Explorer of Experiences

This painted mural at the Jallianwala Bagh Memorial depicts the horrors of April 13, 1919 99 years ago on this very day, thousands of innocent Indians were shot and killed by armed British forces in Amritsar, and to date there has been no formal apology from Britain. So what really happened... The ground zero was Jallianwala Bagh. Around 15,000 men, women and children had gathered at this open public space on Baisakhi Day to protest the Rowlatt Act (an Act that empowered authorities to imprison without trial). Upon learning of this gathering, General Edward Henry Dyer rounded up a troop of 50 men armed with 1,650 bullets who were instructed to fire at the chests of the Indians until the last bullet was fired. They sealed the only two exits of the Bagh, then the size of three football fields surrounded by homes. Without any warning, rounds were fired and with all the exists sealed by the troops, to escape the bullets, many died jumping into a well or in t...

It's not everyday you get a complimentary stay at a room atop a tea plantation. So when I got the chance to stay at Tea Nest Annexe in Coonoor, I grabbed it. Even though I just returned from a two week trip in Ladakh, I was roaring to explore Coonoor - it's not much heard of, visited or spoken of. When we landed at Coimbatore, a humid yet cool weather greeted us. There were hordes of taxi drivers offering us their service, and we asked one to take us to Mettupalayam bus stand from where we could catch the local bus to Coonoor. The ticket for this 3 hour road trip by bus cost us Rs.40 versus a door-to-door cab ride that was Rs.1600 (post haggling). While driving us to Mettupulayam, our taxi driver tried relentlessly to convince us to take up his Rs. 1500 offer seeing that we had settled in so comfortably in the back seat. But we rejected. We hopped into the local bus - it wasn't promising by any standard, the usual rickety exterior and a houseful interior. The bus con...