Grey-crowned goldfinch ‘Let’s do birding in Kashmir this summer,’ my friend Rajashekar Meti said over the phone. For someone living in Nagercoil, at India’s southern tip, travelling to Kashmir for birding is no small undertaking. Reaching Srinagar usually means an overnight journey, connecting flights, and long layovers, leaving the person exhausted even before they start birding. Spectacled finch Despite my initial reluctance, I agreed to the trip because around ten bird spe

Explore Bukhara, a historic Silk Road city in Uzbekistan, from the Ark Fortress and Po-i-Kalyan Complex to Lyab-i Hauz, the trading domes, and its ancient neighbourhoods. The Ark of Bukhara Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva are often grouped as Uzbekistan’s great Silk Road cities, yet each tells a different story. Samarkand reflects the monumental ambitions of Timurid rulers, who made it an imperial capital. Khiva preserves a remarkably intact walled city, although much of its hi

Visit Konigil Meros Paper Mill, near Samarkand, to learn about the revived ancient Silk Road tradition of papermaking, and watch the stages of the process. A guide demonstrating the traditional Samarkand papermaking process by beating boiled mulberry bark into pulp Reading about the city’s history before travelling to Samarkand, we discovered that, besides its celebrated monuments, Samarkand was one of world’s great centres of papermaking; hence, we visited Konigil Meros Pape