A Brief Education in Butter Tea The first mistake is expecting sweetness. Traditional Tibetan butter tea combines tea, salt and butter to create a drink suited to cold, high-altitude environments. It is warming, sustaining and frequently offered as an expression of hospitality. The flavour can surprise visitors accustomed to delicate infusions and civilised little biscuits.… Continue reading Cultural Interlude
Travelling with Ideas Why the finest journeys require more than a guidebook Newsletter Blurb A monastery is never merely a building, nor a festival simply a spectacle. We consider how travelling with historians, Buddhist scholars, anthropologists and art specialists can reveal the systems of meaning hidden within a destination. Feature Copy The difference between seeing… Continue reading Scholar-led Feature
Curated Journeys Across India Curated Journey One Masks and Monasteries Ladakh | Leh, Thiksey, Hemis, Alchi and the Indus Valley Timed around the Hemis Festival, this journey combines ritual performance with a deeper study of Ladakhi Buddhist art and architecture. Visit monasteries with a specialist guide, explore village life along the Indus and meet artists… Continue reading Five Ways to Follow the Tibetan Thread
Spiti, Himachal Pradesh Spiti is frequently called a cold desert, which is geographically accurate but emotionally inadequate. Deserts are expected to be empty. Spiti is filled with presence. Villages appear as compact clusters of whitewashed homes beneath enormous mountains. Fields of barley and peas occupy narrow bands of improbable green. Monasteries stand above settlements, their… Continue reading The Valley That Learnt to Whisper
Tawang, Bomdila and the Buddhist Highlands of Arunachal Pradesh The road to Tawang does not hurry. It climbs through forests, crosses high passes and disappears periodically into mist, as though wishing to reconsider the entire enterprise. This gradual approach is essential. Tawang should not be reached merely as a point on an itinerary. It should… Continue reading The Eastern Monastery Road
Bylakuppe and Mundgod, Karnataka The journey to Bylakuppe passes through an unmistakably southern Indian landscape. Coconut palms, coffee plantations and fields washed in generous green stretch towards the horizon. Then, quite suddenly, monastery roofs rise above the trees. It is an arresting change of scenery. Prayer flags flutter in Karnataka’s warm air. Monks in maroon… Continue reading Tibet Beneath the Coconut Palms
Dharamshala and McLeod Ganj Dharamshala is frequently introduced through geography. It lies beneath the Dhauladhar range, surrounded by cedar forests and mountain weather that can change its mind before breakfast. Yet its truest landscape may be intellectual rather than physical. Since the arrival of the Tibetan community in exile, McLeod Ganj and the surrounding settlements… Continue reading A Country Carried in Memory
The Hemis Festival, Ladakh The road to Hemis Monastery follows the Indus before turning towards a narrow valley of dun-coloured mountains. Ladakh’s landscape is famously economical. Rock, sky, river and light appear to have agreed that ornamentation is unnecessary. Hemis, however, has other ideas. The Indie Trails team was recently in Ladakh and had the… Continue reading When the Gods Wear Masks
