The Journal · Artisans, temples, food and festivals
Culture, Craft & Cuisine
India's living culture is among the richest on earth — its craft guilds and master artisans, its regional cuisines, its temples and its festivals. This is our guide to the country's cultural depth: meeting the master makers, travelling India through its food, the temples of Khajuraho, and timing a journey to the great festivals.
Photographing India: Where to Point the Lens, and When
Few countries give a photographer more — colour, ritual, light and faces. A guide to India's great photographic subjects, and the hours that make them.
The Craft Guilds of India: Meeting the Master Makers
Behind India's textiles, jewels and miniatures stand living guilds of master artisans. How to meet them — and why access is the whole point.
The Culinary Journey: Regional India for Serious Food Lovers
India is not one cuisine but dozens, each shaped by region, faith and history. A guide to travelling the country through its extraordinary food.
The Festivals & Fairs of India: Timing a Journey to the Colour
Diwali's lamps, Holi's colour, the great camel fair at Pushkar. India's festivals are among the world's most extraordinary — if you time your journey to them.
Khajuraho: The Temples of Central India
A thousand years ago, a forgotten dynasty carved some of the most exquisite — and famously sensual — temples in the world. A guide to Khajuraho.
The Weavers of Varanasi: A Living Tradition in Silk
On the narrow lanes of the holy city, a craft unchanged for three thousand years continues — and Elevated India will take you inside it.
India's Living Craft Traditions: A Guide for the Serious Collector
From Varanasi silk to Jaipur block-print, from Kutchi embroidery to Nilgiri bronze — where to find India's finest artisan works, and how to acquire them responsibly.
The Textile Journey of India: Cloth as Culture
No country weaves, prints and dyes cloth like India. A journey through its great textile towns — the block printers of Rajasthan, the silk looms of Banaras, the tie-dyers of Gujarat and the shawl-makers of the Himalaya.
The Music of India: A Listener's Guide
From a raga at dawn on the ghats to qawwali at a Sufi shrine, India's living musical traditions are among its deepest pleasures — and among the easiest to miss without the right introduction.
The Pushkar Camel Fair 2026: Dates, and How to Be There Properly
The fair runs 17–24 November 2026, climaxing on Kartik Purnima. What actually happens on which day, why the trading days and the pilgrimage days feel like different festivals, and how to see both without joining the crush.
Diwali in India: What It Is Actually Like, and Where to Spend It
Diwali falls on 8 November in 2026. What the five days actually involve, why the festival is quieter and more domestic than visitors expect, and how to be inside it rather than watching from a hotel window.
Onam in Kerala: What a Harvest Festival Looks Like From Inside a House
Kerala's state liquor monopoly takes its biggest single day of the year on the day before Thiruvonam, and then closes its shops on the feast day itself. Onam is the rare Indian festival whose centre of gravity is a private house rather than a public street — which is exactly what makes it difficult to travel to.
Durga Puja: Kolkata Becomes a Different City
A British Council study put the creative economy around one week's festival at ₹32,377 crore — 2.58 per cent of West Bengal's entire GDP. Durga Puja is not a religious event with an art economy attached. It is one of the largest public art commissions on earth, erected and dismantled annually by around three thousand neighbourhood committees in a single city.
Design Your India Around Culture
Tell us what draws you, and a curator will compose a private journey around it — typically within one working day.
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