India Guide
Guide
Field notes to help you see India more clearly.
The essays are short, opinionated reads. The guides go deeper — the context you want before you arrive, written by someone who grew up there.
Understanding IndiaThe geography, history, cultures and practical realities that make India what it is — one guide, from the ground up.
North IndiaMountains, empires and the great plains — the open, fertile heartland of the Golden Triangle, where India’s great dynasties kept converging.
RajasthanHow the desert shaped a culture — the Thar, the trade routes and the cities that rose from scarcity.
Central IndiaRivers and abundance — the Ganga, the Narmada, and the heartland where kingdoms, cities and belief grew.
Eastern IndiaRivers, deltas and the Bay of Bengal — where the great rivers of the north finally reach the sea.
South IndiaWhere the sea shaped the land — the peninsula, the monsoon and the civilisations they built.
KeralaWhere the mountains meet the Arabian Sea — a deep dive into the narrow green land between the Western Ghats and the coast.Tamil NaduThe land of temple cities — a deep dive into the southeastern peninsula, where rivers built kingdoms and the temple turned agricultural wealth into monumental architecture.
KarnatakaThe plateau, the coast and the hills between — a deep dive into the Deccan state split three ways by the Western Ghats, from Hampi’s boulders to Mysore’s palaces to Bengaluru’s tech corridors.
Northeast IndiaMountains and borders — a crossroads where Tibet, Myanmar, Bhutan and Bangladesh meet, and where difficult terrain preserved an extraordinary density of cultures.
Deccan EastAndhra Pradesh and Telangana — the Telugu-speaking Deccan east, where the four-state South India deep dive completes: two rivers cross the same dry plateau as Karnataka’s to a fertile coast, a diamond-trading fort and a language of poets.