Latest Natgeotravellar Podcast Episodes
Coconuts, Cold War and Nuclear Fusion
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - March 10, 2022 00:35 - 9 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn the spring of 1943, US torpedo boat No. 109 gets shattered to pieces by a Japanese destroyer. Some of the crew members make a miraculous escape, and one of them goes on to create history. Over 8000 miles across the oceans in Gujarat India, a team of paleobotanists find 37 million year old fos...
West Indies Cricket, Jackals and Mariamman Temples
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - March 03, 2022 00:35 - 9 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn the early 2000’s, a concerned government official approached Dave Martins. Dave was an iconic musician from the Caribbean, who was the lead vocalist of the band Tradewinds. Someone who had his finger on the pulse of the Southern Caribbean islands. The government official asked him to write a ...
Siddis, Limes and Benazir Bhutto
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - February 24, 2022 00:35 - 9 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratings"In October 2021, the Kannada film Salaga, featured a track which was sung by a Hindustani classical singer, the first from her community. Further up north in Hyderabad, since the 18th century, there is a popular form of music which features only drums. Across the border in Pakistan, a song sung...
Sindhis, Crocodiles And Abida Parveen
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - February 17, 2022 00:35 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratings"In the 14th season of Coke Studio Pakistan, Abida Parveen and Naseebo Lal gave us a beautiful song steeped in the Sufi tradition - Tu Jhoom. Almost 75 years ago, the prolific writer Saddat Hassan Manto, gave us 'Yazid', a story set in the backdrop of partition. But there is an unlikely connecti...
The Malayalis Of Pakistan
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - February 10, 2022 00:35 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn 1921, a bloody rebellion in North Kerala led to the death of over 2000 people. In 2018, almost a century later, a song from the film Oru Adaar Love titled Manikya Malaraya Poovi went viral, garnering millions of views, even from parts of India that did not understand a word of Malayalam. But ...
Gujaratis, Uganda and The Last King of Scotland
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - February 03, 2022 00:35 - 9 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsWhat does a military dictator in a South-East African republic have in common with Ramanand Sagar, the man who made the cult television show Ramayan? And what could it have to do with one of the richest communities in India, which actually thrived in that very African republic? This week, in the...
Chettiars, Burma and Fiery Dragons
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - January 27, 2022 00:35 - 12 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsWhat does a small cluster of less than 100 villages in Tamil Nadu have in common with agrarian flatlands of Burma? And what are both of these doing in a conversation taking place in a modern urban home in the IT corridor of Bangalore? This week, in the the third episode of teh series, The Great ...
Money Orders, Dehradun & Transatlantic Slave Trade
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - January 20, 2022 00:35 - 7 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn 1898, the New York Times wrote a glowing review of this particular service in India. Closer home, the Bombay Mill Owners Association wasn’t so pleased - The service was so popular amongst its workers, that it led to work disruptions. But what has all this got to do with the hill city of Dehra...
Bhojpur, Sexuality and Migration Songs
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - January 13, 2022 00:35 - 13 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratings"It's all around us, so much so, that probably no state in India has been untouched by it - The labour migration. The state which probably provides the most manpower to India's varied workforce is Bihar. More specifically, the Bhojpur region. While the region has become infamous for its supposed...
Shimla, Rare Books And The American Declaration Of Independence
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - January 06, 2022 00:35 - 14 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn 1947, on the eve of Partition, a young man left Lahore and came to Shimla. What makes his journey unique, amongst the millions who must have undertaken this voyage is what he ended up doing in Shimla. What started out as a stationery shop went on to become a storied institution. This week, we...
The Caravan Rests
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - December 09, 2021 00:35 - 1 minute ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIt’s been over 2 years we have travelled together. This month, the Caravan rests to return in 2022. Till then Check out the other episodes of "India's Linguistic Heritage" The Hidden Story of Sanskrit, and the North-South Divide : https://ivm.today/3CpKQuO Reclaiming India's Linguistic Her...
The Improbable Impact Of Nature On 2000 Languages
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - December 02, 2021 00:35 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsWhy does the hill district of Shimla, home to a mere 8 lakh people, have at least 10-15 different languages? Why does Indonesia have 250 languages, and the strangest of them all - Papua New Guinea, an island nation, to this very day, has over one thousand spoken languages? Why did these rather d...
Breast Tax, Brahmins And The Bizarre Origins Of Modern Malayalam
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - November 25, 2021 00:35 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn the early 19th century, the Maharaja of Travancore levied an absolutely bizzare tax: Any woman who had come of age and had breasts had to pay a breast tax, and bare her breasts to anyone who was of a higher caste to them. This was one amongst the hundreds of taxes the lower castes had to endu...
The Hidden Injustice In India's Languages
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - November 18, 2021 00:35 - 7 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn 2018, a research study by the University of Michigan and World Bank found that women who are native speakers of certain kind of languages have a lower labour force participation rate and lower educational attainment. How did our Indian languages fare? This week, in the fifth episode of the se...
Partitions Unknown: Hindi, Urdu and the Umbilical Cord
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - November 11, 2021 00:35 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratings"In 12th century Delhi, a new language began to emerge, which was initially known as Dehlavi. Parallelly, the political landscape of India changed, with the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate and the arrival of the Mughals. With them came Persian, and quickly established itself as the language...
Reclaiming India's Linguistic Heritage: 300 Ramayanas?
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - November 04, 2021 00:35 - 11 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratings"In 2008, a quasi political organisation asked for the removal of an academic paper from the syllabus of Delhi University. They eventually succeeded in 2011. But what was in that paper that had 'hurt' sentiments? This week, in the second episode of India's linguistic heritage, and on the occasio...
The Hidden Story Of Sanskrit, And The North - South Divide
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - October 28, 2021 00:35 - 9 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn the summer of 1420, following a strange series of events, the migration of a community of people started from a border town between Tamil Nadu and Kerala, to a village in Karnataka. The village eventually came to have a unique claim to fame: It became known as India's Sanskrit village, where ...
Shahtoosh: The Wild Story of the World's Most Expensive and Illegal Fabric
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - October 21, 2021 00:35 - 10 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsA customs inspection at the Switzerland Italy Border, murders in the Tibetan highlands and a weaving workshop in Srinagar - Kashmir. What connects these disparate places? This week, in the tenth episode of Kashmir Diaries, Utsav brings to you the wild story of Shahtoosh, the most expensive fabri...
Zbayul: The Invisible Village of Ladakh
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - October 14, 2021 00:35 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratings"In 1948, as India was fighting Pakistan in Kashmir, the Pakistani army reached this village but bypassed it completely. Simply because hidden behind a gorge, with just one access point, the village was invisible to them. Legend has it that when the army of a neighbouring kingdom tried to invade...
Sheshnag, Deadly Hikes and A Thousand Year Old Tradition
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - October 07, 2021 00:35 - 7 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn the narrative of Kashmir, what often lies forgotten is the origin story. What could a Naga king who ruled thousands of years ago, have in common with a humble Gujjar-Bakrwal man, and what did they have to do with the origin of Kashmir? This week, in the eighth episode of Kashmir Diaries, Utsa...
The Vanishing Art of Kashmiri Carpet Weaving
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - September 30, 2021 00:35 - 14 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsWhat started out 600 years ago in Persia (present day Iran) thrived to become the crown jewel of the Kashmiri arts. However, the art of Kashmiri carpet weaving is now vanishing, on the brink of extinction. This week, in the seventh episode of Kashmir Diaries, we meet Rafiq Ahmed Shah, a 73 year ...
Kashmiris, Hangul and the Manual of Life
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - September 23, 2021 00:35 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsAbout 100,000 years ago, a mutation in a family of deers gave rise to 3 distinct sub-species which came to be known by the geographical regions they travelled to - Bukhara in Uzbekistan, Xinjiang in China and Kashmir in India. But what does that deer have to do with the Kashmiri people? This wee...
Srinagar, Ancient Carvings and Supernovas
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - September 16, 2021 00:35 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn 1960, the Indian Archeaologist T N Khazanchi, in a painstaking excavation spanning 11 years, discovered proof of 4 distinct human cultures beginning from the Aceramic Neolithic to the Historical era, which meant that the Kashmir Valley had been inhabited for at least 11,000 years. In the exca...
Kargil, Hundarman and the Museum of Memories
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - September 09, 2021 00:35 - 10 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn the Indo-Pak War of 1971, as the two countries fought bitterly, the fate of a few people change irrevocably - Overnight, they found themselves to be citizens of a new nation. This week, in the fourth episode of The Kashmir Diaries, Utsav takes you to Kargil, which overnight became a household...
2 Years of PFN and A New Manifesto
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - September 02, 2021 00:35 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 2 ratings100 Episodes - A reason to celebrate, a reason to reflect. This week, we don’t have a postcard, but a long conversation about travel. Utsav speaks with Chuck, the host of Getting Meta, about slow travel, the evolution of Postcards from Nowhere, and what drives him to travel in the first place. T...
Gujjar-Bakarwals: The Forgotten People of Kashmir
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - August 26, 2021 00:35 - 7 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsThey form 12% of the population of J & K, and yet their story is missing from the larger discourse of Kashmir. The Gujjar-Bakarwals are the nomadic pastoralists who migrated from Rajasthan in the 6th Century, and continue to live off the land. This week, in the third episode of the Kashmir Diari...
The Art of Writing Time: Persian and Sanskrit Chronograms
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - August 19, 2021 00:35 - 7 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsTwo systems of writing time developed independently: One in Kashmir, and the other in Kerala. But they developed in completely different cultural milieus. And its all connected to the parking lot of Maulana Azad Medical college in Delhi. This week, in the second episode of The Kashmir Diaries, w...
The Last Rosewater Maker of Srinagar
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - August 12, 2021 00:35 - 7 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsWhat could be common between the towns in the Isfahan province of Iran, and the city of Srinagar in Kashmir? And how could they show us two ends of the same spectrum? This week, starting a new series, The Kashmir Diaries, we travel to Srinagar and meet the last craftsman of a dying art - Rosewat...
Navajo People, Cosmic Order and Hózhó
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - August 05, 2021 00:35 - 6 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn a corner of northwestern United States, live a group of Native American people known as the Navajo, who in their language has no word for religion or art. But they have a very unique philosophy which encompasses both - Hózhó. This week, join me in understanding the life philosophy of the Nava...
Ep. 96: Navajo People, Cosmic Order and Hózhó
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - August 05, 2021 00:35 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn a corner of northwestern United States, live a group of Native American people known as the Navajo, who in their language has no word for religion or art. But they have a very unique philosophy which encompasses both - Hózhó. This week, join me in understanding the life philosophy of the Nava...
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