Jammu and Kashmir's challenging terrain is steadily yielding to a new era of connectivity. The Udhampur–Srinagar–Baramulla Rail Link has connected the valley to India's rail network. Its centrepiece, the Chenab Bridge, stands as the world's highest railway arch bridge.

What happens when two Indians in their seventies decide to conquer Europe in seventeen days? They discover ten countries, seventeen destinations, countless monuments, several rivers, hundreds of photographs and one very stubborn truth. Europe is beautiful, but the body has its own travel itinerary.

Europe looks like a dream until you start paying the bills. The streets are clean, the trains glide smoothly, the rivers sparkle, and the buildings look straight out of a fairy tale. Everything appears beautifully organised. But there is one small problem. Your wallet begins to cry before you have finished admiring the scenery...

For generations, India's lighthouses were places people saw from a distance. Standing at the edge of the sea, they marked dangerous stretches of coast and guided vessels through darkness. Their lights belonged to sailors. Their towers belonged to the landscape.

Moving beyond the bustle around Hawa Mahal, I entered Jaipur’s Jantar Mantar and immediately noticed a different atmosphere. Geometric shapes spread across the complex; towering walls, angular structures and enormous arches naturally arouse curiosity. It is neither a traditional palace nor a temple, yet the entire complex appears extraordinary in its own way.

How can a country be smaller than a Delhi neighbourhood and still have its own prince, its own borders, its own administration and enough national pride to make a full-sized flag look slightly embarrassed...

What happens when nature pours all her beauty into one small country, wraps its mountains in snow, and humans build trains that climb slopes steep enough to make even gravity nervous? Welcome to Switzerland.

We climbed into a boat that cheerfully ignored personal space and took us remarkably close to Europe’s largest waterfall by sheer volume, the Rhine Falls near Schaffhausen, Switzerland. The closer we got, the louder the roar became. The river seemed to be shouting, “Come closer, brave humans! I have a free facial and a mild cardiac workout for you!"

Our bus rolled into Heidelberg at around ten in the morning. Fresh from a sumptuous breakfast at our Frankfurt hotel, we were energised, curious and ready for another round of European sightseeing. But something changed almost immediately.

The city disappeared almost without warning. One moment we were leaving behind Heidelberg’s old streets, the Neckar River, the ruined red-sandstone castle high on the hillside, and the graceful arches of the Old Bridge. The next, our bus seemed to have entered a different Germany altogether.