A Day in the Hutongs Morning Take the subway to Yonghe Gong for an early morning – and hopefully crowd-beating – visit to the Lama Temple. On leaving, cross over the main road and pass under the pailou (gate) at the entrance to Guozijian Jie for the Confucius Temple. Afterwards, take a break at the … Read more

Restaurants Fish Nation Enterprising venture serving English-style fish and chips to bar crawlers. 31 Nan Luogu Xiang 6401 3249 Cafe Sambal An old-style courtyard house serves as the venue for exquisite dishes prepared by an authentic Malaysian chef . 43 Doufuchi Hutong, off Jiu Gulou Dajie 6400 4875 Han Cang Bustling two-story rustic restaurant with … Read more

One of Madrid’s most affluent neighbourhoods, Salamanca is named after its founder, José de Salamanca y Mayol (1811–83). The Marquis first saw the commercial possibilities of the area bordering the Retiro in the 1860s and transformed it into a model of urban planning, with grid patterned streets and elegant mansions. The new neighbourhood was an … Read more

A Day’s Shopping Morning Leave Serrano metro station, heading south and limber up with a spot of window shopping on Salamanca’s main fashion drag. Turn left into Calle Columela – try not to pay too much attention to Mallorca’s mouthwatering displays of cakes and pastries then left again into Calle Claudio Coello, a delightful street … Read more

Despite the slow creep of floodlit housing estates to the east and west, the south of Hong Kong Island (or “Southside” as everyone calls it) retains more than enough rugged coastline, wooded upland and sequestered beach to startle anyone whose preconception of Hong Kong was wholly urban. Traffic from the city passes through the Aberdeen … Read more

A Circular Tour Morning This circular tour of Hong Kong Island is perfectly feasible to complete in a day, so long as you don’t start too late. From Central, jump on an Aberdeen-bound bus, alighting close to Aberdeen harbour . Haggle for a sampan harbour tour offered by one of the pushy touts on the … Read more

The regal approach sets the tone for my stay. An hour’s drive from the Nedumbassery airport in an SUV on smooth roads is of course nothing remarkable but the last leg of my journey, by design, is by private boat. Tableaus of semi-rural Kerala greet us as we putter off from the Varapuzha jetty. A … Read more

It is with Junaid that I go for a pre-prandial walk in the morning. At that early hour, the Chittoorappan temple exudes a calm spirituality. The wooden lattice for oil lamps that surrounds all Kerala-style temples, visible in daylight is soot-black with countless years of worship. The temple tank has attracted the first batch of … Read more

Paris is often called the museum city, and walking down its streets, past centuries-old buildings and statues, through beautifully planned squares and wonderfully manicured parks and gardens, one sometimes feels that one is in a very large, open-air museum. But Paris – museum city – also refers to the myriad museums that are dotted around … Read more

Decorative Arts Museum (Musée des Arts Décoratifs) Right next door to the Louvre is a wonderful excuse to indulge in some exquisite ‘window shopping’ in a museum which showcases the works of some of the world’s most accomplished creators of fashion, advertising and decorative art. Decorative Arts Museum The Decorative Arts Museum houses a permanent … Read more

The Orsay Museum (Musée d’Orsay) Mention the Universal Exhibition or ‘World’s Fair’ in Paris, and nearly every Parisian will tell you that that is the event for which the Eiffel Tower was built, as a temporary exhibit, in 1889. But in the Paris World Fair which followed in 1900, a no less illustrious but lesser … Read more

The Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art All over the world, the name Cartier evokes fine jewellery or precision watches, but to Parisians, and Parisian artists especially, it also evokes a contemporary art ‘space’ that rivals any state-sponsored institution in terms of diversity, pedagogical approach to curating as well as practical support for the creative process. … Read more

Escaping a Delhi summer is too tantalising to turn down, but the sight of Tripura’s rolling green land, as our plane descended on Singerbhil airport in Agartala, was a bigger relief than I imagined. To parched eyes longing for green trees and cool shade, Tripura seems like paradise. Like most people outside the Northeast, I … Read more

Tripura’s forested hills hide many such secrets, such as the rock murals of Devtamura. These panels lie in an extension of the Baramura range in south-central Tripura. The river Gomati cuts an impressive gorge through it, on its way past the old capital of Udaipur and beyond to the Meghna river in Bangladesh. We got … Read more

But then, the Manikya kings who ruled Tripura for nigh on six hundred years until 1949 were of tribal origin themselves. The officially sanctioned Rajmala, a genealogical history of the Tripura kings posited a lunar line for the ruling family, linking it to the Mahabharata. However, the first ruler of this clan who can be … Read more

Shyamsundar Tila, our first stop, is renowned for the remains of the excavated base of a massive cruciform Buddhist temple that stood here sometime around the ninth century. Excavated in 1998-99 by the ASI, the site revealed some huge sandstone statues of the Maitreya Buddha and other Bodhisattva images, along with a collection of remarkable … Read more

All eyes are on London As the greatest sporting event in the world unfolds this summer. Stephen Guy tells you what to expect—on the field and off it A Summer Like No Other’ promises the slogan. ‘The biggest festival the UK has ever seen’ echoes another. “We want this to be the greatest show on … Read more

The Olympics If you are coming to London to see an Olympic event, the first question is: have you got a ticket? No ticket, no entry. Tickets to sporting events must be purchased in advance online. Tickets will not be avail-able on the day at the gate. In the UK, demand for tickets for popular … Read more

Festival events Getting tickets for the arts and culture extravaganza is a breeze compared to getting tickets for the sports, and much is free anyway. London and the rest of the UK will be living its busiest cultural summer ever with artists from all over the world descending on the capital. An incredible 12,000 events … Read more

Antico Caffè Greco Rome’s 1760 answer to all the famed literary cafés of Paris. Just off the Spanish Steps on the busiest shopping street in town, it is an elegant holdover from yesteryear, its tiny tables tucked into a series of genteel, cosy rooms plastered with photos, prints and other memorabilia from the 19th-century Grand … Read more