Hidden India: Odisha’s secrets revealed on CNN

The eastern India state of Odisha, stretching for more than 300 miles along the Bay of Bengal, bristles with architectural and cultural gems. Tropical, remote and home to some of the subcontinent’s most striking temples, much of the state was off-limits to foreign travel for some years because of Maoist unrest but reopened in 2016. […]

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Odisha – The Land That Time Forgot in The Nikkei Asian Review

My latest story with French journalist Laure Siegel on Odisha, one of India’s least visited states, and its fledgling tourist industry, published in the Nikkei Asian Review. PURI, India — “Jay Jagannath! Jay Jagannath!” A sea of people chants the sacred mantra while pulling on thick ropes hauling three massive, 14-meter-high wooden carts decorated in […]

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Teaching the Termites – Tom Vater on the pleasures of hotel libraries

I love libraries, bookshops, even a pile of books to look through will do. And I like hotels with a decent library. Most hotels I stay in, whether up-scale, flea-pit or somewhere in between, don’t have libraries. A couple months ago, I was staying at the Z Hotel in Puri, Orissa, India, one of my […]

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The Battle For Catfish – Orissa’s Fishermen Struggle for Catches

The Andhra fishermen of Puri on India’s east coast are fighting for cultural, financial and spiritual survival. First light on Puri Beach. Pentacotta fishing village, which grows like a misshapen appendix from the resort’s northern beach front, is coming to life. More than 10.000 people from Andhra Pradesh live in small one-storey stone and mud […]

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