read.
My writing highlights eco-friendly and community-based travel, culture and craft. Below are selected writings.
Can solar power save India’s iconic houseboat capital?
Kerala’s Lake Vembanad teems with birds, bucolic villages—and pollution. New initiatives aim to make boating on the lake more sustainable.
Ripeesh Pillai’s houseboat is tricked out with two brand-new solar panels, hovering on the two-bedroom craft’s roof like giant space saucers. Intended to harness the hot sun that bakes Kerala, India’s southernmost state, the panels are part of a new green initiative to rehabilitate Lake Vembanad and its backwaters, which lure vacationers with houseboat tourism.
for National Geographic, April 2022
Bangkok rediscovers the magic of its legendary river.
In the historic—and once again buzzing—riverside districts of Thailand's capital, one writer traces her family’s past.
Bangkok’s Chao Phraya flows in exaggerated loops through historic neighborhoods, past Buddhist temples, gilded palaces, and humble teak bungalows teetering on the water’s edge.
The river floats by the curled rooflines of Chinese shrines, the spires of Christian churches and mosque minarets, and shophouses that were—and still are—home to immigrant families from China, India, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. They settled along its banks as early as the 19th century to trade in teak, cloth, gems, and spices.
for National Geographic, March 2022
Laos thinks the naga deserves UNESCO status.
In Laos, a legend holds that a handsome half-serpent, half-human water spirit known as a naga lures a beautiful weaver to be his bride in the depths of the Mekong River. Although you’ll see this dragon-like god everywhere in southeast Asia—grinning from rooflines, twisting across temple murals, and forming the stair railings that lead into prayer halls—the naga is a particularly essential motif in Laotian textiles. Kiang Ounphaivong, a weaver at Ock Pop Tok, an artisan studio in Louangphabang, Laos, incorporates naga elements into every textile, just as her mother and grandmother did before her. “Maybe if I weave something really beautiful, the naga will marry me, too,” she laughs.
for National Geographic
Mexico’s “pottery of the night”.
In the Oaxacan village of San Bartolo Coyotepec, legend contends the clay is blessed. Artisans who use it to make Oaxaca’s famous barro negro, black clay pottery, are reluctant to reveal its secrets. But 66-year-old Amando Pedro Martinez is an exception. Sparks crackle from the earth oven in his studio as I watch him reach, with cloth-covered hands, into the still cooling kiln and pull out smooth ebony plates one by one. Made from clay mined on the slopes of the Sierra Madres across the valley, these pieces started out the color of wet mud. Impregnated with heat and smoke, they transformed into sleek greys and blacks evocative of twilight’s darkest hour. It’s no wonder ancient Zapotec folktales call barro negro “pottery of the night”.
for National Geographic
A perfumed history.
Long before sunrise Tegh Singh arrives at his flower farm on the banks of the Ganges. He circles the rose shrubs, plucks blossoms at peak bouquet, and tosses the pink petals into a jute sack slung over his shoulder. By the time the first rays of sunlight skim across the river, 35-year-old Singh is on his motorcycle, ferrying his harvest to the small city of Kannauj, known as the perfume capital of India.
for National Geographic
Plateaued.
In Kham, a historic region in southeastern Tibet, timing is everything. To align with Kham’s spirit world, you’ve got to be tuned in. Fortunately, Gonkho, a nomad and my guide, possesses a supersonic antennae. Early one morning, he sprints into the monk-run cafeteria at Dzogchen Monastery—the seat of Tibetan Buddhism’s Nyingma sect—and rushes me through breakfast. Beijing had finally approved the staging of a cham masked dance, a sacred ritual honoring the legendary 12th-century warrior-king Gesar, he tells me. To witness it, we had to get on the road. Now!
for Travel + Leisure Southeast Asia
Morocco’s free-wheeling port shines anew.
In a French Deco building in Tangier, not far from where William S. Burroughs wrote much of Naked Lunch, textile artist Nina Mohammad- Galbert led me through the stacks of vintage Beni Ourain and boucherouite rugs that line her studio.
for Travel + Leisure
Rising on the river.
Ask anyone who, like me, grew up in Bangkok in the 1970s, and they’ll tell you about suffering through interminable weddings at a riverside hotel in Bangrak, one of the Thai capital’s oldest districts. In those days, status-obsessed locals would shuffle over to Charoen Krung Road, Bangrak’s main drag, elbowing through steamy markets and stalls selling jok, or Chinese rice porridge, to submit to an eternity of long-winded wedding toasts.
for Travel + Leisure
Bangkok flow.
The Chao Phraya threads through my childhood memories, its broad silty waters curling through rice paddies in the countryside before drifting past the burgeoning skyline of Bangkok, where I grew up. From a young age, I cruised the river’s ferry system with my grandfather, a cloth merchant who supplied bolts of cotton up and down the river. Shoulder to shoulder with other river commuters, we throttled past bulky barges and slender long tail boats to Ratchawongse Pier, where my grandfather looked in on clients in the city’s Chinese and Indian garment districts.
for Four Seasons Magazine
Mandarin Oriental: Tip top institution with thrilling new spin.
Of all the spa stopovers in all the Asian cities, it’s wildly impressive that the Mandarin Oriental still flies the flag as a constantly evolving and utterly relevant place.
for Conde Nast Traveller
The historic city of Hoi An steers into the future.
In the middle of Hoi An is an area called Ancient Town, and the sobriquet fits. Commanding a prime location on Vietnam’s central coast, where the Thu Bon River empties into the South China Sea, this city was a maritime heavyweight for much of its history. The region was settled more than 2,000 years ago, and it served as a strategic port until the mid 1800s for Chinese, Japanese, Indian, French, Dutch, and Portuguese seafarers and traders plying the spice route.
for Travel + Leisure
See Komodo dragons up close.
I had been wandering Komodo Island for over an hour when I encountered its most famous resident. Covered in muddy, chainmail-like scales, the world’s largest lizard half-heartedly flicked his long, forked tongue, then heaved his awkward limbs and kept moving. A grinning ranger walked up to me, wielding a stick and playing twangy Bahasa ballads from his cell phone: “I guess you didn’t look good enough to eat.”
for Travel + Leisure
A walk to remember.
The Himalayas and I go way back. Forty years ago, at the tender age of six, I was deposited in a boarding school in Dehra Dun, a pretty valley town 240 kilometers north of Delhi and right on the doorstep of the world’s fiercest mountain range. The school’s stark brick buildings and bleak courtyards reeked of melancholy and mischief. Matrons in flowing saris with tightly coiled buns led rote lessons and inculcated Victorian manners. I struggled through interminable cycles of icy winters, muggy heat and torrential monsoons, forever piling on and peeling off itchy woolens and threadbare cottons. I choked on gum porridge, dry chapatis and rubbery chicken curry. Mostly, I plotted mutiny and escape. Beyond the school gates, the wild and unruly Himalayas overlapped and tumbled all the way to China. I cast my lot with the mountains and in them I imagine a refuge where I could live life’s grand adventures.
for Travel + Leisure Southeast Asia
Delta blues.
“I love the river,” Teow shouted while assembling a steaming bowl of hu tieu from the galley of his weathered sampan. A mildly sweet broth of shrimp, pork and rice vermicelli topped with citrusy herbs, hu tieu is a Mekong delta classic. Teow’s rig was docked deep in Cai Rang floating market, a mind-boggling armada of more than 400 houseboats and sampans eight kilometers upstream from Can Tho, the provincial capital. Here, farmers, fishermen and middlemen gather in the wee hours to hustle rice, fish and produce, and hu tieu is their go-to breakfast. It was just shy of 7 a.m., and Teow was trying to keep up with a queue four punts deep. The 40-year-old moved nimbly in his tight kitchen space, dressing piping hot bowls at breakneck speed before setting them adrift in the sea of skiffs. The scene was symphonic and delightful, and the hu tieu was damn good.
For Travel + Leisure Southeast Asia
Fit for a raja.
My first memories of Rajasthan are tied up with golden mustard fields, turmeric hills and a slobbering water buffalo. It was the mid-1990s, and I was a graduate student investigating heirloom millet seeds—the region’s primary grain crop—and living in an unfinished brick house on the outskirts of Jhunjhunu, back then a dusty market town clamoring with chai and sabji wallahs, metal smiths, rickety bicycles, camel carts and listless cows.
For Travel + Leisure Southeast Asia
Burma in a bowl.
I’m on a mohinga walkabout with Rangoon-based chef Kevin Ching. In tea shops across the city, we tuck into hearty bowls of the tangy catfish soup, slurping mildly fermented rice noodles mixed with stewed banana stems, lemongrass, coriander and heaps of black pepper.
for Travel + Leisure Southeast Asia