The future King Edward VII, visiting India in 1875, remarked that it was commonplace for every writer “to set out with the admission that the Taj Mahal is indescribable, and then proceed to give some idea of it”. I don’t think words exist in the English language to […]
Sikri was once a nondescript village 38km west of Agra, its only claim to fame being the home of a sufi mystic, Sheikh Salim Chishti. Its fortunes chained dramatically in 1568 when the Mughal emporer Akbar visited the saint. Akbar was at the peak of his rule, with […]
Set in 30 acres of walled gardens in the eastern part of Delhi, Humayun’s mausoleum is considered the crowning glory of early Mughal architecture. Humayun was the second Mughal emporer and the least successful of the early Mughals, now primarily remembered for his tomb. He ruled the Mughal […]
Believed to have been built around 1678, Bibi Ka Maqbara (Tomb of the Lady) was built by Prince Azam Shah, son of the sixth Mughal Emporer Aurangzab, in memory of his mother Rabia-Durrani. It does of course have a striking resemblance to the world famous Taj Mahal, the […]
Devagiri Fort, later known as Daulatabad Fort, lies 11km north-west of Aurangabad and is only 16km away from the famous Ellora Caves. The two could be combined with an early start, although it would make for an extremely tiring day. The fort is situated on an isolated cone […]
Pune’s Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum contains the collection of Dr Dinkar G. Kelkar (1896–1990), dedicated to the memory of his only son, Raja, who died an untimely tragic death. The collection was started in the 1920s and by 1960 it contained around 15,000 objects. By all accounts […]
Leaving Swakopmund early in the morning we started the long drive south past coastal dunes and across desolate gavel plains dotted with rocky outcrops, before traversing the deep Gaub and Kuiseb passes. You could sense with every mile we were getting further and further away from civilisation, with only […]
Swakopmund (German for “Mouth of the Swakop”) lies on the coast of western Namibia, about 280km west of the capital, Windhoek. The city is surrounded by the Namib Desert on three sides, and from various viewpoints in the city you can see the golden orange sand dunes of […]
Kevin Standage 
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