This excerpt was taken from BBC travel. Amritsar, a north Indian city of two million people, is famous for many things: delectable cuisine, its historical old town and the spectacular Golden Temple – the most significant shrine of the Sikh religion. Yet, what stands out everywhere, from the temple to the people in the streets, is a feeling of generosity that is linked to the very founding of the city. Amritsar was established in the 16th Century by a Sikh guru and is located in the region of Punjab where Sikhism originated. The religion is known for its tradition of seva – a voluntary service performed for others without any expectations or reciprocity. Sikhs all over the world do seva in gurudwaras (Sikh temples), most often in simple acts like cleaning the floors, serving meals and maintaining order in the temple. Others perform seva in their private life through acts of generosity and charity. In April 2021 when Covid devastated families across India, the Sikh community rose to the challenge of delivering oxygen cylinders and other medical supplies to those in desperate need. “Seva means selfless service, and in Sikhism it is not just an exhortation and a guide but a daily practice,” writes Jasreen Mayal Khanna in her book Seva: Sikh Wisdom for Living Well by Doing Good. “Kind has been cool among Sikhs way before it became a Brooklyn hipster motto.” “The other name for seva is love,” said 23-year-old Abhinandan Chaudhary, who has been doing seva with his family since he was eight. “A common teaching is that one should be so discreet and selfless, that if you are doing seva from the left hand, even your right hand should not find out about it.” In an increasingly individualised and capitalistic world, it is a refreshing way of living. The spirit of generosity in Sikhism can be seen across the world. During Covid lockdown, Sikh volunteers in a gurudwara in England delivered thousands of meals a day to NHS staff, while Sikhs in various US cities cooked hundreds of thousands of free meals. In crisis or emergency situations, Sikhs have rallied their full force to help those in need, whether it may be storm-hit Canada or cyclone-struck New Zealand. But in Amritsar, the beating heart of the Sikh religion, the fulfilment of seva is taken to another level. It is known throughout India that no person ever has to go to bed hungry in Amritsar. That’s because there is always a hot meal ready for anyone who should want it at the Golden Temple, the most significant shrine of the Sikh religion. The Golden Temple’s langar, a free, communal kitchen, is the largest in the world, serving 100,000 people per day, seven days a week. Everybody is welcome to eat here, without discrimination, for as long as they need shelter and food, and meals are available 24 hours a day…. Read the full BBC article HERE.  

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This excerpt was taken from BBC travel. When you are about to land on India‘s archipelago of Lakshadweep in the Arabian Sea, 490km west of the closest Indian city of Kochi, you’ll see shades of blue all around. The narrow strip closest to the white beach, lined with hundreds of coconut trees, is light blue. A little further into the sea, the water is turquoise, while the deep sea is emerald blue. “It’s mesmerising, really,” said Shradha Menon, a geologist from the Indian Institute of Technology, who visited the islands three times in the last two years to study their carbon sedimentation. Each time, she was one of just a handful of outsiders on the 36-seat plane from Kochi to Lakshadweep, carrying island residents and government officials posted there. But recently there has been a lot more interest in the islands from Indian travellers after Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Lakshadweep in January 2024. Pictures of him walking on the white beaches and snorkelling in its crystal-clear waters were uploaded on his official account on X (formerly Twitter) and his YouTube channel, garnering hundreds of thousands of views. In his message to the public, he said, “The beauty of Lakshadweep can’t be described in words. To those who like to visit beaches and islands around the world, I urge them to visit the Lakshadweep.” Since then, the archipelago has been thrust into the spotlight. Google searches for “Lakshadweep” soared to the highest they’d been In 20 years, according to The Economic Times. Travel articles suddenly appeared in mainstream media outlets, and YouTube videos and Instagram reels flooded the internet. MakeMyTrip, one of India’s biggest travel booking portals, claimed a 3,400% increase to in-platform searches for Lakshadweep after Modi’s visit. The phone lines of Lakshadweep‘s Society for Promotion of Nature Tourism and Sports (SPORTS) that handles tourism in the territory have never been busier. From one or two tourist inquiries a day, they have been getting at least 10 a day since last month, said Abdul Samad, one of SPORTS’ two water sports instructors who helped Modi snorkel in the island in January. Meanwhile, Cordelia Cruises, which has been sailing from Mumbai, Kochi and Goa to Lakshadweep since September 2021, has witnessed a 2,500% increase in booking queries since Modi’s visit. New beach and water villas are already being planned on the islands of Suheli and Kadmat, Samad confirmed, and India’s finance minister Neermala Sitharaman even mentioned Lakshadweep in her budget speech on 1 February while talking about better connectivity to India’s islands to grow tourism. Read the full BBC article HERE.

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was woken by the long, forlorn sound of the siren. The brakes hissed and screeched as our train chugged up the hill and pulled into Radella, a station along one of the most beautiful train journeys in the world: the Colombo to Badulla railway. “The journey is so enthralling that you don’t want to take your head out of the window,” said Dayawathie Ekanayake, who has travelled extensively by train across the island during her career as a finance consultant. “It makes you feel constantly in awe. You wonder about what comes next – is it a waterfall? A stupa-like tea garden? Or is it mist-clouded peaks? You never know. You just have to keep looking.” Since my first journey along this route seven years ago, I have returned numerous times, eagerly jumping off the train to explore towns and hamlets flanked by tea estates. The 291km track takes in a mix of deep gorges, craggy cliffs, cascading falls, lakes and rivers from Sri Lanka‘s west coast into its mountainous interior. It twists and turns through 46 tunnels, snaking past high montane canopy with bright red rhododendrons and wild ferns, a fragment of the native hill country forest cover left untouched by British colonisers. On a bright day, sun-drenched hills stretch down to the glistening southern coastline from the train window as far as the eye can see. This slow, 10-hour long journey might be inconvenient for the modern-day traveller, but it’s so enchantingly scenic that it’s become a bucket list adventure for many visitors.   It’s not just the views that has travellers in awe. The train journey itself has become an Instagram sensation in recent years, with travel bloggers risking their lives to take photos of themselves hanging off the door as the train rumbles past rickety bridges (some of them have been criticised for their dramatic poses). Yet, the journey is also tied to Sri Lanka‘s colonial history and gives passengers a deeper understanding of the island-nation. During British colonisation in the 19th Century, Sri Lanka was the third-largest coffee exporter in the world. As demand rose, it became expensive to ferry coffee on bullock carts from the central mountains to Colombo for shipment, especially with road conditions deteriorating during the monsoon months. Estates had to therefore store their coffee for long periods of time, causing the quality and value to deteriorate. So British estate owners pushed for a rail system to transport coffee. In 1867, the British completed a railway from the city of Kandy in central Sri Lanka to the coastal city of Colombo. “The British didn’t build railways to help locals travel,” explained Sanka Abeysinghe, naturalist at the luxury boutique hotel chain Teardrop Hotels, who also conducts railway hikes for resort guests. “They designed railways to transport estate produce.” I boarded the train in Colombo, leaving the muggy heat and low country farmlands to slowly ascend towards the rocky mountains surrounding Kandy. Cutting through rugged terrain, the train climbed 426m over a 21km stretch, passing through 12 tunnels, hugging treacherous curves along the mountains and soaring above thick tropical jungle. After leaving Kandy, we passed fertile riverine valleys, and entered Sri Lanka‘s hill country. Tea flourishes in these damp, wet highlands, so, “when tea became prominent, after the coffee rust epidemic – a fungi disease that hindered the coffee trade [in 1869] – the British wanted to extend the railways to transport tea from the mountains to Colombo,” Abeysinghe explained. In the 1870s, the British began to expand the railway from Peradeniya, a railway junction near Kandy, extending the route to the terminal station Badulla in 1924. This 178km-long stretch involved navigating through rainy, forested mountains, steep ridges and a series of sharp twists and turns by building an impressive mix of bridges, viaducts, tunnels and embankments. It took 52 years to complete. We pushed out of the mountains, and over the next three hours we passed small and well-kept British-era railway stations like Galboda and Watawala, which were built solely for the purpose of transporting tea from each estate. We sluggishly ascended past Hindu temples tucked in tea gardens, small housing settlements where the tea estate labourers live, and turpentine forests shrouded in swirling mist. Sometime after leaving Hatton – the gateway town to Adam’s Peak, a holy mountain for pilgrims of all faiths – we entered the Poolbank Tunnel, the longest of the 46 tunnels at more than half a kilometre in length. “You cannot really see the light at the end of the tunnel here,” Abyesinghe said, chuckling. From here, young passengers eagerly hung from the door to see the gushing cascades of the spectacular St Clair’s Falls through tea bushes. Cold air drifted in from the open windows and rising mist cloaked the towering Great Western mountain range. Many passengers got off the train at Nanu Oya, a tea-country town where visitors can tour the plantations and learn about the history of tea on the island; but I stayed on board, climbing up to Pattipola, the highest broad gauge railway station in the world. From here, we finally left the cold central hills, travelling past dairy farms towards the sun-drenched south-eastern mountains. After a couple of hours later, we pulled in at Ella. Over the last decade, this once-sleepy village has turned into a lively tourist hub with cafes and bars lining the streets and people posing for photos in front of the picturesque Nine Arch Bridge, a viaduct with nine arches that soars over tropical jungles of plantain trees and areca nut palms and has become one of the most photographed spots on the island. Flanked by thick jungle and tea plantations, the bridge was designed by British engineer Harold Marwood, but according to folklore, it never would have been built were it not for local knowledge. It’s said that during World War One, when it was difficult to source steel from Europe, British engineers had to rethink the bridge design. Since colonial rulers had little to no...

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