excerpts from the Rukhnama [the first and second volumes]. For no other three—a man, his book, and a city—are more closely intertwined than Turkmenbasy [Niyazov], the Rukhnama, and Ashgabat.

“When you read Rukhnama, you shall be purified, justified; your life and existence shall have a justification; your objectives and intentions shall be fulfilled. Your existence among the Turkmen shall be accepted!”

11 memorable experiences only to be had in turkmenistan

Tourist number: 1933.

It is the early hours in the morning of 1 October, and I am at the gleaming falcon-shaped marble-encased airport in Ashgabat, capital of Turkmenistan. I ask the official at the visa counter what does this line on my entry stamp mean. He explains that 1,932 tourist visas had been issued in 2023 before mine. I am 1,933rd. This does not include the 3-to-7-day transit visas, by-the-way.

With a silly grin plastered on my face, I tell him he has no idea how much it means to have that sticker on my passport. Many months of planning and three back-to-back flights, from Goa to Muscat to Dubai to Ashgabat, and I am finally, finally here.

I guess my enthusiasm is contagious. The otherwise poker-faced official gives a little smile and wishes me a happy stay. I respond with a beaming grin.

Outside, shifting lights on the airport’s facade recreate a falcon’s flapping wings.

time-travel and dinosaur plateaus in remote north-east turkmenistan

Lebap Province in north-east Turkmenistan is as remote as it gets in this Least Visited Country. Filled with moonscapes, a dinosaur plateau scalloped with around a couple of hundred, 150-million-year-old footprints of Megalosaurians during the Jurassic Period, deep canyons, and grottoes dedicated to saints and wishes, it is untouched by tourism. No-one speaks English here either.

To put things in context, Turkmenistan does not allow tourists to travel independently through the country. Neither can one simply travel to any random part of the country that tickles one’s fancy. There are designated places one is allowed to explore, and when out of Ashgabat, one must be accompanied with a licensed local guide.

Not many people visit Turkmenistan. The average number is less than 10,000 annually excluding the 3-to-7-day transit visas. Even fewer make it to its remote north-east. One of those rare ones was me. 😀

Here is my photo diary on this part of the world. I hope it inspires you to take the road less travelled, in this case time-travel to Lebap Province!

travel guide: turkmenistan’s 3 legendary unesco-listed treasures

For a history buff, Turkmenistan is what wish-lists are made of. Its historical sites comprise three of the greatest world cities of the past which served as the capitals of some of the region’s most powerful empires in the ancient and medieval world, namely, the Great Seljuks, Khwarezmshahs, and Parthians.

All three of these cities are UNESCO World Heritage Sites today: Merv in the south-east, Konye Urgench in the north, and Old Nisa near the capital Ashgabat.

Welcome to my travel guide on these legendary metropolises’ fantastic histories and breathtaking monuments. Places very few visit, in one of our world’s Least Visited Countries. ❤

MERV: ‘QUEEN OF THE WORLD’ AND CAPITAL OF THE GREAT SELJUKS

Coronation of Seljuk Sultan Ahmad Sanjar [r. 1118 – 1157]; Jami’ al-Tawarikh by Rashid al-Din, Tabriz, Persia, 1307 AD.

Often described as ‘the wandering city,’ Merv is Turkmenistan’s grandest UNESCO World Heritage Site, both in scale and age: 1,236 hectares [including the buffer zone] and 4,500 years. Listed in 1999, it is also the oldest and best-preserved oasis city along the Silk Road in Central Asia.

travel shorts: kyrk giz grotto, if ribbons and mud could stick

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Take a long piece of cloth or ribbon, add a blob of mud to it, and hurl it high onto the ceiling of the grotto. If it sticks, your wishes will come true. If the ribbon falls flat on the ground, well you can either give up, or try again. 🙂

It is a ritual which people from across Turkmenistan carry out at the 50-metre-high grotto in Lebap Province, in remote north-east Turkmenistan. Starting a new job, getting married, or want a baby—it would not be amiss to make a pilgrimage here first.