Children, lessons, and laughter in the cold   the quiet courage of teachers who stay. Prologue   After Ice, a Door Opens “A river can teach you to walk; a village can teach you why.” I arrived in Padum with the Chadar still in my bones those careful days on the frozen Zanskar, the daily grammar of ice (tap, trust, tiptoe), the…

A kitchen-table immersion: roasting kernels for oil, braiding wool tassels, learning the stories behind floral headgear, and sharing salt tea while elders map seasons in proverb. The lane into the courtyard was hardly a lane at all more a remembered path between a wall that had kept its stones together through six stories and a willow that had learned to…

Threads of mountain wind turned into warmth. Morning in Leh is a careful sound. Not the alarm clock kind, but the quiet arithmetic of altitude adding itself to breath: a longer inhale, a more deliberate exhale, prayer flags clicking a soft grammar as if the wind were reading out loud. The bazaar wakes in segments kettles clearing their throats, a…

A dance of devotion where time beats in circles. I arrived at Hemis with dust in my teeth and a drum already in my chest. The road had been arguing with the Indus all morning, trading shade for shimmer, ravine for river, and at some modest bend a signboard announced the monastery with the unadorned confidence Ladakh prefers: HEMIS. No…

You don’t so much arrive in Old Delhi as you are absorbed by it The city narrows here into arteries and capillaries of stone and sweat, churning people through history with neither sentiment nor apology. The moment I stepped out of the metro station at Chandni Chowk, the air was already different – thicker, slower, smeared with engine fumes and sandalwood, goat…