Never Been Abroad

Category: Within Reach

Within Reach gathers the places inside India I have somehow still not visited — near enough to reach on an overnight train, and yet unwalked. These are dispatches on home-country journeys postponed for years: the pilgrimage towns, hill stations and coastlines a short journey from home that I keep not making. Begin with Varanasi, Hampi or Meghalaya.

  • Charcoal sketch of a wide brown tidal river between low mangrove-forest banks under a big hazy sky, a small boat on the water - never been abroad

    Sundarbans

    The Sundarbans are my own home state’s wild edge — the world’s largest mangrove forest where the great rivers meet the sea, and the tiger that swims between islands.

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  • Charcoal sketch of a great temple spire rising over a low town, the grey Bay of Bengal and fishing boats beyond - never been abroad

    Puri

    Puri is a great pilgrimage temple town on the Bay of Bengal — a giant wooden chariot festival, an ancient temple and the open sea; the one place all my people go.

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  • Charcoal sketch of a hill-capital of stacked houses spilling down a steep green ridge into cloud-filled valleys, a faint snow peak beyond - never been abroad

    Sikkim

    Sikkim is the small green Himalayan state that was its own Buddhist kingdom within living memory — wet ridges, roofed monasteries in pine, cardamom and cloud.

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  • Charcoal sketch of a tall ornate gateway and the domes of the old city in soft twilight, low haze - never been abroad

    Lucknow

    Lucknow is the city of nawabi refinement — courtly manners, faded palaces, and above all the food; a cuisine I can name dish by dish and have never tasted at source.

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  • Charcoal sketch of a thin spit of pale sand with sea on both sides running to the horizon, ruined walls, a big empty sky - never been abroad

    Dhanushkodi

    Dhanushkodi is a ghost town at the very tip of India — washed away by a cyclone and never rebuilt, where the land thins to a finger of sand pointing at Sri Lanka.

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  • Charcoal sketch of a curving white-sand bay with leaning palms, turquoise shallows over reef, dense jungle headlands - never been abroad

    Andaman & Nicobar Islands

    The most remote, least-India-feeling part of India — turquoise sea, jungle, an old prison — and yet out there, a thousand miles at sea, I would hear my own Bengali.

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  • Charcoal sketch of a four-minaret arched monument rising over a dense bazaar, domes and a fort-hill beyond in dry haze - never been abroad

    Hyderabad

    An old Deccan city of a vanished sultanate — a four-arched monument, a hill-fort of whispers, and a biryani I have wanted my whole life and never tasted at source.

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  • Charcoal sketch of a still lake with a white palace floating on it, the long city-palace and ghats along the shore, dry hills behind - never been abroad

    Udaipur

    White palaces on still lakes in a dry, hard state — a palace that seems to float on the water. An improbable softness in the desert, half romance and half mirage.

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  • Charcoal sketch of a green plateau edge with a great waterfall dropping into a cloud-filled gorge, forested hills in rain-haze - never been abroad

    Meghalaya

    The wettest corner of my own country — a high green plateau where people grow bridges from living roots and the rain is a character. As foreign to me as abroad.

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  • Charcoal sketch of a still backwater at evening, a thatched houseboat on a broad lagoon, palms and their reflections, low green banks - never been abroad

    Alleppey

    Alleppey is a green water-country of lagoons, canals and rice fields below the sea, crossed by houseboats — a short journey south, and I have only seen it in photos.

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