Tag: Blog

Rock of Cashel: Kings, Bishops and Medieval Ireland’s Royal Outcrop

Rock of Cashel: Kings, Bishops and Medieval Ireland’s Royal Outcrop From the road across the Tipperary plain, the Rock of Cashel looks less like a group of buildings than a single thing that grew out of the ground: a limestone outcrop crowned with gables, a round tower and the broken crossing of a cathedral, all […]

Blarney Castle: The Stone, the Tower and the Making of Irish Eloquence

Blarney Castle: The Stone, the Tower and the Making of Irish Eloquence Most people know Blarney Castle for a single gesture: lying on your back at the top of a medieval tower, leaning out over a drop, and kissing a block of limestone in the hope of acquiring the gift of the gab. The gesture […]

Drukgyel Dzong: Bhutan’s Fortress of Victory and the Tibetan Frontier

Drukgyel Dzong: Bhutan’s Fortress of Victory and the Tibetan Frontier At the head of the Paro Valley, where the road runs out and the old trail begins its climb toward Tibet, Drukgyel Dzong stands on a low spur above the river. It was built in the seventeenth century to mark a victory over invading Tibetan […]

Paro Rinpung Dzong: Fortress Monastery and Art in Bhutan’s Paro Valley

Paro Rinpung Dzong: Fortress Monastery and Art in Bhutan’s Paro Valley Anyone who flies into Paro, or out of it, sees Paro Rinpung Dzong from the aircraft window. The runway follows the valley floor, and the fortress stands on the slope above the river, a whitewashed mass so large it reads more like a walled […]

Punakha Dzong: Bhutan’s Palace of Great Happiness at Two Rivers

Punakha Dzong: Bhutan’s Palace of Great Happiness at Two Rivers Punakha Dzong stands on a narrow spit of land where two glacial rivers meet, its whitewashed walls rising straight from the water and its golden roofs catching the light of a valley far warmer than the mountain passes above it. For more than three centuries […]

Dochula Pass: Himalayan Views, Chortens and the Road to Punakha

Dochula Pass: Himalayan Views, Chortens and the Road to Punakha On a clear morning the road east out of Thimphu climbs through blue pine and hemlock until the forest opens onto a saddle of grass, a small temple, and 108 whitewashed chortens banded in red, with the whole eastern Himalaya laid out beyond them. This […]

Gorumara National Park: Wildlife and Forests in India’s Dooars

Gorumara National Park: Wildlife and Forests in India’s Dooars Gorumara National Park covers only about 80 square kilometres, yet a late afternoon at one of its watchtowers can bring Indian rhinoceros, gaur and elephant to the same stretch of riverbank. It lies in the Dooars of northern West Bengal, where the last ridges of the […]

Dooars, India: Tea Forests and the Himalayan Foothills

Dooars, India: Tea Forests and the Himalayan Foothills Somewhere below Gangtok, the road stops climbing for good. The terraced hillsides of Sikkim give way to sal forest, then to tea bushes clipped flat as a lawn beneath rows of shade trees, and the mountains that filled every window for days become a blue wall along […]

Rumtek Monastery: Sikkim’s Dharma Chakra Centre and the Karmapa Tradition

Rumtek Monastery: Sikkim’s Dharma Chakra Centre and the Karmapa Tradition Rumtek Monastery sits on a forested ridge across the valley from Gangtok, its gilded roof ornaments catching the light long before the town below has properly woken. It looks ancient, and in one sense it is: a monastery of the Karma Kagyu school has stood […]

The Kingdom of Sikkim: A Himalayan History Between Tibet, India and Bhutan

The Kingdom of Sikkim: A Himalayan History Between Tibet, India and Bhutan For three hundred and thirty-three years, a line of Buddhist priest-kings ruled a small mountain state wedged between Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan. The Sikkim kingdom was founded in 1642 and lasted until 1975, when it became India’s twenty-second state, and in between it […]

From Sikkim to Bhutan: Crossing the Eastern Himalaya by Road

From Sikkim to Bhutan: Crossing the Eastern Himalaya by Road For much of the year, the road out of Sikkim runs through cloud. Pine ridges give way without warning to the flat, steaming plains of the Dooars, and within a single day’s drive the traveller passes from misty Himalayan forest into warm lowland grassland, then […]

Darjeeling Heritage: A Hill Station Between Sikkim and the British Raj

Darjeeling Heritage: A Hill Station Between Sikkim and the British Raj Long before Darjeeling appeared on any colonial map, the ridge that carries the town today belonged to the Kingdom of Sikkim. Its name comes from the Tibetan words dorje (thunderbolt) and ling (place), a reference to a Buddhist monastery that once stood on what […]

Darjeeling, Sikkim and Bhutan Itinerary: A 14-Day Journey Across the Eastern Himalaya

Darjeeling, Sikkim and Bhutan Itinerary: A 14-Day Journey Across the Eastern Himalaya Three destinations rarely sit on the same itinerary, and fewer still make sense together the way Darjeeling, Sikkim and Bhutan do. A tea-growing hill station built by the British, a Himalayan kingdom absorbed into India within living memory, and an independent Buddhist nation […]

Darjeeling Himalayan Railway: Mountain Engineering and the Toy Train

Darjeeling Himalayan Railway: Mountain Engineering and the Toy Train At Darjeeling station, a squat black steam engine no larger than a family car pulls out onto rails set barely two feet apart, and for the next two hours it climbs, loops and reverses its way up to Ghoom, the highest railway station in India. This […]

Gangtok, Sikkim: A Himalayan Capital Between Pilgrimage and Modernity

Gangtok, Sikkim: A Himalayan Capital Between Pilgrimage and Modernity Gangtok sits on a forested ridge at roughly 1,650 metres, wrapped in cloud for much of the year and looking out, on the clear mornings, toward Kanchenjunga. It was a scattering of hamlets and a single monastery until the 1840s, then the seat of an independent […]

Bhutanese Food: Red Rice, Ema Datshi and the Culture of the Table

Bhutanese Food: Red Rice, Ema Datshi and the Culture of the Table Long before the first chorten comes into view, Bhutan announces itself through its kitchens. Strings of scarlet chillies dry on farmhouse windowsills, red rice ripens in narrow terraced paddies, and every household keeps a block of pungent, soft cheese on hand for the […]

Darjeeling Tea: Terroir, Gardens and the Story of a Himalayan Cup

Darjeeling Tea: Terroir, Gardens and the Story of a Himalayan Cup At just over two thousand metres in the Himalayan foothills, the hillsides around Darjeeling carry a particular kind of quiet: rows of glossy tea bushes running into cloud, cut by narrow paths where pluckers move without hurry through the mist. The tea grown here […]

The Kingdom of Colchis: Jason, Medea and Ancient Kutaisi

The Kingdom of Colchis: Jason, Medea and Ancient Kutaisi The Greeks thought of the eastern Black Sea shore as the far end of the world, and the Colchis kingdom they placed there gave their poets a golden fleece, a king named Aeëtes and Medea, one of tragedy’s most unsettling heroines. That country is now western […]

Armenian Khachkars: Stone Crosses, Memory and Medieval Craft

Armenian Khachkars: Stone Crosses, Memory and Medieval Craft Armenian khachkars are among the most distinctive works of medieval Christian art anywhere: upright slabs of stone carved with a cross rising from a rosette and surrounded by vines, pomegranates and interlace so fine it can resemble lacework. Each was made by hand, each is different, and […]

Vardzia Cave Monastery: Georgia’s Rock-Cut City and Medieval Frontier

Vardzia Cave Monastery: Georgia’s Rock-Cut City and Medieval Frontier Vardzia cave monastery looks, from the valley floor, like a cliff that has been quietly hollowed out from within: hundreds of dark doorways and windows stacked in uneven terraces across a wall of pale volcanic rock above the Mtkvari river. Begun in the twelfth century as […]

Georgian Wine and Qvevri: How an Ancient Clay-Vessel Tradition Survives

Georgian Wine and Qvevri: How an Ancient Clay-Vessel Tradition Survives Walk into a traditional Georgian wine cellar and the most important equipment is easy to miss. The vessels are buried to the neck in the floor, so all you see are round clay mouths, often ringed with brick and capped with a lid of stone […]