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By:

Archita Redkar

11 September 2025 at 8:00:25 pm

Beyond the Map: Discovering Europe’s Soul

Part 1 - The greatest attraction is not always a monument. For me, travel begins long before I board a flight. It begins with planning. an itinerary, studying maps, tracing railway connections, searching for small hotels and charming motels, checking the weather and deciding what to pack. Sometimes, the excitement lies simply in discovering how two seemingly insignificant towns are connected by a local train, a scenic bus route or anunexpected road. This is why I have always been drawn to...

Beyond the Map: Discovering Europe’s Soul

Part 1 - The greatest attraction is not always a monument. For me, travel begins long before I board a flight. It begins with planning. an itinerary, studying maps, tracing railway connections, searching for small hotels and charming motels, checking the weather and deciding what to pack. Sometimes, the excitement lies simply in discovering how two seemingly insignificant towns are connected by a local train, a scenic bus route or anunexpected road. This is why I have always been drawn to places that do not appear on every traveller’s checklist. Travel, for me, is not merely about reaching a destination. It is about understanding it, experiencing it and allowing it to surprise me. As Pico Iyer beautifully expresses in his celebrated essay Why We Travel, “We travel, initially, to lose ourselves, and we travel, next, to find ourselves.” Travel has the remarkable ability to take us away from the familiar and introduce us to another version of ourselves. That thought resonates deeply with me. Every journey can change something. within us—a new perspective, a friendship, a taste, a landscape, a conversation or simply the realisation that there are countless ways of living and looking at the world. Offbeat Europe When we think of Europe, our imagination naturally turns to Paris, London, Rome, Switzerland, Amsterdam or Prague. These iconic destinations deserve their place in the traveller’s imagination. But Europe has another, quieter personality. It lives in mediaeval villages tucked between mountains, riverside towns, little cafés in cobbled squares, farmers’ markets, countryside railway stations and family-run restaurants where the menu may not even be available in English. Sometimes, the greatest attraction is not a monument at all. It is a street. a railway journey, a bakery, a local market, a conversation, a village square where elderly people gather on a Sunday afternoon, or a small hotel where the owner remembers your name. Discovering the Undiscovered Imagine arriving in a small European town with no long list of attractions. Instead of rushing from one monument to another, you walk slowly through its streets. You stop at a local café, watch people go about their lives, visit a weekly market and take a regional train because the route looks beautiful. You buy something from a little shop. You taste a local dish. You try to communicate despite not knowing the language. You exchange a smile. Perhaps you have a conversation with the café owner or another traveller. For me, these moments are often more precious than photographs in front of famous landmarks. The great travel writer and explorer Freya Stark captured this spirit. beautifully when she wrote, “To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.” There is something wonderfully liberating about arriving somewhere. unfamiliar with curiosity rather than expectations, allowing a place to introduce itself rather than deciding what it should be. That, perhaps, is the difference between simply visiting a destination and truly travelling through it. The Pu. La. Way Among Marathi travel writers, one name that has always fascinated me is Pu. La. Deshpande. His Apoorvai, Poorvarang and Jaave Tyanchya Desha are not merely travelogues. They are journeys seen through the eyes of a wonderfully curious, humorous and sensitive traveller. What makes Pu. La.’s writing so special is that he did not simply tell us what a place looked like. He showed us how it made him feel. He noticed people. their habits, humour, peculiarities and little incidents that an ordinary tourist might overlook. In the preface to Apoorvai, Pu. La. makes a self-aware observation: the book contains not merely a description of the journey he undertook but also of himself who was travelling. That, to me, is one of the most beautiful philosophies of travel writing. No two people experience the same journey in exactly the same way. The city, the railway and the monument remain unchanged—but the traveller transforms the experience. What one person notices, another may miss.
Pu. La. had that extraordinary ability to notice the apparently insignificant and turn it into something memorable. His descriptions of Europe, particularly England, celebrate little streams. and rivers, green hills, villages, church spires, grazing cattle, children waving at passing trains, cricket grounds, winding roads and ordinary people going about their day, rather than just famous landmarks. Reading those passages makes me realise that this is precisely what I seek. when I travel. I want to see what exists between the famous places: the landscape outside, the train window, the character of a small town, a local café, a regional dish, a bustling market and, perhaps, a conversation with someone whose life is completely different from mine. (The writer is a tourism professional and runs a company, Global Voyages. She could be contacted at goglobalvoyages@gmail.com. Views personal.)

Warriors of Night

Writer: Aditi Pai
Aditi Pai
Oct 6, 2024
3 min read

Updated: Oct 22, 2024

We name our daughters Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati; we worship the divine feminine power in the temples but oppress, repress and even attack the feminine power amidst us. That is the irony in the way India sees its women.

After the safety of the daylight fades, women are seen as easy prey by the predators of the night.

We mark the nine nights of Navratri, the festival of the goddess, by celebrating the dedication and valour of nine real-life women who brave the challenges of the night to pursue their dreams.


Part - 4


Never felt unsafe

The singer says there has been a generational change over the last two decades

Never felt unsafe

Work has no timings for Aisha Sayed. Sometimes, she begins her studio recording at 12 AM and finishes by 5 AM; at other times, concerts and live shows start at 9 AM and she’s done by midnight. In her field of work as a performer and singer, Sayed is used to not getting a night’s sleep and often returning home when most of the city is set to wake up. “I have been travelling at night but I have never, ever, felt unsafe in Mumbai,” says the singer-performer who began her career at the age of 13 years. Her father spotted her talent for music and took her to meet a sound engineer who was their neighbour in Bandra. The family helped her get opportunities and from there, her career began.

Being among the top contenders in Indian Idol, season 3, in 2007 catapulted her to fame and it opened up a world of new performance opportunities across the country. “I was just 20 years then and I was travelling the world, performing at the most lavish weddings, staying at the most luxurious hotels and performing at big corporate gigs,” she says. Safety, while on work, is has never been an issue for her for the organizers arrange a security detail for the performers. “They escort us until we reach the room. And since we travel with our team in a big group, there is always safety in numbers,” says Sayed, who sings in 10 languages. Her peers have faced instances of audience members being rowdy. “Once in Delhi, a group of drunk men followed my colleague to her room and kept banging on her door late into the night. But I have been fortunate,” she says.

Work assignments have taken to varied places, from the most luxurious international destinations to far-off venues in the hinterland of India where she’s travelled through dark, dense forested areas. “I have driven through areas where the only light is that of your car’s headlights. Turn around and you see pitch darkness,” says Sayed. She’s always got a little prayer on her lips when travelling through these remote areas for miles together. She recalls a show in Chattisgarh where she had to travel for nine hours at a stretch through remote and forested areas. “No place in our country is as safe as Mumbai,” she stresses. She would know, considering her extensive travels. She advises women to travel in groups while in places that are unfamiliar or unknown and never to venture out at night alone. “Keep your family informed of your whereabouts,” she says.

While her agreements state that proper security at all times, Sayed says that she drives her own car if she’s out at night for parties or personal work but insists that the people of Mumbai are largely helpful and cooperative. A rickshaw driver who once drove to home in the wee hours of the night, after a recording, waited at her gate until the watchman let her in. Friends and colleagues have dropped her home several times.

Mumbai, she feels, has changed—and it’s for the better, in the past two decades. “Earlier, on buses and trains, men would use the crowd as an excuse to touch women inappropriately. That has gone down. There is a generational change that I see,” says Sayed. She used to take the BEST buses and trains to her training classes and for recordings in the early days of her career.

Her timings are inconsistent and her shows take her to various cities and towns. But the Mumbai-bred girl emphasizes that her city is very safe for women, despite the various incidents of violence. “Mumbai is the only place where a woman can wear what she wants, wear bright red lipstick, leave her hair open and look glamorous and still be safe.”

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