On first appearance it doesn't look like much, a 22 foot tall iron pillar, slowly rusting away in the middle of an empty square in Dehli, India. The surprise comes in learning its age, some 1600... »

Inspired Inventions, Instruments of Science, Retro-Tech, Hoaxes and Pseudoscience | Submitted by Dylan

The road from Madikeri to the Tibetan settlement in Bylakuppe is lined with farm cooperatives. Driving through the fields, one gradually gets used to the incongruous sight of monks driving... »

Rites and Rituals, Curious Places of Worship | Submitted by Linette Lim

In 1864, the famous French world traveler Louis Rousselet described "[a] vast sheet of water, covered with lotuses in flower, amid which thousands of aquatic birds are sporting..." at the shores... »

Incredible Ruins | Submitted by Annetta

The entrance to the imposing Mehrangarh Fort is guarded by a series of seven famous gates. To the left of innermost gate, Loha Pol, or "Iron Gate", are 15 small handprints left by the wives of the... »

Memento Mori | Submitted by Annetta

Tucked in a corner of the party capitol of India, the mostly-incorruptible body of Goencho Saib (Lord of Goa), otherwise known as St. Francis Xavier, is on display in the right trancept of the Bom... »

Relics and Reliquaries | Submitted by Annetta

A dozen miles north of Pondicherry, India, there is a town to which you already belong and already have citizenship, and which awaits your arrival. However, to live there you will need to give up... »

Intriguing Environs, Micro-Nations, Curious Places of Worship | Submitted by wythe

The village of Wagah lies on a contentious border. Its Eastern half remains in India as it has always been, while its Western half is in Pakistan, split down the middle by the British in 1947.... »

Cultures and Civilizations , Rites and Rituals | Submitted by Dylan | Updated by re_nakaba

In the late 1200s, the Koli or "fisherman kings" built the first fort off the coast of Maharastra on a rocky island in the Indian Ocean. However the island had a hidden advantage, in the middle of... »

Incredible Ruins | Submitted by M Rebekah Otto

If any group of people qualifies for the term "lost tribe" it is the Sentinelese. Like other Andaman island natives, they have managed to live for thousands of years near one of the most ancient... »

Lost Tribes | Submitted by stanestane | Updated by Annetta

On the boulder-strewn banks of the Tungabadra River in Karnataka lie the ruins of Hampi, where the capital of the Vijayanagara Kingdom once stood. From 1336 to its fall in 1565, when it was sacked... »

Incredible Ruins | Submitted by bertieinindia | Updated by Henry