Ria Gupta

Planning a Ladakh road trip? There’s a lot to figure out before you hit the open road, from choosing between the Manali and Srinagar routes to navigating altitude, fuel stops, road conditions and stretches without food or network. But once you've got the logistics sorted, driving is arguably the best way to experience Ladakh. Ladakh may have produced some of the prettiest pictures you’ve seen on the internet, but there’s a reason to experience it from behind the wheel. The landscape changes dramatically from one stretch of road to the next, with bare mountains giving way to valleys, lakes, villages and snowy passes. While there’s many a biking aficionado that may beg to differ, in my opinion, a car gives you a front-row seat to all of it. But this tryst has to be a slow burn. The region can be unforgiving, and demands you get to know it mile by mile. There’s no food and no network in places; carcass-peppered deserts give way to flooded bridges or airless passes. But once you’re comfortable with that untamed spirit, you get to lose yourself in the stills of bare slopes that transition into valley views, bustling towns that grow tall into snowy peaks, and water as it flows like life from every open crevice.  So don’t just land there and prop yourself by a hotel window. Plan it right and do this cold desert in a way that lets you live and move with its changing rhythms. Here’s everything you need to know before taking a roadtrip to Ladakh.  Ladakh road trip: At a glance Best tim

It’s time to trash the stereotype of a city hooked only on loud pop and commercial club nights. Delhi’s music scene is far more restless than that: a buzzing network of live concerts, rooftop folk sets, living-room qawwalis, screaming rock, improvisational jazz and experimental electronic nights. My flatmate, a Pune transplant working at Microsoft, stumbled into a Sufi concert while she was at Delhi’s Triveni Kala Sangam to look at art. Soon, we realised that if you know where to turn, Delhi’s music operates on several different frequencies: it’s a restlessly buzzing network of fluid live concerts, rooftop folk sets, living-room qawwalis, screaming rock, improvisational jazz, and more.  Mumbai may hold the commercial infrastructure and Bengaluru may dominate the electronic circuit, but Delhi runs on something far more volatile: curiosity. A wave of unlikely venues, fluid genres, and non-traditional formats are making it easier than ever to experiment. Here’s your way in.  Delhi’s changing sounds  It’s this exact curiosity that took me to the streets of Chandni Chowk one December evening. On the rooftop of Omaxe Chowk, we sat spellbound by Manganiyar artists playing Rajasthani tunes directed by Roysten Abel, the glimmer of over a hundred stage lights cutting through Delhi’s dense winter smog.  Their music was originally recorded by Amarrass Records, which has been hosting its Amarrass Nights series for nearly two decades. The late Padma Shri Sakar Khan, Barmer Boys, Rehmat-e-N