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 misted tea-covered hills, a small train on a curved viaduct, low cloud filling the valleys - never been abroad

    Coonoor

    Coonoor and the blue Nilgiri hills sit a short climb above places I have actually been in the South — and I never once went up. The near-miss kind of longing.

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  • Charcoal sketch of a ruined temple tower and stone ruins among huge rounded granite boulders, a river and palms in heat-haze - never been abroad

    Hampi

    Hampi is a whole vanished capital gone back to boulders and river, in my own country, reachable by an ordinary train — and somehow never reached.

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  • Charcoal sketch of the golden sandstone fort city of Jaisalmer rising out of the pale Thar desert under a big sky, camels small on the sand - never been abroad

    Jaisalmer

    A golden fort I first met in black and white, as a boy who could not picture the gold. It took me twenty years to see the colour, and I still have not stood in it.

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  • Charcoal sketch of Kanchenjunga glowing above a sea of cloud at dawn, tea-covered ridges and a small hill town below - never been abroad

    Darjeeling

    The one time a Darjeeling trip in my family was ever real, I cancelled it — by being conceived. My own state’s hill station, and I have still never been.

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  • Charcoal sketch of the Mangalore coast at sunset, fishing boats on a long beach, red-tiled rooftops and palms, a river mouth and headland - never been abroad

    Mangalore

    Three times this coast reached for me by a side door, and three times the door shut. I can name its food dish by dish and have never once tasted it at source.

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  • Charcoal sketch of Pangong Tso, a long thin lake under bare high mountains, the water stretching away into the distance - never been abroad

    Leh–Ladakh · Pangong Tso

    Ladakh is the place I have the fewest excuses about. It is in my own country. There is no ocean here to blame — only me, and a road I keep not taking.

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  • Charcoal sketch of the Varanasi ghats at dawn from a boat on the Ganga, temple spires and mist over the river - never been abroad

    Varanasi

    Of all the places I have not been, Varanasi is the unforgivable one — a night’s train from home, and somehow never once made.

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