The Heritage Hotels of India

Kipling wrote that 'Providence created the Maharajas to offer mankind a spectacle'.
Tourists can experience that spectacle by staying in one of more than a hundred heritage hotels in Rajasthan - from lake palaces to desert forts, magnificent town houses, hunting lodges and city palaces.
And the number of princes throwing their doors open to paying guests is ever-growing.

With photographer Aroon Thaewchatturat (aroonthaew.com), Tom Vater journeyed across India to offer irreverent reviews of 10 exceptional properties that may have little more in common than their relative antiquity – but, whether five star or budget, they all offer a hotel experience decidedly unique, sometimes eccentric and always fascinating.

Or as hotel owner Maharaj Arjun Singh, brother of the late Maharana of Udaipur, puts it, “We Rajputs aren’t much good at anything these days. But we are good at running hotels and the tourist industry in Rajasthan and beyond was practically invented by us.”

First published in Lifestyle+Travel. Also published in Asia & Away, The South Eastern Globe, Untamed Travel and by the Araba Media Group.

From Panjim to Panaji – Goa’s capital is one of India’s most charming cities.

While Goa’s palm fringed beaches have been a magnet for hippies, backpackers and package tourists for three decades, few visitors spend much time in Panjim, or Panaji, as it has been called since liberation from the Portuguese in 1961.
Nowadays Goa, ruled by Portugal for almost 500 years, is mostly associated with acquiring a tan, techno and full moon parties and flea markets and – in short with leisure holidays. This is a shame, as there is much to be discovered in the city.
And with a population of just 100.000, Panaji remains India’s cleanest, most laid back capital.

For more information about Goa's best heritage hotel (no really, it's good), please visit www.panjiminn.com

Photographs: Aroon Thaewchatturat (via www.onasia.com). First published in Lifestyle + Travel. Also published in Untamed Travel, Verve Magazine, and Ahlan!

Hampi – Heavenly ruins forgotten in time

Hampi would be little more than a picturesque and remote Indian village, were it not for the magnificent 14th to 16th Century ruins that are spread over a 20 square kilometer area along the Tungabhadra River. A UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986, the Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagar once ruled all of Southern India as well as the eastern state of Orissa and proved, time and again, an effective bulwark against Muslim invaders from the north.

Set in a fantastical, otherworldly landscape of huge weather-beaten granite boulders, rolling hills and green verdant valleys, visitors to this ancient kingdom could be forgiven for thinking themselves on another planet, or at least, in a time that is long past.

Hong Kong action star Jackie Chan's recent blockbuster 'The Myth' features the ruins of Hampi as a spectacular backdrop.

Photographs: Aroon Thaewchatturat (via www.onasia.com). First published in Lifestyle + Travel.

Flying for Everyone

Tourism in India was up 25% in 2004 and, unless the conflict with Pakistan flares up again, foreigners will continue to rediscover the subcontinent. Budget airlines will do much to facilitate this.Spicejet inaugurated its first routes last month and we are booked, for a measly 4000 Rs each on the 1700 km stretch from Goa to Delhi. That’s less than double the price of a train ticket.

Photographs: Aroon Thaewchatturat (via www.onasia.com)

Welcome to Sonagachi – Calcutta’s largest brothel area is thriving

Recently featured in the Oscar-winning documentary 'Born into Brothels' , Sonagachi is one of India's largest redlight areas. Tom Vater finds out who really controls some of India's most unfortunate women.

Photographs: Aroon Thaewchatturat (via www.onasia.com)

First published in The Irish Independent

The Last of the Human Rickshaws

Dominique LaPierre, best-selling author of 'The City of Joy', and the rickshaw pullers of Calcutta reflect on a threatened profession. Under pressure from Calcutta's municipal authorities and rapacious rickshaw owners, up to a 100.000 men pull continue to pull passengers through the narrow streets of West Bengal's capital, defying increasing taffic and the law to feed almost a million dependents.

Photographs: Aroon Thaewchatturat (via www.planetsyndication.com)

First published by Emirates Inflight Magazine. Also published in Untamed Travel

Tea Total in Darjeeling, India

The story of the world's most expensive tea

Rajah Banerjee still remembers the moment in 1970 when his life changed. A student at the time, he was visiting his father's tea plantation in Darjeeling, northeast India, when a wild boar crossed his horse's path and he fell to the ground.

"I saw a flash of white light and the next thing I remember were the workers trying to wake me up. At that moment, I experienced a revelation--we are nothing but stewards, caretakers, not owners of this world. I had to stay and take over the tea estate to preserve my family's property and offer the tea workers a better life."

In the years since, that's just what Banerjee has tried to do: He's created the first organic plantation in India's most important tea-growing area, provided cover for wildlife, including two tigers and 13 leopards, created a workers' forum--and catapulted his Makaibari brand to the cutting edge of the global market. His top of the range Silver Tip retails at $440 a kilogram, making it one of India's most expensive teas.

Photographs: Aroon Thaewchatturat (via www.planetsyndication.comPublished in The Far Eastern Economic Review, Voyage Magazine (China) and Lifestyle + Travel

A Baul's Railway Song

“I am Kalachand Karbesh, Baul of Bengal,” a rather tall old man in a long white shirt bellows at me. “Welcome to West Bengal. Do you want to hear a song in Bengali or English?”

Without hesitation Kalachand Karbesh sits himself down on the opposite bench, crowding out a young engineer and his wife, who are silently flustered.
”This is the Shoraz,” he explains with a huge grin as he starts tuning his instrument..
The shoraz has seven strings and two sets of machine heads, one at the end of the neck, another halfway down, much like with some banjos. The fretless board is made from thin metal, pressed onto the thick neck, which seems to be fashioned from a single piece of wood terminating in a round gourd shaped sound body. The front is covered in leather. A bone plectrum is fastened to the bridge with string.
“I have many tunings for the shoraz. I change all the time, depending on song.” Kalachand Karbesh teeth are discolored by years of chewing beetle and his skin is burnt dark by the sun. But he is full of energy.

This story was first published by f-roots, the UK’s major world music magazine in 2004. It has also appeared in Emirates Inflight Magazine.

The Battle For Catfish

The fishermen of Puri on India's east coast are fighting for cultural, financial and spiritual survival. Tom Vater accompanies one crew on a hair-raising trip across the Andaman Sea, in search of shark and catfish. Photographer Aroon Thaewchatturat visits their home.

First published in Untamed Travel

Arunachal Pradesh, Trouble at the Final Frontier

How India's most remote state is facing enormous cultural, environmental and financial challenges

Arunachal Pradesh is India’s wild and beautiful backyard. Densely forested and bordered by China and Burma, the state was a barely explored wilderness until a few decades ago. Bricks were first used in the 1960s. The first census was conducted in 1961. Populated by more than a hundred indigenous tribes and supporting 60% of the subcontinent’s flora and fauna, the environment and local culture are now showing severe signs of strain. India treats the state like a colony, investing little, while exploiting all available resources. Civil conflict and a steady stream of refugees are threatening to overrun the entire region.

Photographs: Aroon Thaewchatturat (via www.planetsyndication.com). First published in Untamed Travel

India's Lost Generation

Amongst Calcutta's 100.000 homeless children

“One day I was standing on the station platform at Sealdah. Someone shouted ‘Thief’. The police came running, but they did not run after the thief. They just grabbed me and beat me with sticks and then took me to jail. I was put in a cell and the big police captain came and grabbed my hand and took out a knife. He said, “We will cut off your little finger, because you steal.” Then the men came again and beat me. After three days they let me go and I returned to the train station.”

For more information please visit www.calcutta.de

Welcome To The Priceless Palace

More than 20 years ago, Indian MP and newspaper proprietor Tata Hagata and a couple of friends invested 72.000 Rupees and purchased a ruined palatial property in Puri, a run-down beach resort on India's east coast. Over the past two decades Hagata has restored the building to its former Raj-era glory. Originally designed as a sanitarium for an ailing Bengali prince, the Z Hotel is a true refuge from the travails and challenges of traveling on the subcontinent.

Photographs: Aroon Thaewchatturat (via www.onasia.com)

A Town Called Hardwar

The ghats, wide prayer steps leading to the water’s edge, are brightly illuminated by floodlights. The pilgrims flood across bridges, some jump into the fast moving, almost clean waters, swollen by recent rains near Gangotri, the Ganga’s source, high up in the Garwhal Mountains. Others buy flower-boats, wide leaves loaded with marigolds and ghee (clarified butter) candles, that are duly set off on an uncertain journey across the plains towards Varanasi. Serious looking Brahmins sit on little podiums, surrounded by crowds, keen to dispense knowledge of future fates. Bells ring everywhere and bhajans (prayer songs) blare from giant tannoys, rigged up on lampposts along the river. Shrines are covered in garlands and the smell of incense fills the air. The atmosphere is full of rejoicing, rarified by pure thought and strong faith, without reflection or tack, unimaginable in the West.

For more information on Trekking in the Indian Himalayas, as well as on Hardwar and its surroundings, please contact Mohan's Adventure Tour and Travels.

This story has appeared in 'Beyond the Pancake Trench', published by Orchid Press in August 2004. Buy this title

Sadhus, Sannyasis, Ascetic Mendicants And Renouncers

The Wild Holy Men Of India, Caught Between Past and Present

Late afternoon, on the shores of the Ganga. About a thousand naked men cower on the edge of the water in a long neat row. They all have shaved heads, wisps of their hair still blows around the sandbank they sit on. Some look old and frail, others are still in their twenties. Orange clad Sadhus walk behind the rubble, armed with sticks, keeping the aspirant Nagas in line. Today is the most important day in the lives of these men – their funeral.

This story has appeared in 'Beyond the Pancake Trench', published by Orchid Press in August 2004. Buy this title

It has also been published in the British anthology 'Strange Attractor', and in Farang Magazine.