Mental Excursions

Nine Days of Restraint, and a Feast of Temptations                                                                                                                                                                              - Anupama S Mani Visibly hassled, she told me she was going to the market to get Navratri food items. And, just conversationally I asked what. Now, that should tell you how stupid I can be at times. Off she prattled a long list. By the time she had rattled off about twenty items, her eyes had acquired a rather wild look. I was suddenly ov...

Where Nature Took My Breath Away                                                                                            -Anupama S Mani Don Sheldon Amphitheatre on Ruth Glacier, Denali, Alaska Last week I wrote about my visit to Anchorage in Alaska. From Anchorage we undertook a three-hour train journey to reach Talkeetna, a small town with a population of barely 1,000 people (shockingly low for Indians). There are full-service rustic lodges to cozy wood cabins and historic downtown inns as tourists flock here for glacier flights, rafting, mountain biking, hiking, camping and fishing all of which also feed the town economy. Air taxi companies ferry visitors for flightseeing trips to Denali by ski planes. Talkeetna is chosen because it offers the most ...

Anchorage: The Alaska I Didn't Expect                                                                                                     -Anupama S Mani A handy petting guide for anyone trying to upgrade their Alaska vacation into a local medical drama. Visiting Alaska had been one of my dreams. (Of course, I have several more where it comes from). Whenever I looked at Alaska on the map, it seemed like a jaw jutting out of the continent. I imagined snow-capped mountains, snowy giant dogs pulling sledges and Indigenous people (I am told it is offensive/outdated to call them by the name we called them by) shovelling snow outside glowing igloos and little boys packed in furry jackets fishing in holes in ice. What I saw when I got out of the...

San Francisco: A City of Surprises                                                                                                     -Anupama S Mani When the staircase has a story to tell. Heavy gold jewellery, intricate wood work, gilded masks, delicately painted anthropoid sarcophagi —all beautifully preserved and sitting right in front of my eyes — shocked me out of my poor knowledge zone about ancient Egypt. In the windy morning with the sun still uncertain about how it wanted to behave, as it often does in San Francisco, we headed to the de Young Museum to enjoy the Treasure of the Pharaohs , an exhibition of 130 exquisite works spanning 3,000 years of ancient Egyptian history, showing significance, aesthetic sense and values associ...