The Magic Tours Blog

In the Mysore Palace, I saw the Wodeyar Coat of Arms on the palace gate. It was a proper British Coat of Arms, containing all four formal el...

We were in Ajmer during the annual Urs, the death anniversary of the 12th century Sufi mystic Moinuddin Chishti. It is a six day commemorati...

  Madurai has long been the cultural epicentre of Tamil Nadu. Records of the city from the 3rd century BC depict a thriving trading centre, ...

Have you heard about the Tamil Mahabharatams? Although the physical locales of the Mahabharata are primarily located in north India, there...

The Garuda Purana, composed in Sanskrit, contains 16000 verses, dealing with an incredibly diverse collection of topics. It covers cosmol...

The problem with ordering curry leaves online is that you have more leaves than you know what to do with. Meenakshi Ammal came to my rescue...

Karaikkal Ammaiyar (The Mother from Karaikkal) lived in Tamil Nadu in 6th century. She was a poet-saint, one of the 63 Shaivite Nayanmars. ...

The village of Kanadukathan is a couple of hours from Madurai in Tamilnadu. If you walk through the village, you will come across streets f...

From Johnson Album 3, 4, painted 1660-70 Featured in the British Library exhibition, Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire. Emperor Aur...

Spotted at Pushkar: a collection box (Daan Patra) for Gau Seva (the welfare of cows). A young bull stands next to it, looking quite annoyed...

This week I read a story in  Hindustan Times  about Portuguese church bells, which are being used all over temples in Maharashtra. Templ...

Have you been to Rajsamand Lake? It is just an hour north of Udaipur, past the religious centre of Nathdwara. Rajsamand Lake, Wikimedia...

Continuing the series on the ghats of Varanasi; Jatar Ghat was built in the mid 1800's by the finance secretary of the Gwalior Estate...

Phulkari meri reshmi Rang na aiya theek Chheti darshan devne Main rasta rahi udeek My phulkari is silken But the colour doesn't...

About 10 kilometers south-east from Amritsar, along what used to be the historic Grand Trunk Road, there is a nondescript town called...