The Official Blog Of Ritam Saha

Ankara in all it's glory Most people visiting Turkey do not bother to stop by Ankara. I luckily did not commit this mistake. After a four-hour long bus journey from the Cappadocian town of Nevsehir, here I was, in the Turkish capital. The number of police cars and personnel on the streets exceeded the numbers in all other Turkish cities. The red and blue flashes gave the capital its official look. The streets of this official destination are lined with hotels and government offices: a capital city doing its job. A few paces away from where I was staying, the statue of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk looked over the   A statue of Ataturk in his office district, perched on his horse as a commander. The sober lights of the Ottoman styled Osmanli Mosque spilt onto the rushing traffic. It was only a couple of hours since I had checked in, that the sun set in a sea of red, leaving the sky pale and dark. The cars rushed along below, and the lights had been left on. Ankara did not sleep th...

Istanbul, a universal beauty where poet and archaeologist, diplomat and merchant, princess and sailor, northerner and westerner screams with same admiration. The whole world thinks that this city is the most beautiful place on earth.   – Edmondo De Amicis Istanbul. A city that is built from the bedtime fairy tales that children learn as they fall asleep - a city of dreams and sky-high minarets indicating its significance as the seat of flourishing empires. Here, one notices the brilliance of the past, coexisting with the optimism of the future. From the heights of the Galata Tower to the seemingly calm, but fierce currents of the Bosphorus, Istanbul is one city which has two sides to everything. Two continents, two speeds - one slow and one fast and two cultures. Napoleon observed that if "the world was a single state, Istanbul would be its capital". The seat of romantic beauty, Istanbul attracts the world's attention to itself every day. Getting to Istan...

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...