• Arts & Culture - Food - Fun - History - Places

    Goa Carnaval 2013: Fun, food, and Much More

    Goa Carnaval 2013 is almost here! The 4 days of fun, frolic and, feast is set to open on February 9 and will last until February 12. But for foodies and cultural buffs, celebrations begin a day earlier. Food & Cultural Festival, to be held parallelly with the Carnaval (Portuguese for carnival), is slated to be from February 8. Goa is known mostly for its beaches. All these years, tourism as well as all celebrations happened in and around beaches. But this time, there is going to be a conscious effort by the department of tourism to remove the focus from the beaches and…

  • Places

    Lavasa: First Impressions: Planned Hill City or Planned Destruction

    Disclaimer: We are not experts in ecology, architecture, or town planning. This critical view is to be read as a layman’s perspective. First impression, unfortunately, is not the best impression in this case. Lavasa has aroused our curiosity when we heard about it first—especially as the ‘first planned hill city of India.’ For Indians, there cannot be any hill station without colonial baggage. So this sounded pretty interesting, but we never managed to visit Lavasa. When controversies erupted on this project, we were keenly reading all the news and reports. Finally, we managed to get a glimpse of Lavasa. While…