The Official Blog Of Ritam Saha

A Qatar Airways A350 climbs over the commercial district of Doha Doha, the capital of the state of Qatar, is one of the most attractive, modern and beautiful cities in the Arabian peninsula. Like the Emirati commerce hub Dubai, it serves as the hub for business in the small, but prosperous Arabian country. The present day State of Qatar was born in 1971, earning complete independence from British rule. Qatar is ruled by the Al Thani clan, and has been so, only experiencing a minor inter - family power struggle in 1995. The crime rate is ridiculously low, amounting to only 2.11 per 100,000 people. The country is one of the richest in the world and a major exporter of natural gas. Most of it's assets lie in the ocean, from where it regularly drills and ships them to the rest of the world. My trip to Qatar was limited to its capital, Doha, so I shall speak only about what I saw. However, Doha is just one of the important places to visit. Other attractions include Al - Wakra...

Flag Map of the People's Republic of China The city of Xi'an is the capital of the Shaanxi province in mainland China. It was once the Eastern end of the Silk Road and was formerly called Chang'an (meaning the Eternal City).  My train pulled on to Platform 4 in Xi'an's large railway station after a fairly long journey from Beijing on a fairly cold evening in 2014. After climbing the magnificent Great Wall, walking along Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden city, here we were, ready to visit this ancient Chinese settlement. You can read all about my Beijing trip here . My only impression of Xi'an was built out of my knowledge of Xi'an's terracotta army, which is the most famous tourist destination Xi'an is wonderful blend of old and new on spot. When we arrived and exited the station, a city of many variations greeted us. Here, the past competes with the future for attention. Sky high towers form a backdrop for a city that has the most anc...

Flag - Map of the People's Republic of China I travelled to mainland China in 2014, when still in school. Staying in Calcutta is certainly not an advantage for a traveller like myself, as the city provides limited international connections. There was one flight operating directly from the city to Kunming in mainland China, which is just two hours away. The People's Republic is a Communist ruled one party dictatorship, which they fondly refer to as a democracy. I was too young to understand geopolitics when I visited, but I thoroughly enjoyed China without getting its political angle involved. But for now, we'll just look at Beijing (formerly Peking), China's grand capital and the seat of its power and might. We flew out of the city on China Eastern Airlines' late night flight to Kunming. It was a two hour journey on a 737. Upon arrival at Changshui International Airport, we cleared immigration and took our onward connection to Beijing Capital Internationa...

The history of Indian cinema goes back 105 years to 1913, when Dadasaheb Phalke birthed the industry with a silent, 40 minute feature film, Raja Harishchandra . “A performance with 57000 photographs. A picture two miles long. All for only three annas” was Phalke's promotional line for Indian cinema's first film. However, when one takes a glance at its poster released in the prestigious “Times of India”, it is a disappointing far cry from the general layout of a film poster – it had no glossy pictures and thick fancy writing. Phalke would continue making films - all of them silent, after the elite audience he'd invited and the thousands who gathered to watch Raja Harishchandra at the Coronation Cinematograph said good things about his 57,000 pictures. However, the posters that accompanied would be as bland and full of writing as the first, at least until ten more years had passed. In the 1920s, Bollywood cinema (a portmanteau of Bombay and Hollywood, dubbed by the m...