Travel Tales

“People don’t take trips, trips take people.” – John Steinbeck

The Admiral That Embarrassed an Empire

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There is a sign on Kanhoji Angre Island that says, simply, “View Mumbai.” An arrow points right. My eyes strained hard in the direction it pointed, and sure enough, Mumbai was there, spread across the horizon like a rumour that got out of hand. Behind me, the lighthouse stood quiet in the morning sun. It only flashes at night.

This small island, five kilometres off the coast of Alibaug, holds more history per square metre than most places manage in an entire country. It was called Khanderi until 1998, when it was renamed after a man the British spent decades trying to catch and never did.

The Admiral They Called a Pirate

Kanhoji Angre was born in 1669 and died undefeated in 1729. In between, he ran the Maratha Navy with a brisk efficiency that made European admirals uncomfortable. He controlled the entire Maharashtra coastline from Sawantwadi to Mumbai. Every ship that sailed through Maratha waters paid a levy called jakat. Those that refused often lost the ship.

His navy was a coalition. Koli, Bhandari, and Kharvi seafarers formed its backbone. He employed Dutch commanders for his best vessels, a Jamaican pirate as chief gunner, and a Portuguese defector from the very East India Company trying to bring him down.

The British called him a pirate. In 1712, his navy captured the armed yacht Algerine, which belonged to the Governor of Bombay himself. They returned it fourteen months later, along with the Governor’s representative’s widow, for 30,000 rupees. The British East India Company, an organisation not known for taking things graciously, took this very badly indeed.

He also found time to found the town of Alibaug and issue his own silver currency, the Alibagi rupaiya. The ferry you take to reach his island leaves from the town he built.

Despite repeated attempts by the British, Portuguese, and Dutch to defeat him at sea, Kanhoji Angre died in bed in 1729. The lighthouse that now carries his name was built by the very people he spent his life outmanoeuvring.

There is something satisfying about that.

A Lamp from Paris

The British laid the cornerstone in January 1867. The Governor of Bombay did the honours. A Parisian firm, Barbier, Bénard & Turenne, supplied the lamp equipment. Their brass maker’s plate is still there, bolted to the green-painted housing, looking alarmingly cheerful. A small bronze plaque on a machine built for the age of sail, now guiding container ships tracked on phones. History has a sense of humour.

On a clear night, it flashes twice every ten seconds, in red and white, visible 25 nautical miles out. It has done this, with minor interruptions, since June 1867.

  • Empress Of India. The ship’s bell clang well.
  • Mumbai at a distance
  • Climb up to the lighthouse
  • The stariwary to the very top
  • Viewing deck at the lighthouse
  • Made in Paris
  • Entrance Of The Lighthouse
  • Delegates ahoy!

What You Find When You Get There

The island is small enough to take in quickly. The fort walls, built by Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in 1679, still mostly stand. Old cannons sit along the parapets. There is a musical stone that makes a metallic ring when struck with a pebble, which fishermen once used to warn of approaching ships. Two freshwater wells have been supplying the lighthouse keepers for over a century.

The lighthouse entrance is painted in blue and white, with small potted plants arranged outside. The interior is something else. The spiral staircase winds up through 160 years of iron and stone, the steps worn smooth in the middle, the green handrail the same shade as the lamp housing at the top. You climb toward a circle of light that keeps getting slightly closer and never quite arrives, until suddenly it does.

From the top, Mumbai sits in one direction and the open Arabian Sea in the other.

What the Island Keeps

Near the water’s edge, a small orange temple sits wedged between ancient rocks, saffron flags flying. It is very much still in use. Inside, among the garlands and incense, hangs a large bronze bell. Cast into the metal, in raised letters: EMPRESS OF INDIA. 1891. A ship’s bell, over a hundred and thirty years old, now rung daily as an offering at the Vetoba temple. The Konkan Kolis worship Vetal, the god of ghosts. On an island named after the man who spent his life raiding British ships. Nobody planned that particular detail, and it is all the better for it.

Along the way, delinquent cannons lay on their side on a rusted cart, exactly where someone had left it. Around it, water bottles and plastic bags. Three centuries of history and a morning’s worth of rubbish, sharing the same patch of ground.

Still Making an Impression

A faded banner on the wall announced that sixty maritime officials from thirty countries had visited a few weeks earlier. IALA, the body that sets lighthouse standards for the entire world, had chosen this island for its technical tour. They flew in from Europe, Asia, and the Americas, checked into Mumbai hotels, and then took a boat to a five-kilometre rock to look at a Victorian lamp made in Paris.

Kanhoji Angre spent his life ensuring that Europeans paid close attention to this coastline. Some habits, apparently, persist.

The ferry back to Alibaug takes twenty minutes. At night, the lighthouse flashes twice, pauses, and flashes again. It has been saying something out there, to anyone paying attention, for over a hundred and fifty years.

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If forts and forgotten history interest you, Kamuthi in Tamil Nadu is worth the detour.

The Bowl That Holds Everything

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As a young boy, every temple visit meant one thing before anything else. My great grandmother’s hand, and the soft clink of coins.

She would stop at the entrance, find the men sitting outside, and without ceremony drop a few coins into the black bowl in front of them. The sound was unmistakable. Metal on something hard and hollow. A clean, round clang that rang out and then faded into the temple noise. I heard that sound at every temple, in every town, across every visit. It became, without my knowing it, the sound of arrival.

I came to know the bowl’s name much later. Thiruvodu. In Tamil, thiru means sacred or holy. Odu means vessel. The sacred vessel. The bowl that holds what is given and asks for nothing more. Mendicants of Lord Shiva have carried it for centuries, painted black, hollowed from the hard shell of a fruit that, of all things, originates in the jungles of Mexico. It travelled oceans before anyone thought to name it sacred. Then it settled quietly into Tamil temple life, as if it had always been there.

I did not know any of this as a boy. I just knew the sound.

Well into adulthood, I picked up the courage to do more than drop coins and walk on. In a small town somewhere in rural Tamil Nadu, where life is placid and unhurried, a man sat on the ancient stone floor of a temple, sacred ash on his skin, a thiruvodu in front of him, its rim bedecked with bright flowers. We got talking. Within minutes he said something I have not managed to forget: “Whatever they give, my bowl must be worthy and ready to receive.”

I have turned that line over in boardrooms. In bad conversations. On mornings when the day arrived with more than I had asked for.

A decade and a half or so passed. Another thiruvodu brought alive an ordinary moment. This time I was in Konerirajapuram, a small village in the Chola heartland, off Kumbakonam. Its Uma Maheswarar temple has stood since the tenth century and houses what is said to be the world’s largest bronze Nataraja. A thousand years of devotion, with routines and a shrug. The village is now a shadow of its former self, though the temple stands unmoved.

We passed through a deserted Agraharam to get there. Long colonnaded houses, ochre walls peeling in slow strips, red pillars standing at attention for a life that had quietly packed up and left. Somewhere in those corridors, families had cooked and argued and celebrated for generations. Now, just footsteps and a silence that wasn’t empty. The kind that remembers.

The temple was shortly after. And there he was, sitting outside, holding a thiruvodu worn smooth with years. No flowers this time. Just the bowl, the man, and his smile.

I asked him how he was.

He said, in Tamil, whatever has happened has happened for the good. Whatever will happen will all be for the good.

The words are from the Bhagavad Gita. But he spoke them with no performance attached. No invitation to discuss. He said what he said, smiled, and returned to sitting. The bowl sat on the ancient stone floor, looking at the sky.

He hadn’t overthought his afternoon. He wasn’t rehearsing the next thought or relitigating the previous regret. He had simply arrived at the present and settled there. The bowl open. The mind open. That was enough.

What the Sea Confirmed

Seneca, the Roman Stoic who wrote more wisely about happiness than he perhaps lived it, said something similar two thousand years ago. Happiness, he wrote, asks one thing: set down the memory of a bad past and the fear of a bad future. Two bags. Both heavy. Most of us carry them everywhere.

A few months later I drove to Sayalgudi without a plan. Just a sense the road went somewhere worth going. It did. The road ran out and the sea filled the gap. Waves arriving, crashing, dissolving without complaint, each one complete in itself.

I sat on that beach with a phone full of unread messages, a conversation I had handled badly three weeks earlier, and a meeting I was already dreading on Tuesday. I had carried all of it from Mumbai, through Madurai, down to the edge of the land. Good luggage management.

Each wave came in full, spent itself completely, and pulled back without holding on to anything. No wave has ever refused to break because the last one didn’t go well.

With one of those waves came back the image of the thiruvodu. It arrives open. It receives what comes. It does not clutch what has gone. The bowl doesn’t mourn its last contents or worry about the next. It simply stays ready.

The man in Konerirajapuram already knew this. He had known it long enough that he no longer needed to think about it.

Two bowls. Two men. One with flowers on the rim, one worn plain. Both open to whatever arrived. Between them, across a decade and a half of travel through Tamil Nadu temples, they had said everything Seneca spent letters trying to say.

Be ready to receive. Let go of the rest.

The bowl doesn’t ask what it deserves. It doesn’t mourn what it missed. It simply stays open, in whatever temple or crumbling Agraharam or quiet coastline you happen to find yourself in.

That, it turns out, is the whole practice.

Tourist, Go Home

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I was in Barcelona, wandering through a neighbourhood that smelled of olive oil and laundry, when I saw it. Painted in large, unapologetic letters on a wall: Tourist Go Home.

Not a suggestion. A verdict.

I stood there for a moment, passport metaphorically in hand, and felt the particular shame of someone who has just been told, with remarkable economy of language, that their presence is the problem. I took a photo, of course. Which, in retrospect, did nothing to help my case.

The Bus That Disappeared

Barcelona had been dealing with this for years. In the La Salut neighbourhood, a small 20-seat minibus called the 116 served locals going about their daily lives. Then Park Güell appeared on Google Maps, tourists discovered the route, and the bus stopped being useful to anyone who actually needed it. Luz López, 75, told a Spanish newspaper that people with walking sticks could no longer board.

The city council’s solution was quietly brilliant. They asked Google to delete the route from Maps entirely. No announcement. Just: gone.

“At first we laughed,” said a local activist. “It seemed absurd, like putting gates on the countryside.”

It worked. Cities are now erasing themselves from the internet, piece by piece, to get a moment’s peace.

Cherry Blossoms and the Limits of Instagram

In Fujiyoshida, a small Japanese city of under 50,000 people at the foot of Mount Fuji, the Arakurayama Sengen Park cherry blossom festival had run happily for ten years. Then social media found it. By last year, 10,000 people were arriving on a single peak day. Tourists trespassed on private property, dropped litter, opened doors to private homes to use the bathroom. Some defecated in residents’ gardens and, when challenged, became aggressive. Children walking to school were pushed off pavements by crowds that had no particular awareness that school existed.

In February this year, the mayor cancelled the festival. “Behind this beautiful scenery,” he said, “the quiet lives of our citizens are being threatened.”

The cherry blossoms will still bloom. The tourists will still come. Because the problem was never the festival. The problem is the assumption that beauty is a public resource, available to whoever can afford the flight.

We see the photograph. They live in the frame.

Documentarian and photographer Sej Saraiya, writing in the Hindustan Times on 22 February 2026, names this precisely: movement without humility, she argues, “trains us to confuse access with understanding, presence with permission, and visibility with care.” She goes further, suggesting that in an era of speed and viral exposure, humility may be the only thing that keeps travel honest at all.

The Thirty-Second Reminder

Before meetings, conferences, and school assemblies across Australia, someone will stand and say: I would like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which we gather, and pay my respects to their Elders, past, present, and emerging.

Thirty seconds. It costs nothing. And it does something quietly radical: it reminds everyone in the room that the ground beneath them has a history, and that history belongs to someone who was here long before the meeting was scheduled.

Every time I have heard it said properly, by someone who means it, I have felt the same gentle, necessary deflation of my own self-importance.

You are a visitor here. You have been welcomed. Act accordingly.

Not a tourism lesson. A human one.

Somebody Lives Here

The simplest reframe is also the hardest to hold when you are three hours into a queue with your camera.

The place you are visiting is somebody’s home. The street you are photographing is where someone’s grandmother walks to the shop. The view that appeared on your feed at 2am last Tuesday has been somebody’s ordinary Tuesday for their entire life.

We have come to treat travel as a transaction. You pay, you arrive, you consume, you depart. What you owe the destination is not a conversation most of us are having.

When I stood in front of that wall in Barcelona, I did not feel attacked. I felt corrected. The city was telling me something accurate: your presence has a weight, and you may not have thought about that weight until now.

Barcelona had to paint it on a wall. Fujiyoshida had to cancel a festival it had spent ten years building. Luz López had to wait for a bus she had been riding for decades.

Travel remains one of the more reliable ways to discover that your assumptions are parochial. But done well requires arriving as a guest rather than a consumer. To leave a place at least as good as you found it. Which is, when you think about it, the oldest rule of hospitality, applied in reverse.

The cherry blossoms near Mount Fuji will bloom again this April. They are indifferent to us, which is part of what makes them beautiful.

The question is whether we will be worthy of them.

On the other side of tourism, there is travel done with presence. I found a small example of it on a river ferry in Brisbane. That story is here.

Have you had a moment that made you feel like an unwelcome guest? Or one that reminded you what good travel looks like? I’d love to hear it in the comments.

Cu Chi: What the Ground Remembers

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Ask anyone in Ho Chi Minh City what you must see. You will not finish the sentence before someone says Cu Chi tunnels. I heard about the Cu Chi tunnels Vietnam before I even landed. It has that kind of reputation.

And it earns it.

If you want to see death, destruction, and human resilience in one place, Vietnam is a good address. The Cu Chi tunnels carry all three. Quietly. Without making a fuss about it.

First, Some History

It started in the late 1940s. Vietnam was fighting to end French colonial rule. Small holes were dug into the red soil around Cu Chi, a rural district about seventy kilometres northwest of what was then Saigon. Nothing grand. Just enough to vanish into when you needed to.

Then the Americans arrived.

By the early 1960s, the United States had committed troops to South Vietnam, supporting its government against the communist North and the Viet Cong guerrillas fighting in the South. Cu Chi sat squarely in contested territory. The Americans eventually built one of their largest bases in Vietnam right on top of the tunnel network. They did not know it was there.

The farmers dug deeper. If you want the full picture of the war, Ken Burns’ documentary is the place to start.

The Tunnels

Tunnel hatches in the floor

Two hundred and fifty kilometres of tunnels. Dug by hand. Mostly at night. By farmers who had never lived underground and had no intention of starting.

That number takes a moment to land.

Stretch those tunnels out and they run from Mumbai to Pune and back. Think New York to Philadelphia, Or Sydney to Canberra. Pick your geography. The number does not get smaller.

All of it beneath an ordinary-looking forest. All of it invisible from above.

The soil here is red and firm. Good for digging. Better for hiding. Simple shelters became something else entirely. Kitchens with chimneys angled sideways so the smoke rose thin and invisible through the trees. Field hospitals. Weapons stores. Command rooms lit by oil lamps. People were born down there. Some died there. The tunnel did not ask anyone if they were ready. It just asked them to keep going.

My Turn

I tried getting into the tunnels. There is a section open to tourists, widened slightly from the original, lit at intervals. Helpful, in theory.

Within two metres I was bent double. Shoulders on both walls. Knees filing urgent complaints. For someone of my particular level of fitness, this was not exploration. This was negotiation. I shuffled forward, gasping quietly, looking desperately for where it ended. It did not seem to end.

I emerged. Wincing. Suddenly very aware of muscles I had not thought about since the last time I climbed stairs too quickly.

Around me, other tourists were doing the same. Appearing from holes in the ground like bemused meerkats. Some triumphant. Some clutching their knees. One man stood very still with the expression of someone reconsidering several life choices.

To think that for decades, an entire generation lived and worked from down there. Slept there. Ate there. Planned there. Climbed out to fight. Climbed back in.

The Tank

Built for open ground and a visible enemy. It found neither. The M48 Patton sits where the forest stopped it. The gun still points. The war moved on without it.

Then there is the tank.

An American M48 Patton. Built for open ground, clear sightlines, and a visible enemy. It found none of those things here. It stands alone in the heat, rust-stained and enormous, with the quiet dignity of something that was once very powerful and is now very still.

It is an accidental monument to a simple idea. Alter the ground of combat and the strength built for another ground becomes useless. The tunnels did not match American firepower. They made it irrelevant. The war moved beneath the reach of the tank, beneath the bombs, beneath everything that should have ended it quickly.

Watch your ground, the tank seems to say. I did not.

Places that carry this kind of weight stay with you. Kamuthi Fort, a forgotten fortress in Tamil Nadu, did something similar to me. Different continent, same silence.

Walking Back

The path back to the entrance takes you past the firing range. You hear it before you see it. A crack, then another, then a continuous percussion that fills the trees. Tourists queue to fire AK-47s and other guns. The sound is enormous. It bounces off everything and asks no permission.

The irony is thicker than a bulletproof vest. The guns were supposed to have fallen silent when the tunnels emptied out. Decades later, the bullets are still flying. Just with better queuing and a gift receipt.

When you get older, you develop an aversion to loud sound. My father used to say that. The thought arrived just as I turned away and noticed a small polite sign on the path ahead. B-52 bomb crater. Not an ordinary crater. One left by a bomber that flew so high you never saw it coming. Marked now like a feature on a nature trail. The ground around it still looks unsettled. Like it remembers and has not quite forgiven it.

You look ahead and keep walking. The gunfire slowly recedes behind you.

What They Left Behind

Mines and grenades on wooden racks, amber light, neat and domestic. Arranged carefully. The tidiness is the unsettling part.

Inside a low covered shelter, the weapons are on display. Mines, grenades, and small explosive devices laid out on wooden slats. Yellow casings. Black fittings. Organised like a market stall. Each one made largely from scrap, from whatever the war left behind. Spent shell casings were cut and reformed. Unexploded American bombs were carefully taken apart and rebuilt into something else. Nothing was wasted. Everything had another use. So says the tall guide with authority and a badge.

He explains the use cases of each of the bombs without drama. This for the legs. This one slower. The calm voice makes it worse for me.

The pyramid of artillery shells, tourists browsing casually in the background) Hundreds of shells, stacked neatly. Tourists drift past. The contrast does not resolve easily.

In the exhibition room, artillery shells are stacked in a broad pyramid. Hundreds of them, arranged by size, smallest at the base, largest reaching upward. A gift shop is visible just behind. People browse both with roughly the same expression.

Rockets. Casings. Each one labelled. None of them need to be.

The labels tell you what each one is. 105mm artillery shell. 150mm shell. Cluster bomb. The numbers are precise. The effect is not clinical. You stand there and do the arithmetic quietly, and then you stop doing it.

The Ground Remembers

You walk among quiet tourists towards the exit. Most are solemn. Turning something over. The forest thins. The entrance comes into view.

By the time you reach it, the firing range is distinct yet distant.

Though I suspect some of the silence around me had less to do with reflection and more to do with the sudden discovery, deep in a Vietnamese forest, that knees and thigh muscles exist. And have opinions.

Two hundred and fifty kilometres. Dug by hand. By farmers. Against the world’s most powerful army.

The ground remembers. Even if the rest of us needed reminding.

If travel and human behaviour interest you, this queue on Wall Street taught me something entirely different about optimism.

An Unforgettable Wall Street Queue

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Some travel experiences stop you mid-stride, send you into the nearest café, and make you look things up immediately. This was one of those. It has stayed with me ever since.

New York City has a presence that is hard to miss. Busy. Proud. Tall. When its mayoral elections attract international attention, it tells you something. The city also has a remarkable talent for organising queues. Queues for bagels. Queues for museums. Queues for coffee that costs more than lunch and tastes like it knows it.

Near Wall Street, there are two queues around a bronze bull. Yes. The Charging Bull of Wall Street.

One forms in front. People pose, touch the horns, take photographs. It is literal, performative, and reassuringly obvious. Taking the bull by the horns, as it were.

The other queue is different. It gathers behind the bull.

This one does not announce itself. It does not move quickly. People shuffle forward with the seriousness usually reserved for immigration counters or new Apple launches. When their turn comes, they disappear briefly behind the animal and re-emerge wearing the faintly satisfied look of someone who has completed a small but meaningful civic duty.

That queue stopped me. I stood there for a while, trying to work out what exactly was being achieved.

A Ritual Revealed

It did not take long to find out.

The queue exists so that people can touch the bull’s testicles. Yes. You read that right. For luck, apparently.

The Queue Forms
Happiness at the end of the queue

Not metaphorical luck. Actual luck. The sort associated with money, markets, careers, or at the very least, a good day. There was no embarrassment about it. No nervous laughter. People waited their turn, did what was required, and stepped aside for the next person.

Some things, I learned, are best understood by watching quietly.

How the Bull Got There

Absurd rituals deserve good origin stories, and this one has a particularly strong one.

The sculpture, officially called Charging Bull, was never commissioned. In 1989, after the stock market crash, an Italian sculptor named Arturo Di Modica was furious at what he saw as a collapse of courage and confidence.

So he did what any reasonable person might do.

He spent months working in his cellar, used his own money, cast a bronze bull weighing over three tonnes, and one night deposited it outside the New York Stock Exchange. No permission. No permits. No committee meetings. Then he vanished.

The city wanted it removed.
The public loved it.
The bull stayed.

The queue came later.

Bulls and bears, of course, existed long before bronze statues. The language of bull and bear markets has been around for centuries. Bulls charge forward. Bears retreat, swipe, and hibernate. One stands for confidence and momentum. The other for caution and decline.

After the Charging Bull appeared, optimism acquired a body. Confidence suddenly had muscle, shine, and something you could stand behind in a queue. Financial districts around the world followed the impulse, if not always the sculpture itself. Bulls appeared in good times, never bad ones. Built to be photographed, touched, and briefly believed in.

The bear, meanwhile, remained abstract. A chart. A warning. Something you were expected to read about later.

Understanding, it turns out, is much harder to rub for luck.

Touching Optimism

What fascinated me wasn’t the sculpture so much as the behaviour around it.

Touching the bull felt like experiential optimism. You don’t need to understand markets. You don’t need to read history. You just show up, queue, touch, and move on feeling marginally better. The bull promises movement. Momentum. Forward motion.

The bear, by contrast, asks for reading. Possibly thinking. It asks for a pause, for reconsideration, for the uncomfortable act of standing still. And pauses do not photograph well. People don’t fly halfway across the world to rethink their decisions. They come for symbols that look like they’re going somewhere.

Coffee, Naturally

I didn’t learn most of this from a plaque.

There is very little explanatory material near the bull. New York prefers you to work things out for yourself. I learned the story in a nearby coffee shop, sitting by the window, reading while watching the queue replenish itself with impressive reliability.

People arrived. People waited. People left slightly happier.

It felt appropriate that coffee was involved. Most observations worth keeping seem to require caffeine and a place to sit.

What Stayed With Me

Long after I left Wall Street, what stayed with me was not the bull’s size or shine, but the seriousness of the queue. The lack of irony. The shared understanding that this was a harmless thing to want.

Travel often sells spectacle.
This offered behaviour.

A line of people from all over the world, waiting patiently behind a bull, hoping for a little extra fortune. It was absurd. It was oddly touching. And it made perfect sense.

Some queues, it turns out, are worth standing in.

I asked a café regular if anyone ever took issue with it. “This is New York,” he said. “As long as it doesn’t block traffic, it’s fine.”

Which, I realised, is probably the operating principle in most parts of the world now.

The Fort That Forgot Its Kingdom

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Google knows me a little too well. Somewhere between scanning my photos of weathered temples and long-abandoned wells, it popped up a notification. “You might be interested in Kamuthi Fort.” Oh sweet thing, of course I was.

Kamuthi Fort sits in one of those small Tamil towns that lived in my mind as a nameboard on buses leaving Mattuthavani bus stand years ago. You see the sign, nod at its existence, and move on to the next one. But as with all such towns, there are stories waiting if you only pause. 

So, pause I did.

A sixteenth century fort, said Google. Nine ramparts, said the web. I was sold.

A half-open steel gate squeaked in the wind. Silence did the welcoming.

The drive from Sayalgudi was short and easy. The kind of road where fields stretch to the horizon and herons perform slow-motion flypasts. When the map finally announced, “You have arrived”, I looked around for a dramatic gateway, maybe a guard with a spear. Instead, a half-open steel gate squeaked in the wind. Silence did the welcoming.

My daughter and I stepped out to find a way to enter. A half-open steel gate guarding a three hundred year old fort was unmissable irony.

Inside, the Archaeological Survey of India had left a plaque, Tamil on one side and English on the other, as if to say, “You wanted history, here, have some.” It read:

“This stone fort was constructed 300 years ago by Sethupathy King Udayathevar alias Vijaya Raghunatha Sethupathy. It is believed that this was built with the assistance of a French Engineer. After the downfall of Panchalankurichi, this fort fell into the hands of the East India Company. It was also under the control of the Marudhu brothers for some time. It is reported that Veerapandya Kattabomman stayed at this fort on his way to Ramanathapuram.”

Department of Archaeology, Government of Tamil Nadu.

A Large Swathe Of Time

Three hundred years ago. Or maybe three fifty. Hard to say. The plaque offered no date, and the stone looked as if it had been sunbathing there for at least fifty years itself. Perhaps that was the idea, a quiet puzzle for every visitor to solve, century after century. A lump of cold data with no life, sitting there like an exam answer from a student who had memorised the facts but forgotten the story.

Large swathes of time like “three hundred years” hide more than they reveal. We revisited our memories and tried patching together a timeline of world events back then. 

We bantered about how it might have been built when the Mughals were beginning to wobble.

Before the United States became a country, when it was still mostly wild land and brave people trying to survive winter. Before the French Revolution, when Marie Antoinette was still years away from allegedly offering people cake. Before Beethoven wrote a single note, before railways linked cities, before the first vaccine, and even before coffee became a global habit that half the world now depends on just to get through the morning.

The sun shone through the clouds. It was a splendid conversation to have in that setting. To talk about a quiet, crumbling place by stitching it into the larger story of the world. To look at these stones in desolate isolation, and then suddenly see them in full, noisy context.

The other line on the plaque that caught our attention was about the French engineer. What was a Frenchman doing in the sweltering plains of Ramanathapuram, drawing blueprints for a Tamil king? I pictured him, moustache damp, measuring walls under a merciless sun, wondering which Parisian sin had earned him this posting.

And then there were the Marudhu brothers, Kattabomman, the Sethupathis, all names that echoed rebellion and royalty. I could almost imagine them striding through this space with pride, purpose and possibly a few swords.

All these conversations were possible only because of past dalliances with history, and my occasional attempts to teach her some. In front of us, though, was an NCERT style summary carved into granite, looking surprised to get as much attention as we were to see it.

When you have too much history, you sometimes stop tending to it. It felt like a reasonable hypothesis to accept, nod at, and move on.

Steps, Stories, and Silence at Kamuthi Fort

The fort is circular, its thick walls still stoic even though time and rain have bitten chunks out of them. Wide stone steps climb up the ramparts. Strong. Straight. Stubborn. The kind you do not see in modern buildings.

Storied steps of Kamuthi fort

I climbed one and reached the top, expecting a grand view. Instead, I found empty beer bottles glinting in the sunlight. Every era has its warriors, I suppose. Then I climbed another flight of steps, and another view waited. Each staircase led to a different story.

From up there, the view stretched across contradictions. A colourful temple tower rose from one side, loud with freshly painted gods. On the other side, the Armed Reserve Ground stood silent.

I later found a YouTube video claiming that the cops once used the fort for target practice, until residents protested. Not out of love for history, but because of the noise. Small mercies, I thought. I have no idea how true that story is, but the fort clearly has had many lives. And its latest round of survival did not seem to be due to grand conservation plans, but to something far more ordinary, everyday irritation.

At the centre of the fort, a wide green patch stretched like an empty parade ground. Perhaps soldiers once trained there. Perhaps kings reviewed troops. Now, weeds stood in quiet attendance.

The walls of Kamuthi Fort are astonishingly thick, the kind that were built not just to stop enemies but to outlast them and ten generations that followed. Up close, you can see layers of old brick, lime mortar, sand, crushed shell, and the occasional glint of stone all holding together like a long, patient handshake.

Thick walls, stubborn stones, and a silence that carries the weight of centuries.
Thick walls of Kamuthi Fort

Later that evening we pored over the internet, trying to understand what gave the construction its strength. We found that builders in those days mixed the mortar with whatever helped it endure, including jaggery water, powdered limestone, and kadukkai, a small wrinkled fruit whose natural tannins helped the walls resist cracking and moisture.

Some recipes even mention raw eggs for a smoother set. Whatever they used, it clearly worked. Three centuries later, these walls still stand in stubborn defiance, quietly proving that things built with care and a few eccentric ingredients tend to last.

On my way out, I noticed a bold red 1993 painted on the wall of the temple wedding hall. Its proud year of inception. It stood directly opposite the steel gate, a mere thirty two years old. The contrast was almost comic. Like a fresher showing off a car he mostly owes the bank, before a billionaire who has lost his fortune.

What Kamuthi Fort Teaches Without Trying

Kamuthi Fort may never make it to glossy travel brochures. It does not charge tickets, sell souvenirs, or feature in drone videos with cinematic background music. But it has something many others do not. Presence. A stubbornness to remain. You walk through the broken walls and feel centuries of sun and storm still trapped in the bricks. You hear whispers of battles and see echoes of neglect.

If this were in Europe, there would have been tour guides with microphones, an entry ticket priced just right to fix half the state budget, and a tidy little museum shop selling magnets of the fort looking ten times grander than real life. There would have been plaques with footnotes, audio guides in eight languages, and a cheerful volunteer reminding you to stay on the marked path.

And if this were in the United States, the place would have been turned into “Fort Kamuthi National Heritage Park.” There would have been a café called “Kattabomman’s Brew”, a massive fort shaped bouncy castle for children, actors from Colonial Williamsburg doing hourly re-enactments, a twelve dollar bottle of water, burgers the size of dinner plates, and a forty nine dollar premium early access pass. Of course, the small town of Kamuthi would have been flattened to make way for a giant colour coded parking lot.

All this for a place that, in Kamuthi, lives perfectly happily with a steel gate and the afternoon sun.

It struck me then how wildly the world varies in the way it wraps itself around history. Some places polish their past to make it look like something else. Others leave it lying around like old furniture. Kamuthi Fort simply sits and waits, holding on with quiet strength while we hurry past. It deserves far more care than it gets. The slow drift into disrepair feels like a small discourtesy to everything it has survived.

Perhaps it will get more attention if someone like Lokesh Kanagaraj decides to shoot a fight sequence or a moody montage here. But we do not have to wait for that. We can start with something simpler, attention and respect.

We owe these places that. A few moments of silence. A pause to think of the countless hands that built, fought, prayed, or repaired these stones.

If you are ever near Kamuthi, please go. Not only for your children to climb its steps, but for yourself, to stand still for a while. To feel how time stretches, how pride turns to dust, and yet how beauty lingers in silence. You will come back lighter, and oddly grateful.

Because even in its decay, Kamuthi Fort is doing something quietly spectacular.
It is enduring.

Other blogposts from this trip
1. Kaapi Kadai wisdom
2. Notes from Sayalgudi

A serene Sayalkudi beach with gentle waves, empty sands, and a wide, calm sea meeting the sky.

The Road Ends, the Sea Begins: Notes from Sayalgudi

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The beach at Sayalgudi doesn’t announce itself. It appears, almost shyly. No signboard declares “Welcome to Paradise.” No resort gate opens grandly with a poor, uninterested labrador that is forced to sniff the car’s trunk. There’s just the soft hiss of waves, a ribbon of clean sand, and the faint scent of salt that tells you you’ve arrived somewhere that doesn’t know it’s special.

The sea stretches endlessly, its rhythm unhurried, uncurated. There are no shacks, no deck chairs facing the sea, no soft-serve ice-cream vendors. Just a moon already at work, waves rehearsing their eternal script, and one solitary visitor thanking his stars that, such beauty escaped some social media influencer’s attention!

I sat there for a long while, watching the sea nibble at the shore and retreat, as if testing the flavour of land. It was hard to believe that this was two hours from Madurai. Tamil Nadu’s coastline is vast and beautiful, and extends beyond the fame of the Marina, Pondicherry, and Kanyakumari.

The Road That Curves Away from Fame

Getting here is a breeze. You start from Madurai, drive towards Rameswaram, and somewhere after Manamadurai you slip off the highway. The road begins to twist, as if embarrassed by how small it has become.

Seemakaruveli bushes for company

On both sides stand seemakaruveli bushes — Prosopis juliflora, the invasive guest the British brought in the 19th century to tame wastelands. Now it rules the countryside like a green despot, spreading faster than gossip and just as hard to uproot.

Villages appear and vanish like punctuation marks. Abhiramapuram, Karisakulam, Athikulam, Allikulam and many more whose names blur in the rear-view mirror. Their kaapi kadais linger longer in memory: tin kettles boiling away gossip, glass tumblers with a skin of sugar on top.

Politics rendered on plaster

The walls along the way shout in red, black, yellow, white, and blue. Politics rendered in thick Tamil letters. In this part of the world, even plaster has opinions. A painted bull here, a rising sun there, two leaves somewhere else; campaign promises merging gracefully into art. Between two walls, a goat herd ambles across the road, his flock spilling into the highway with serene entitlement. He crouches by his TVS 50, adjusting something in the chain. They used to walk once, I think. Now even goats wait for engines.

Sugar and Spice. Ah! Memories

A little further on, a man sells inji karuppatti. Ginger and palm jaggery. Packed neatly in olai kottans (palm-leaf baskets). I buy some. They’re sweet, fiery, and nostalgic all at once. Childhood condensed into sugar and spice.

A Trust in the Road

I often drive through rural Tamil Nadu with a quiet confidence that if anything were to go wrong, someone would appear. Not with a “How may I help you, sir?” but with a curious “Are you okay? Water?” People here don’t outsource kindness. It’s part of the day’s work, somewhere between lunch and the evening bus.

Over the years, I’ve been stranded by punctures, wrong turns, and delusionary optimism. Each time, a passer-by has stepped in, not only to do the needful — that tidy phrase from corporate emails — but to actually see what was needed. A word, a jug of water, a direction, sometimes just company until help arrived. Rural rhythms seem to cock a polite snook at the urban question of “What’s in it for me?” Here, the answer is often, “Nothing”. And that’s fine. Every time signing off with a “paathu poituvaanga.” Loosely translated to “stay safe and come back soon.”

A Town That Prefers Modesty

Sayalgudi itself sits quietly on the southeastern edge of Tamil Nadu, a town of about twelve thousand people and exactly zero pretensions. There are shops selling coconuts, rubber slippers, and recharge coupons. The fish market smells of honesty and ocean. It’s the sort of place where everyone seems busy but no one seems in a hurry.

You follow a narrow lane until the houses give up, and the sea fills the gap. The transition is so sudden it feels like the land has run out of sentences and switched to poetry.

People Who Stay Real

The “resort” I stayed at was more functional than fancy. A bed, an air-conditioner and a fan that coughed with commitment, and a window that framed the horizon. Hot running water. Clean sheets. A television that didn’t need to be turned on, because the best show in town was hosted by the sea. And luxury came from the sound of the waves.

Gopal, the manager, was a stocky man with a weathered Hero Honda and an even more reliable smile. Ajit, the chef, tall and thoughtful, made fish curries that could start conversations. And Jaya, the attentive housekeeping staff, had returned to the resort after dallying with other employers in the vicinity. All wonderful people. “It’s good to help people here,” she said softly, folding towels with care. “Only wish others are considerate too.” Who those “others” were, we left hanging in that polite ambiguity that some conversations excel at. Like a scene from a Mani Ratnam movie where silence does the explaining. And you fill in the gap in your own way.

They didn’t greet you with a scripted “Good morning.” They simply nodded, smiled, and said “Enna saar?” — “What, sir?” — half greeting, half check-in on your wellbeing. It was infinitely warmer than the mechanical, well-practised flow of a five-star resort employee. These folks were simple and authentic. Just like the sea. That’s all that mattered.

Stillness, the Unadvertised Luxury

By night, Sayalgudi changes tone. Fishing boats light up the horizon like a shy constellation. The lighthouse sweeps its beam with the discipline of a monk ringing a bell. The air fills with the sound of insects tuning up, and occasionally, a bird that hasn’t yet signed off.

It’s the kind of stillness Pico Iyer writes about: “The more ways there are to connect, the more we seem desperate to unplug.”

Here, you don’t disconnect as rebellion. You simply forget to connect in the first place. The signal flickers; the mind steadies.

I walk along the shore, barefoot, the sand cool and damp. Something sharp presses against my foot. For a moment I think it’s a broken beer bottle. A memory from a trip to Bali. But it’s a seashell, luminous under the moon. I slip it into my pocket, a small souvenir of an unadvertised paradise.

Abundance in the Unfamous

The next morning, Ajit serves dosai so crisp it competes with the waves. Gopal checks if the Wi-Fi has decided to exist. Jaya hums an old Ilaiyaraaja song as she sweeps the courtyard. Life goes on, entirely unbranded.

I think of all the famous beaches I’ve visited. Where the soundtrack is a mix of EDM, immaculate hotel staff and unbridled commerce. Corn. Coffee. Ice-cream. Beer. Horse riding. Whatever. Sayalgudi reminds me what a coastline really is: a conversation between sea and sand that doesn’t need an audience.

Paul Theroux once said, “Tourists don’t know where they’ve been; travellers don’t know where they’re going.” In Sayalgudi, both are forgiven. You just sit, let the waves do the talking, and measure time in tides.

A Small Philosophy Between Two Waves

The sea teaches quietly. Each wave arrives certain, crashes spectacularly, and dissolves without complaint. Watching them, I begin to think of work emails and deadlines that once felt as urgent as surf, until they receded. Maybe that’s what travel to places like this really does: it returns scale to things.

My phone vibrates — a reminder of a meeting, a plan, a project. I look at the screen, then at the moon tracing its silver loop above the water. Another wave rises, crashes, and fades.

“Tomorrow,” I tell the caller. Then add, “Actually, day after.” I hear the silence on the other side.

I add, “Please.” One more wave roars.

The wind approves. The sea keeps its counsel. Somewhere far away, a boat hums its way home.

I switch my phone to airplane mode. This time, I don’t want to buckle up like I otherwise would when I do that. Because, this time, I am not in a plane. I seem to have wings.

Other blogposts from this trip
1. Kaapi Kadai wisdom
2. The Fort That Forgot Its Kingdom

A Hill, a Haze, and All of Pune Trying to Say Hello

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From the top of Lavale, the world below looks like it is trying to multitask. Part village. Part expanding city. And part construction brochure. The morning haze does its best to hide the confusion, but even through the soft grey, the jumble is obvious.

A set of apartment blocks stands proudly in the foreground, as if posing for an ad that has not been written yet. Behind them is a sudden burst of buildings that look like they belong in a different country. Blue domes, tall towers, arches, the whole theatre. It is the sort of campus that makes you blink twice, then check if someone is filming a period drama nearby.

Beyond all this, Pune stretches out in every direction. Tall buildings fade into the mist. Others stand out sharply. A crane leans casually into the frame, hinting that more construction is on the way. The land, however, stays unbothered. Patches of fields, open brown earth, scattered trees. All of them seem perfectly content to ignore the city’s ambition.

But the hill itself is calm. The trees in front rustle lightly. Birds chirp as if the valley is their personal auditorium. Every now and then, a dog barks somewhere below, reminding you the world is awake even if it looks half-asleep.

And then there is the sound of distance. A tractor starting up. A pressure cooker whistle floating up from a home you cannot see. An early-morning folk tune travelling up the slope. All of it carried through the crisp, cold air as if the hill enjoys delivering messages.

At 7.00 am a factory’s siren goes off. Loud. Firm. Reliable. It slices through the mist like a very punctual rooster. The view does not change, but your sense of morning resets instantly. Even the haze seems to shift slightly out of respect.

Once the sun rises higher, the landscape begins to reveal itself. The valley sharpens. Buildings gain edges. Roads emerge. The hills behind appear clearer, like someone increased the brightness. Even the castle-like campus settles comfortably into the scenery instead of surprising you.

By then your coffee has made its way into your system. The warmth spreads. Your thoughts soften. Whatever you were worried about before you stepped out feels a little foolish in front of this strange mix of serenity and cityhood.

Nothing dramatic happens. Nothing needs to.

You look out again. At the haze, the hills, the buildings trying to touch both village and city. And something inside you settles.

For a small, perfect moment, all is well with the world.

All is well with the world.

Lightly, Child, Lightly

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The other day, I was looking at a roadside coffee shop in rural Tamil Nadu. It was a pit stop. More to sip on nostalgia. Coffee was the excuse. I got both. Nostalgia. Coffee. And a line from Huxley that appeared on cue.

The man behind the counter was working his magic with a giant kettle that hissed and sang like an old friend. The smell of fresh decoction drifted through the morning air. Somewhere in the background, Ilayaraja’s 80s melody played faintly from a radio that had seen better days. There was a very faint nip in the air, and the newspaper hanging by a rusted clip on the stall was still crisp. Proof that the day was just beginning.

The man himself was spotless and alert. A splash of thiruneer, three bright grey lines, shone on his forehead. He moved with a rhythm shaped by years of practice. Pouring, mixing, serving, taking money, returning change. All in one smooth motion. It felt as if time had slowed down to watch him.

There was no tension in his face. No wasted effort. He did not rush, yet he was never still. The kettle tilted at the perfect angle. The coffee arced through the air in a golden stream. The froth landed obediently in its glass. Every act was precise and calm. Ease that comes when you stop fighting your work.

That is when it struck me. Lightness comes from intimacy. When you have done something long enough, you stop proving yourself to it. The dancer stops counting beats. The cricketer stops calculating angles. This man has stopped thinking about coffee.

Aldous Huxley said it perfectly. “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly, child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.” Perhaps he had watched this man.

He looked up once, smiled, and went back to his art. The world around him kept moving. Buses honked. Cows crossed. A customer called for an extra spoon of sugar. Yet he was steady, like a monk in the middle of a festival.

It was not grand. Or dramatic. It was simply beautiful. And light.
Ease, brewed fresh.

The Brown Snake and I

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It was one of those Brisbane evenings that felt neatly put together. The moon hung above the Story Bridge, the bridge glowed in red and gold, and the river below reflected it all as if it knew its role.

This is the Brisbane River. But long before it became a postcard, it was Maiwar. The river of the Turrbal people, the first caretakers of this land. They lived along its bends for thousands of years before Europeans arrived in the 1820s. For them, the river was everything. Food, road, temple, and teacher.

The Meeting Place and a Cricket Fortress

The Turrbal people had names for every turn of the river. Woolloongabba meant “meeting place.” It still lives up to that name. It is now home to the famous cricket ground, The Gabba, where every few years India meets Australia to settle who really runs cricket.

In 2003, Sourav Ganguly’s brave century on a green, bouncy pitch showed that India had grown tired of being called timid. Then in 2021, a young, injury-hit team came back to do the impossible. Breaking Australia’s 32-year unbeaten record at the Gabba with courage, calm, and a touch of cheek.

It wasn’t just a win; it was a story of belief and joy. Many said the fortress had fallen. I thought otherwise. In fact, the Gabba stood taller for it. It proved again why sport matters: to host rivalries, to test effort, to stretch courage, and to honour that often-abused but still-revered phrase, the spirit of the game.

Funny how I started writing about the river and ended up at the cricket ground. But then again, the river has seen it all. Floods, bridges, and the odd boundary.

The River That Refused to Straighten

People call the river, ‘Brown Snake’. And the name fits. It winds through the city, calm and sure of itself. People jog along it, sail on it, build towers beside it and sometimes, when it floods, remember who’s really in charge.

Along its banks, the city gathers quietly.

Queensland’s Parliament House sits near one of the curves, looking calm and serious as if the river is ready with the next question. The kind that would embarrass a minister and still ask the opposition what they were doing all this while. A little further down, government offices line the shore, their glass windows catching the light. Across the water, old timber homes in Teneriffe stand beside tall new apartments, both pretending they belong together.

Kurilpa Bridge — a web of light and steel across the Brisbane River. It carries walkers, cyclists, and late-night wanderers
Kurilpa Bridge — where steel meets stillness, and the Brown Snake plays along.
The Neville Bonner Bridge — Brisbane’s newest way to cross the Brown Snake, or to stop halfway and take another photo of it.

At South Bank, the Wheel of Brisbane turns slowly over the river. It’s a giant Ferris wheel that looks like it’s keeping an eye on the city. At night, its lights shimmer on the water, mixing with reflections from cafés and bridges. Downstream, near the University of Queensland, students walk and talk by the water, thinking of exams, futures, and maybe nothing at all. The Brown Snake watches them all, moving quietly past.

The Brisbane River tracing the city’s heart . A ribbon of water, movement, and memory.

Later that night I read how early European settlers once tried to make this river straight. They brought dredges and plans, confident they could tidy nature’s design. The Brown Snake was fiercely Australian. It refused and kept curving and silting as it pleased, reminding everyone that some things are meant to meander.

Bridges, Lights, and the CityCat

Sixteen bridges now cross this river. The old Victoria Bridge has been rebuilt more than once. The Story Bridge, born in the Depression years, is Brisbane’s favourite landmark. Every night it glows like a festival — blue, gold, purple — changing colour depending on what the city is celebrating or mourning.

I took the CityCat a few evenings. Long, sleek, and painted in cheerful blues and whites, it glides along the river like a quiet promise. Office workers scroll on their phones. Tourists seem to take the same photo over and over. An extended hand holding a phone and clicking a picture is a standard feature! Somewhere, a child points at the moon.

The Story Bridge. Proof that even steel can smile when the lights come on.
The Brown Snake seen from above. Calm, luminous, and endlessly patient, holding Brisbane in its curve.

On one side, picture-perfect apartments lean over the water, all glass and balconies. On the other, green parks and old timber wharves stand calmly, pretending not to notice. The air smells faintly of salt and weekend plans.

The Rivers That Made Me

Somewhere between two stops, my mind wandered home. To Madurai. To the Vaigai. The river I grew up by. Once the pride of the city, now mostly a trickle between bridges that are newer than the water beneath them. Still, people cross, live, and hope. That’s what bridges are for.

And then I thought about space and wondered how many people live per square kilometer relative to spaces that I am used to.

Brisbane breathes at around 176 people per square kilometre.

Madurai hums at 8,800.

Mumbai roars at 33,000.

For ordinary people, that’s not density. That’s destiny.

Here, everyone seems to move. Running, rowing, cycling, sailing. But try getting a doctor’s appointment, and you’ll learn what patience truly means. The Brown Snake has its own pace, and so does the city.

Vaigai trickles. Maiwar flows. Mumbai surges. Each carries its own rhythm and lesson.

What Rivers Teach Us

As the CityCat slipped under the Story Bridge, the moon brightened above, and the Brisbane River — the Brown Snake — shimmered gold. The ferry hummed softly, carrying people home, and I felt the city exhale.

My mind darted back to the waters I’ve known: the restless sea in Mumbai, the fading Vaigai in Madurai, and this calm, brown river in Brisbane. Each carries its own rhythm . The sea crashes, the Vaigai sighs, the Brown Snake flows and forgives.

Mumbai teaches me motion. Madurai teaches me memory. Brisbane, perhaps, teaches me stillness and flow. Together, they remind me that home is not fixed to a pin on a map. It is a current that carries you forward, again and again, asking you to move, to meander, and to remember.

Rivers don’t just flow; they hold time. They carry stories we’ve forgotten how to tell. Stories of people, floods, bridges, and beginnings. The Brown Snake has watched Brisbane rise, falter, and rise again. It asks for nothing, but it seems to remembers everything.

Maybe that’s what rivers teach us in the end . That strength isn’t about speed or noise, but about keeping on, quietly, towards the sea.