Have you ever wondered how history often selectively celebrates one person while pushing another into oblivion? This blog is to bring one Mongol princess into the light from the darkness of time, whose name was linked to and overshadowed by more powerful names like Marco Polo and Kublai Khan, but who could easily be a central character of any period if history had not forgotten her.
Coffee is probably humanity’s favourite drink. As a storytelling ape species, we humans often attach stories to our beloved things, and coffee is no exception. Although coffee is not India’s ‘cup of tea’, it has a very fascinating history of its arrival in India, which I came to know while visiting a tiny hamlet in southern India.
Google will tell you that Mikania micrantha arrived in India in the 1940s. Old herbarium sheets, forgotten botanical books, and a trail of British surgeons, foresters, and explorers tell a different story — one with three separate points of entry, decades earlier than anyone thought.
My travel itinerary is usually filled with tiny hamlets in the lap of a mountain, a serene seaside town, or the dark greens of a dense tropical forest. Sanchi is not any of them, but it offered an unexpected peace that settled deep within. Nestled on a hilltop, Sanchi was a different travel experience for me. This blog is not just about the facts and figures of this world heritage site, but the feeling it evoked in me that day.