Field notes, kept honest

Stories.

Longer answers to the questions travellers actually ask — written from the ground, updated when facts change, and never padded to rank.

Is Manipur open for tourists right now?

The question everyone asks first, answered plainly — and kept updated.

What the ILP is, who needs it, and how to get it without a middleman.

Phumdis, the dancing deer, and the INA's first tricolour — a working plan for India's strangest lake.

In 1944 the war between Japan and the British Empire turned here. The ground remembers.

Light on oil, loud on herbs, anchored by rice and smoke — a first-timer's ordering guide.

One flower, one ridge, a few weeks a year — how to time the only bloom of its kind on earth.