Trek to Gaumukh, the source of the Ganga
Four days through Gangotri pine forests to the snout of a glacier — the first drop of the river that feeds half a billion people.
Fifty things to do in India
Experiences
Not a bucket list. Fifty specific things worth crossing the country for — and the Iraava home to do each one from.
- 01
- 02
Paraglide off Bir Billing
The world's second-highest paragliding take-off. Run ten paces, step off, and watch the Dhauladhars slide beneath your knees.
- 03
Raft the Brahmaputra through Siang Canyon
Seven days, grade IV+ water, no phone signal — one of the last untouched big-river runs left on earth.
- 04
Ski the powder bowls of Gulmarg
Asia's highest gondola lifts you to 13,000 ft of untracked snow. December to March, it is a different country.
- 05
Walk the Markha Valley
Seven days through high desert, monastery-villages, and one 17,000-ft pass — sleeping in family homestays, not tents.
- 07
Camp at Pangong Tso under the Milky Way
India's first dark-sky reserve. The lake turns from turquoise to ink. The galaxy you forgot existed comes back.
- 08
Cave the limestone caverns of Mawsmai
The world's wettest place hides the longest cave systems in the subcontinent. River caves, formations, total dark.
- 09
Sit silent at dawn for tigers at Bandhavgarh
The highest tiger density on earth. The point isn't always seeing one — it is learning to wait the way the forest waits.
- 10
Track snow leopards in winter Hemis
The hardest mammal sighting in the world. Two weeks of −20°C patience, with the best naturalists in the Himalaya. Worth it.
- 11
Track tigers by boat in the Sundarbans
The only mangrove where tigers swim. You don't see one — you see the pugmarks, the still water, the silence.
- 12
Find one-horned rhinos in Kaziranga
Two-thirds of the world's great Indian rhino population on the floodplain where the Brahmaputra changes its mind every monsoon.
- 13
Photograph blackbuck at Velavadar
Open grasslands, hunting wolves, harriers roosting at dusk in their thousands — Africa transplanted to coastal Gujarat.
- 14
Dawn aarti at the Varanasi ghats
Be on the river before the first light. Watch a city older than recorded history begin its day in the only way it knows.
- 15
Hornbill Festival, Kohima
Sixteen Naga tribes, ten days every December — log drums, fire dances, fermented rice beer, warrior dances you cannot see anywhere else.
- 16
Thursday qawwali at Nizamuddin Dargah
Sit on the dargah floor as the sun drops and the qawwals begin. Eight centuries of devotional music, unbroken, no microphone.
- 17
Pushkar Camel Fair under a desert moon
50,000 camels, traders from Sindh and Marwar, balloon races at dawn — five nights every November where the desert speaks Rajasthani only.
- 18
Walk an Onam pookalam at sunrise
Every village square laid with flower carpets through the night. By 9 a.m. they are gone. You have to be there at six to know.
- 19
Hemis Monastery masked dance
The Cham — masked monks, two-day spectacle, performed once a year in the cliff-side courtyard above the Indus.
- 20
Manganiyar fire-songs in the Thar
An hour from Jaisalmer, on the dunes, a family lineage that has played the same khartal repertoire for eleven generations.
- 21
Cycle the Hampi ruins at sunrise
Get there before the buses. Three hours, a borrowed bicycle, the Vijayanagara empire's stone city entirely to yourself.
- 22
Walk the step-wells of Bundi
Eighty-four medieval baoris, frescoed havelis, almost no other tourists. The Rajasthan that existed before Rajasthan was a brand.
- 23
Meenakshi temple corridors at puja hour
33,000 carved figures across thousand-pillared halls. The 9 p.m. closing ceremony is the moment the city pauses.
- 24
The French quarter in morning fog
Yellow facades, no traffic, the bell of Notre Dame des Anges. Walk for an hour with a coffee and understand what colonial nostalgia is and isn't.
- 25
Sun Temple of Konark at first light
A chariot the size of a city, oriented so the dawn lights its inner sanctum once a year. Be there for it.
- 26
The lights go out in Ajanta Cave 26
Buddhist rock-cut painting, second century BCE. When the guide re-illuminates the cave slowly, you see how the painters meant for you to see.
- 27
Chandni Chowk at midnight
Old Delhi opens differently after 10 p.m. — paranthe wali gali, the all-night nihari at Karim's, jalebis on flame at 2 a.m. The meal of your life.
- 28
Cook with a Coorgi family on their pepper estate
Pandi curry, kadambuttu, akki roti over a wood-fire, all hands-on, eaten at a long table with the family. The recipes don't exist online.
- 29
A 28-course Sadhya on banana leaf
The Onam feast — every dish handed to you in a single sitting, eaten right to left in strict order. A meal that takes a lifetime to forget.
- 30
Forage wild mushrooms with Khasi farmers
Six varieties, in the rain, on hillsides above Mawphlang. Eaten that night in a one-pot stew with bamboo shoot and tungrymbai.
- 31
Chai at every stop on the Pachmarhi road
Hoshangabad to Pachmarhi, eight chai stops, each a different leaf, milk, masala. The road itself is the experience.
- 32
10-day Vipassana at Dhamma Giri, Igatpuri
No phones, no books, no eye contact, no speaking. The most quietly difficult thing on this list — and the only one that changes you on the way out.
- 33
Sunset prayer wheels at Thiksey
The 7 p.m. puja in the gompa courtyard. Then the prayer wheels, one at a time, around the perimeter, as the Indus turns gold below.
- 34
The parikrama at Adi Kailash
The five-peak holy circuit at 16,000 ft, opened to civilians only since 2023. The lesser-known sibling of Mount Kailash, and arguably the harder walk.
- 35
Sit with sadhus at the Magh Mela, Prayagraj
Not the Maha Kumbh — the smaller annual gathering. Easier to attend, harder to forget. The akharas, the river, the saffron-soaked dawn.
- 50
Do nothing for a week
The last and best one. Choose any Iraava home. Stay seven nights. Eat with the family. Read the book you have carried for a year. Watch one season turn into the next.
- 36
Scuba dive the coral walls of Havelock
Visibility you stop trying to measure. Bumphead parrotfish, manta corridors, a soft-coral wall called the Wall of Wonder.
- 37
Surf the long right at Kovalam
Three south Indian beach breaks, an Indo-Aussie surf school, and one of the country's only thriving female surf collectives.
- 38
Three days on a kettuvallam in Alleppey
The conventional advice is one night. The right answer is three — long enough that you stop checking your phone, short enough that you're still in love with the boat.
- 39
Dolphin dawn on Chilika Lagoon
Asia's largest brackish lake, home to the rare Irrawaddy dolphin. Be on the boat before sunrise — listen for the breath before you see the back.
- 40
Kayak the Sundarbans mangroves
Two-person sit-on-tops, expert paddler at the back, narrow tidal channels too tight for the launches. The Sundarbans the way locals see it.
- 41
Bioluminescent night swim on Havelock
New-moon nights only. Every kick fires the plankton into blue light. You are swimming inside a slow-motion firework.
- 06
Cross the living root bridges of Nongriat
Bridges the Khasi tribe grew over decades from rubber fig roots. Slippery, alive, four hundred years old.
- 42
Wake up in Mawlynnong
The cleanest village in Asia. Bamboo skywalks above the village floor, treehouses, the woman-led economy you came east to see.
- 43
Cross Sela Pass into Tawang
13,700 ft, the gateway to the eastern Himalayas, snow-blocked half the year. Special permits, three cultures, the highest monastery in India at the end.
- 44
Drink rice beer in Ziro Valley
The Apatani tribal homeland — paddy-fish co-cultivation, facial tattoos with stories, the Ziro music festival in September.
- 45
Sleep on Majuli, the river island
The world's largest river island, sinking a metre every monsoon. Stilt-house mask-makers, satras, and a culture racing the Brahmaputra.
- 46
Coral skies over Nako Lake, Spiti
11,800 ft, glacial water, prayer flags. The lake holds the sky better than any photograph will admit.
- 47
The last Indian village, Mana
Three kilometres from the Tibet border. Saraswati river vanishes underground here. Sip butter tea in the world's last Indian tea shop.
- 48
The Zanskar before the road shuts
October — the last open weeks before the world's most dangerous winter road closes. Frozen rivers, copper-coloured cliffs, Phuktal monastery glued to rock.
- 49
The abandoned village of Kuldhara at midnight
Evacuated overnight in 1825, cursed by its priests, never resettled. With a local guide, the desert ghost-town starts speaking.