Hitchhiking is usually explained as a casualty of 1970s crime. The data never supported that. What actually killed it was car ownership and controlled-access motorways — and understanding why explains where it still works, and what you get for the wait.
The Chambal ravines and the Grand Canyon are the same geological process at different speeds. One draws five million visitors a year. The other is officially classified as wasteland — which is exactly why it still holds the world's last wild gharials.
A road where cars roll uphill. A lake that turns pink overnight. A valley where birds fall from the sky. India is full of places called supernatural — and when science looked, it didn't kill the wonder. Sometimes it made it worse.
Mumbai's Hanging Gardens are the lid on an 1887 water reservoir that supplies 147 million litres a day to the southern city. Repairing it means dismantling the park above — and three years, four plans and two contradictory expert reports later, nobody can agree how.
Europe is a continent that is well-known for its vibrant and exciting nightlife. From Paris to Berlin, there are countless cities that offer visitors an…
Mumbai's landmarks look unrelated until you sort them by function. Every one of them is a door — a point on the city's edge where somebody landed. A guide to the Gateway, CSMT, Elephanta, Marine Drive, Haji Ali and the national park with 54 leopards in it.
There are seashells on top of Mount Everest. That single strange fact holds the whole story of India — a continent that didn't just reach Asia, but is still, at this moment, crashing into it.
Every June, one strip of India turns almost violently green while the land just over the hills stays parched. It isn't luck, and it isn't a garden. It's a 1,600-kilometre machine that spends four months wringing out an ocean.
