The Language of the Journey
The words that unlock India — architecture, ritual, craft, cuisine and wildlife — defined by our curators, linked to the places on your journey where you will meet them.
A
A Hindu act of worship in which lamps of flame are circled before a deity or a sacred river, accompanied by bells, conch and chant.
The Ganga Aarti at Varanasi's Dashashwamedh Ghat is the most celebrated evening performance of it, though smaller aartis take place at countless shrines at dusk. Guests are welcome to watch; the usual courtesies about shoes, photography and staying behind the officiating priests apply.
On the journey:Ganga Aarti in Varanasi|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
A traditional wrestling gymnasium, where pehlwani wrestlers train in an earthen pit under a shared regime of exercise, diet and abstinence.
Varanasi's riverside akharas are among the oldest still working, and several open their dawn training to respectful visitors. It is a place of discipline rather than performance: watch quietly, and ask before photographing.
On the journey:Encountering Varanasi|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
A bowl-shaped Kerala pancake of fermented rice batter, lacy and crisp at the rim and soft at the centre.
The classic partner to a vegetable or meat stew, and the standard breakfast aboard a backwater houseboat.
On the journey:Kerala houseboat cruise|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
A residential community organised around spiritual practice and a teacher, ranging from an austere hermitage to a large institution.
Ashrams keep their own rules on dress, silence, diet and photography, and these are house rules rather than tourist conventions. We arrange visits where a genuine welcome exists rather than where a gate is merely open.
On the journey:Wellness, Ayurveda & yoga|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
A traditional Indian system of medicine that treats health as a balance between three bodily humours, or doshas.
Kerala is its heartland. A genuine Ayurvedic programme begins with a physician's consultation and runs for weeks; a single scented massage in a spa is a pleasant thing, but it is not Ayurveda, and the two are routinely confused.
On the journey:Ayurveda in Kerala · Wellness, Ayurveda & yoga|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
B
A tie-dye technique of Gujarat and Rajasthan in which thousands of tiny points of cloth are tied off before dyeing, leaving a field of dots.
The finest work is tied by women with a fingernail grown long for the purpose, and the count of the dots is what separates a good piece from a great one.
On the journey:Craft traditions: a collector's guide|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
The groom's wedding procession, in which he travels to the venue accompanied by dancing family and friends, often on horseback.
It moves at the speed of the dancing, which is to say barely at all, and a drummer or a brass band is usual. Guests on the groom's side are expected to join it.
On the journey:Festivals & fairs of India|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
A garden pavilion with twelve open doorways, built so that air passes through it from every direction.
A fixture of Mughal and Rajput gardens, and the reason so many palace lawns and terraces still carry the name.
On the journey:Umaid Bhawan Palace|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
The swamp deer of central India, named for the many tines of its antlers.
The Kanha population fell to a few dozen animals and has been brought back to thriving herds — one of Indian conservation's genuine successes, and the reason the species is Kanha's emblem.
On the journey:Kanha destination guide|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
A dish of rice and meat cooked together in a sealed pot, so that the rice takes up the flavour of the meat as it steams.
Hyderabad's dum biryani is the celebrated version, and the seal on the pot is what distinguishes the real thing from rice with a curry stirred through it. Every city with a Muslim court tradition claims the better one.
On the journey:Hyderabad destination guide|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
C
Tea brewed together with milk, sugar and usually spices, boiled rather than infused.
It is sold everywhere, at every hour, in small glasses or clay cups, and declining one is a mild social loss. What it is not is a delicate leaf tea — that is a different drink, and Darjeeling is where to find it.
On the journey:Tea trails of India|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
The Persian fourfold garden, quartered by water channels, that provides the setting for the great Mughal tombs.
The four quarters are conventionally read as the four rivers of paradise. Humayun's Tomb introduced the form to India and the Taj Mahal perfected it — which is why both are approached through a garden rather than merely seen across one.
On the journey:Humayun's Tomb · Taj Mahal|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
A domed pavilion raised on pillars, used to crown a roofline or to mark a cenotaph.
The word means 'umbrella', and the silhouette of Rajasthan is essentially drawn in chhatris. Where one stands alone in a field or beside a lake, it is usually a memorial marking the spot where a ruler was cremated.
On the journey:Mehrangarh Fort|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
The fine white shadow-embroidery of Lucknow, worked in cotton thread on sheer cloth.
It is hand-stitched, and a good kurta may take weeks; the machine-made version sold in bulk is a different thing entirely. We introduce guests to workshops where the distinction can actually be seen.
On the journey:India's craft guilds & master makers|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
The spotted deer of the Indian forest — the commonest deer, and the one most often seen.
Chital and langurs frequently feed together: the monkey sees a predator from the canopy and the deer smells it from the ground, and each responds to the other's alarm.
On the journey:India's wildlife beyond tigers|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
Relating to the Tamil dynasty that ruled much of southern India, and territories beyond it, between roughly the ninth and thirteenth centuries.
The Cholas were extraordinary builders and bronze-casters: the Brihadeeswarar temple at Thanjavur and the lost-wax Nataraja bronzes are theirs. Their maritime reach extended as far as Sumatra, which is why Southeast Asian temple architecture can look startlingly familiar.
On the journey:Brihadeeswarar Temple · The South India temple trail|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
The two parts of an Indian tiger reserve: a strictly protected core, where no one lives, ringed by a buffer in which limited human activity is permitted.
Core-zone permits are capped and released through a government system, which is why safari slots must be booked months ahead and cannot simply be bought on arrival. Buffer zones are less crowded and, increasingly, no worse for sightings.
On the journey:The private safari guide · Tiger safari|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
D
A mud-resist printing technique in which clay paste is block-stamped onto cloth to protect it from the dye.
It is the signature craft of Bagru, near Jaipur, and the pattern is defined by precisely what the dye could not reach.
On the journey:Jaipur artisan workshops|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
The shrine built over the tomb of a Sufi saint, visited as a place of pilgrimage by people of many faiths.
Delhi's Nizamuddin Dargah, with its Thursday-evening qawwali, is the tradition's beating heart in the capital. Heads are covered and shoes left outside, and the atmosphere is closer to a crowded gathering than to a quiet church.
On the journey:Delhi destination guide|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
A thin, crisp South Indian pancake made from a fermented batter of rice and lentils.
A masala dosa is one folded around spiced potato. It is properly a breakfast, eaten with sambar and chutney, and eaten with the hands.
On the journey:An India culinary journey|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
The court of an Indian ruler — and, by extension, the hall in which he gave audience, or the grand ceremonial assembly held there.
The 'durbar hall' of a palace hotel is the room where this took place, which is invariably why it is the most theatrical space in the building.
On the journey:Taj Falaknuma Palace|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
F
A Goan spirit distilled from cashew apples or from the sap of the coconut palm.
It is protected as a Goan speciality and is made nowhere else. Cashew feni is the one to ask for, and it is a good deal stronger than it first appears.
On the journey:Goa destination guide|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
G
The Indian bison — the largest wild cattle species in the world, and far bigger than photographs suggest.
A big bull stands close to two metres at the shoulder. They are met in the forests of central and southern India, and a tiger taking one is among the more remarkable things a naturalist will ever show you.
On the journey:India's wildlife beyond tigers|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
A critically endangered fish-eating crocodilian of India's rivers, with a very long, narrow snout.
The bulb on the tip of a mature male's snout gives the animal its name. It is harmless to people, and the Chambal is the place to see it.
On the journey:India's wildlife beyond tigers|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
A flight of steps leading down to a river or tank, used for bathing, worship and cremation.
Varanasi's riverfront is a continuous run of them. Confusingly, the same word names the Western and Eastern Ghats, the mountain ranges that step down to India's coasts.
On the journey:Ganga Aarti · Udaipur guide|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
The monumental gateway tower of a South Indian temple, built in tiers and covered in painted sculpture.
Madurai's Meenakshi Temple raises fourteen of them, the tallest over fifty metres. In the southern tradition the gateway is deliberately taller than the sanctum, so the temple announces itself to the town rather than to the sky.
On the journey:Meenakshi Temple|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
H
A traditional townhouse or mansion built around one or more internal courtyards.
The painted havelis of Shekhawati and the carved sandstone havelis of Jaisalmer are the form at its most exuberant. The courtyard is the whole point: it keeps the house cool, private and inward-looking.
On the journey:Jaisalmer & the golden city|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
A large forest bird with a heavy down-curved bill, often topped by a hollow casque.
In several species the female seals herself into a tree cavity to nest and is fed by the male through a narrow slit until the chicks are grown. The great hornbill of the Western Ghats has a wingbeat you hear well before you see the bird.
On the journey:Thekkady destination guide|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
I
A weaving technique in which the threads are dyed to a pattern before they are woven, so the design emerges as the cloth is made.
In double ikat — the patola silks of Patan — both warp and weft are pre-dyed and must be aligned thread by thread on the loom. A single sari can take the better part of a year, which is why so few families still make them.
On the journey:Craft traditions: a collector's guide|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
A Mumbai or Hyderabad café founded by Zoroastrian immigrants from Iran, with marble tables, bentwood chairs and a long list of house rules on the wall.
They serve chai, bun maska and Osmania biscuits, and their number has been falling for decades. Several of the survivors are more than a century old.
On the journey:Mumbai destination guide|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
J
A pierced stone or latticed screen that filters light and air while concealing whoever stands behind it.
It answers the climate and the demands of purdah at once, and at its finest — at Agra, at Amber — it is cut to something close to lace.
On the journey:Hawa Mahal|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
A follower of Jainism, an ancient Indian religion whose central commitment is non-violence towards every living thing.
That commitment explains a great deal a traveller notices: strict vegetarianism, the swept path, the cloth worn over a monk's mouth. Jain patronage also produced some of India's finest marble carving, at Ranakpur and Mount Abu above all.
On the journey:Rajasthan's hidden estates|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
An enclosed balcony window projecting from an upper wall, carved and canopied, from which those inside could watch the street unseen.
Jaipur's Hawa Mahal is, in essence, a facade of them — built so that the women of the court could watch a procession pass without themselves being observed.
On the journey:Hawa Mahal|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
K
The classical dance-theatre of Kerala, in which heavily painted and costumed performers enact episodes from the epics through codified gesture and eye movement.
The make-up alone takes hours, and watching it applied is half the experience. Nothing is spoken: the meaning is carried entirely by the hands and the face.
On the journey:Kathakali evening in Kochi|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
The traditional cargo barge of Kerala, its hull built of planks stitched together with coir rope rather than nails.
Once used to carry rice, it has been reborn as the private houseboat that defines the Alleppey backwaters. The good ones still sail; the poor ones are a floating hotel room with an engine bolted on.
On the journey:Private houseboat cruise|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
A jewellery technique in which uncut gemstones are set into frames of hammered pure gold foil.
It arrived with the Mughals and became Jaipur's speciality. A kundan piece is usually backed with meenakari enamel, so the side no one sees is finished as carefully as the side that shows.
On the journey:Jaipur artisan workshops|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
L
The Sikh community kitchen, which serves a free vegetarian meal to any visitor regardless of faith, caste or means.
The langar at Amritsar's Golden Temple feeds tens of thousands of people a day and is run almost entirely by volunteers. Guests sit on the floor in line with everyone else, and taking a turn at the washing-up is welcomed rather than merely tolerated.
On the journey:Amritsar & the Golden Temple|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
The grey, black-faced, long-tailed monkey of the Indian forest and temple town.
Its alarm call from the treetops is one of the two signals a naturalist listens for on a tiger drive. Unlike the macaque, it is rarely aggressive towards people.
On the journey:India's wildlife beyond tigers|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
A drink of whipped yoghurt, served either salted or sweetened, and in Punjab often thick enough to need a spoon.
It cools the mouth after chilli far more effectively than water does, which is why it belongs on the table rather than at the end of the meal.
On the journey:An India culinary journey|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
M
A raised platform built in or above the forest, originally to watch for game.
Once a hunting perch, it is now the wildlife-watcher's hide — and, at camps such as Jamtara, the frame for a bed made up under the open sky.
On the journey:Jamtara Wilderness Camp|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
A ruling Indian prince — literally 'great king'; a maharani is his queen, or a princess ruling in her own right.
The princely states were absorbed into independent India, so the titles are now customary rather than constitutional. Many families kept their palaces, and turning them into hotels is what saved a great number of them from ruin.
On the journey:India's best palace stays|Reference:Encyclopaedia Britannica ↗
A hereditary community of Muslim professional musicians of the Thar desert, who have performed for Rajput patrons for centuries.
Their repertoire is an oral archive of the desert's history, held within families and passed down without notation. Their firelight performances are what Jaisalmer's evenings are built around.
On the journey:Suryagarh, Jaisalmer|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
The men's quarters of a palace or large household — the public, ceremonial half of the building.
Where the zenana is inward-facing and screened, the mardana holds the durbar hall and the courts of audience. Most palace tours walk you through both without ever naming the distinction.
On the journey:City Palace, Udaipur|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
An Indian riding horse, bred in Marwar, recognisable by ears that curve inward until the tips meet.
It was the cavalry horse of the Rajputs, and is now the mount of choice for riding safaris through Bishnoi country around Jodhpur.
On the journey:Mihir Garh|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
The art of enamelling metal, usually gold, in brilliant opaque colours.
In Jaipur it is traditionally worked on the reverse of kundan jewellery — which is why the connoisseur's first instinct is always to turn the piece over.
On the journey:Jaipur artisan workshops|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
Relating to the Muslim dynasty of Central Asian descent that ruled most of the subcontinent from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century.
The Mughals gave India the Taj Mahal, Humayun's Tomb, the charbagh garden and the pietra dura inlay that adorns them, along with a court cuisine still cooked in Delhi, Lucknow and Hyderabad. Much of the 'classic' India a first-time visitor pictures is, in fact, Mughal.
On the journey:Taj Mahal · Humayun's Tomb|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
N
The trained wildlife guide who accompanies guests on safari, reading tracks, alarm calls and behaviour to find animals.
The naturalist, far more than the park or the season, determines the quality of a safari. We name the individual assigned to a guest rather than leaving it to a lodge rota, because the gap between an average naturalist and an exceptional one is the gap between a drive and an education.
On the journey:The private safari guide|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
A Muslim prince or governor ruling a province under the Mughal empire and, later, under the Raj.
The Nawabs of Awadh built Lucknow's culture of poetry, elaborate courtesy and slow-cooked cuisine, which survives in the city's kitchens and its manners today.
On the journey:Lucknow journeys|Reference:Encyclopaedia Britannica ↗
A stocky wild mountain goat found only in the high grasslands of the southern Western Ghats.
Eravikulam National Park above Munnar holds the largest surviving population, and they graze within a few metres of the visitor path — one of the easiest encounters with a genuinely rare animal anywhere in India.
On the journey:Munnar tea country|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
P
Relating to the dynasty that ruled the Tamil coast from roughly the third to the ninth century, preceding the Cholas.
The Pallavas cut the shore temple and the great rock reliefs at Mahabalipuram, effectively inventing the South Indian stone temple that the Cholas would later build at scale.
On the journey:Shore Temple, Mahabalipuram|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
The intensive cleansing programme at the centre of Ayurvedic treatment, built around five purificatory therapies.
It is prescribed by a physician, involves a restricted diet, and is properly a matter of weeks rather than days. Guests should expect a clinical regime rather than a spa week.
On the journey:Ayurveda in Kerala|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
A member of India's small Zoroastrian community, descended from Persians who settled on the west coast of India centuries ago.
The community is concentrated in Mumbai and, though it now numbers only tens of thousands, it shaped the city's industry, architecture and philanthropy out of all proportion to its size. Parsi cooking — dhansak, patra ni machhi, berry pulao — is one of the better reasons to eat in Mumbai.
On the journey:Mumbai destination guide|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
The fine undercoat wool of a Himalayan goat, and the shawls woven from it.
True pashmina is hand-spun and hand-woven, and the trade is thick with imitations sold under the name. The genuine article is judged on the weave, not on the softness of a shop's sales pitch.
On the journey:Craft traditions: a collector's guide|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
The traditional wrestling of the subcontinent, fought in an earthen pit and governed as much by codes of diet and celibacy as by technique.
It is trained in akharas, many of them centuries old, and the earth of the pit is itself treated as sacred and prepared afresh each day.
On the journey:Varanasi journeys|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
The circuits of a sacred fire taken by the couple, which constitute the binding moment of a Hindu wedding.
Conventionally there are seven, each carrying a vow. Everything before them is celebration; the pheras are the marriage itself, which is why their timing is set by an astrologer rather than by the caterer.
On the journey:Festivals & fairs of India|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
The inlay of cut and polished coloured stones into marble to form a design.
Carnelian, jade and lapis were set into white marble to decorate the Taj Mahal, where the technique reached its Indian summit. Agra workshops still practise it, and the difference between fine work and tourist work shows in the joins.
On the journey:Taj Mahal|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
A gated residential quarter of old Ahmedabad — a self-contained lane of courtyard houses entered through a single doorway.
Pols have carved timber facades, communal bird-feeders and, often, concealed passages between them. They are the principal reason Ahmedabad became India's first World Heritage City.
On the journey:Ahmedabad journeys|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
An act of Hindu worship — offerings of flowers, food, light or water made to a deity at a temple or a household shrine.
Puja is domestic as often as it is public, which is why a shop, a car and a hotel lobby may each have a small shrine receiving one. An aarti is a form of puja, not a synonym for it.
On the journey:Sacred Ganges: Varanasi & Rishikesh|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
The practice of screening women from the sight of men outside the family, by veiling or by seclusion within the household.
Much of what a visitor admires in Rajput and Mughal palace architecture — the jaali screen, the jharokha balcony, the zenana courtyard — exists to serve it. Knowing that turns a decorative detail into a social document.
On the journey:Amber Fort|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
Q
The devotional music of Sufi Islam, sung by a group with harmonium, percussion and driving handclaps, intended to carry singer and listener towards religious ecstasy.
It is performed at dargahs across the subcontinent, and Thursday evenings at Delhi's Nizamuddin shrine are its living heart. A performance builds over long stretches, so arriving late and leaving early misses the point of the form.
On the journey:Delhi destination guide|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
R
The melodic framework of Indian classical music — a set of notes, and rules for moving between them, that a musician improvises within.
A raga is not a tune but the grammar a tune is built from, and many are traditionally assigned to a particular time of day or season. This is why a dawn raga on the ghats is a specific thing rather than a poetic phrase.
On the journey:Varanasi journeys|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
A member of the warrior and landholding clans of northern India, chiefly Rajasthan, who ruled its princely states.
Rajput houses built the forts of Amber, Mehrangarh and Jaisalmer, and their descendants still own — and often still live in — many of the palace hotels we use. It is why a stay in Rajasthan can be a stay with a family rather than at a brand.
On the journey:Mehrangarh Fort · Rajasthan's hidden estates|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
S
Kerala's ceremonial vegetarian feast, served on a banana leaf in a fixed order of some two dozen dishes.
It runs from sharp pickles at the tip of the leaf to payasam at the close, and the order is part of the recipe. It is the meal of the Onam festival, and the finest lunch in the backwaters.
On the journey:Kerala journeys|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
The Rajasthani turban — a single long length of cloth wound around the head, its colour and style signalling region, community and occasion.
It is tied rather than pre-formed, and a guest at a wedding may well be tied into one on arrival. Accepting is the polite move.
On the journey:Festivals & fairs of India|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
A tall hardwood tree that forms the dominant forest of central and northern India.
Mature sal stands are straight-trunked and high-canopied. It is this forest, in and around Kanha, that Kipling gave to Mowgli.
On the journey:Kanha destination guide|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
India's largest deer — a heavy, dark, shaggy animal of the forest, and the tiger's principal prey.
Its bell-like alarm call is the single most reliable sign that a tiger is moving nearby, and a good naturalist stops the vehicle the moment one sounds. The South Indian lentil broth of the same name is unrelated.
On the journey:Tiger safari|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
The music-and-dance evening held before an Indian wedding, at which both families perform for one another.
It is the least formal and often the most enjoyable night of the celebration, and guests are expected to dance rather than to watch. Rehearsed family routines are entirely normal.
On the journey:Festivals & fairs of India|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
A short-necked bowed instrument of North India, played by pressing the strings with the fingernails rather than the fingertips.
It is held to come closer than any other instrument to the sound of the human voice, and traditionally accompanied singers for exactly that reason.
On the journey:Delhi destination guide|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
An unstitched length of cloth, several metres long, draped to form a garment — the principal traditional dress of Indian women.
It is never cut or tailored, and the manner of draping varies from region to region. A Banarasi silk sari worked in zari may take months on the loom.
On the journey:The Weavers of Varanasi|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
The princely hunt of old India, and the whole apparatus of lodges, camps and elephant-back shooting that surrounded it.
Shikar built the machans and hunting lodges that conservation-era India has since converted into some of its finest wilderness hotels. Several of the families who once shot tigers now help pay to protect them.
On the journey:The Oberoi Vanyavilas|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
The long, canopied wooden boat of Kashmir's Dal Lake, paddled from the stern.
The name is also used for the light canoes poled through Kerala's narrower canals, where the water is too shallow and the channels too tight for a houseboat. It remains the quietest way to travel that exists.
On the journey:Backwater journeys|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
A pocket of stunted montane evergreen forest set within the high grassland of the Western Ghats.
Shola and grassland together form a single ecosystem found nowhere else on earth, protected at Eravikulam alongside the Nilgiri tahr.
On the journey:Munnar destination guide|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
A long-necked plucked string instrument of North India, with sympathetic strings beneath the frets that ring on untouched.
Those sympathetic strings produce the instrument's characteristic shimmer. It is the melodic voice of a Hindustani recital, usually paired with tabla.
On the journey:Delhi destination guide|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
A well reached by a long descending staircase, so that water can still be drawn as the water table falls.
Because the stair is shaded and sunk deep, a stepwell is many degrees cooler than the surface, and became a place to gather as much as a place to draw water. Rajasthan and Gujarat hold the masterpieces — Chand Baori, Adalaj, Rani ki Vav — and many have lately been restored.
On the journey:Amber Fort & Panna Meena ka Kund|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
A solid domed Buddhist monument, built to house relics and walked around by worshippers as an act of devotion.
A stupa is circumambulated, not entered, and always clockwise. Sanchi's is the great early survivor in India, and the form travelled onward to become the pagoda of East Asia.
On the journey:The Himalayan north: Sikkim|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
Relating to Sufism, the mystical tradition within Islam that seeks direct experience of God, often through music, poetry and devotion to a saint.
Sufism is the reason India has dargahs and qawwali at all, and its shrines have long drawn Hindu as well as Muslim pilgrims. It is the most porous and least doctrinaire religious culture a traveller is likely to meet in North India.
On the journey:Delhi: the imperial capital|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
T
The pair of hand drums that carry the rhythm of North Indian classical music — a small treble drum and a larger bass one.
The pitch is bent by pressing the heel of the hand into the skin as it is struck, which is why the instrument seems to speak. The rhythmic cycle it keeps is called a taal.
On the journey:Delhi destination guide|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
A cylindrical clay oven fired to a very high heat, used to bake bread against its walls and to cook meat on skewers.
It is the source of naan and of tandoori chicken, and the intense dry heat is the point — nothing else reproduces the char.
On the journey:Old Delhi heritage walk|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
A complete meal served as a set of small dishes arranged around a central plate.
Each region's thali is a map of its cuisine, from Rajasthani dal-baati to a Kerala spread on a banana leaf. In most thali houses the refills are unlimited, and stopping them requires a firm hand.
On the journey:An India culinary journey|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
The ancestral joint-family house of Kerala, built of carved timber around a courtyard.
Kumarakom Lake Resort's villas stand behind genuine tharavad facades, rescued from demolition elsewhere and re-erected on site.
On the journey:Kumarakom Lake Resort|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
A noble estate of Rajputana — a fief smaller than a princely state, held by an aristocratic family under a maharaja.
The descendants of those families now receive guests in the same forts and manor houses their ancestors held. Deogarh and Shahpura are living thikanas, and staying in one is the closest thing to being a house guest of the old order.
On the journey:Dev Shree Deogarh|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
A light meal, and by extension the stacked metal container it is carried in.
Mumbai's dabbawalas move some two hundred thousand tiffins from home kitchens to office desks each working day, and return the empties, with a famously low error rate.
On the journey:Mumbai destination guide|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
The fermented sap of a palm tree, drunk fresh as a mild, sour, cloudy beer.
It is tapped at dawn and grows sharper and stronger as the day goes on, so the hour at which you drink it changes what you are drinking. Kerala's toddy shops serve fierce food alongside it.
On the journey:Kerala backwaters: slow luxury|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
An ornamental gateway or hanging placed over a threshold to mark it as auspicious.
It runs from the carved stone archways of ancient temples to the embroidered festoon hung over a Gujarati doorway at a wedding — the same idea, worked in stone or in thread.
On the journey:Craft traditions: a collector's guide|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
V
The tower that rises directly above the sanctum of a South Indian temple.
Thanjavur's Brihadeeswarar vimana climbs sixty-six metres beneath an enormous capstone — Chola engineering that has been announcing itself for a thousand years. It should not be confused with the gopuram, which is the gateway rather than the sanctum tower.
On the journey:Brihadeeswarar Temple|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
Z
Thread wrapped in fine gold or silver, woven into silk to produce brocade.
It is the glitter in a Banarasi sari, worked on pit looms in Varanasi's weaving quarters. Real zari tarnishes with age where the synthetic substitute does not, which is one way to tell them apart.
On the journey:The Weavers of Varanasi|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
The women's quarters of a household or palace, screened from the view of men outside the family.
Its counterpart is the mardana, the men's quarters. The zenana is the reason so much Rajput palace architecture is built to watch without being watched.
On the journey:Amber Fort|Reference:Wikipedia ↗
Every term here is something our guests encounter in the field — usually with a curator beside them to explain it better than any glossary can.
Meet the Curators