India’s national carrier, Air India, and Japan’s All Nippon Airways (ANA) have joined forces in a codeshare agreement, offering passengers greater travel flexibility between India and Japan. Effective May 23, 2024, travellers can book flights on both airlines using a single ticket. Before delving deeper into Air India and ANA’s latest developments, it is essential to understand what a codeshare agreement means. A codeshare agreement allows airlines to sell seats on each other’s flights under their own flight code. This expands their network reach without adding new routes, reducing operationa ..read more

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Bhutan implemented a mandatory travel insurance requirement for tourists to address potential health emergencies, particularly those related to the virus. However, with travel restrictions easing and conditions significantly improving, the Department of Tourism announced on April 23, 2024, that travel insurance is no longer mandatory for tourists. This simplifies the visa application process and streamlines travel logistics, making Bhutan an even more attractive destination. While mandatory travel insurance is a thing of the past, having one during travel remains ..read more

Macau has long forgone its reputation as just a replica of Las Vegas. This quaint city is more than what meets the eye. It’s a go-to destination for day trippers from Hong Kong but also worth exploring on its own, thanks to the convenient ferry and train links, as well as flights. Beyond its glittering resort casinos, Macau has plenty to offer—quite a few free things to do in fact. So, if you’re looking for things to do for budget travel, you’ve come to the right place. Whether you love history, culture, or everything else in between, these places in Macau are absolutely free to visit. Budget ..read more

Counting the final 152nd step, I let out a long exhale as I hit the landing and peer through the concrete lattice of the window. A leisurely scan of the area gives me a bird’s eye view of the massive quadrangle of Bandel’s historic Imambara flanked by rows of pillars, arches, and a water body at the centre. In the distance, the Hooghly meanders through the landscape as silently and as gracefully as an elephant navigates a forest. Children dive off the pier on this warm summer day while adults go about their morning ablutions in the water body that merges with the Ganges, the lifeline of this ..read more

This April, IMD World Competitiveness Center’s Smart City Observatory, in collaboration with the World Smart Sustainable Cities Organisation (WeGO) in Seoul, South Korea, released the Smart City Index 2024. The findings show Asian and European cities steadily climbing the ranks, while North American cities’ scores have plummeted. The IMD defines a smart city as “an urban setting that applies technology to enhance the benefits and diminish the shortcomings of urbanisation for its citizens”. Notably, seven of the top ten smartest cities this year are European. For the first time since the index ..read more

Good news for Indian travellers to Europe! The European Union (EU) has implemented a new rule that makes it easier to obtain a multiple-entry Schengen visa with a longer validity period. The Schengen visa grants access to over 29 European countries, including Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Greece, Spain, France, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Hungary, Malta, Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Finland and Sweden, along with Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. The new visa ‘cascade’ regime starting Apri ..read more

As the stars slowly reveal themselves, we hear the elephants chewing some 20 feet away. Even in the dark, I can make out their shapes: 53-year-old Kummoon is the smaller one despite being two decades older than Ja Thong. The two females stand huddled together — or as close as they can get to it — under a tree. When we arrived a few hours ago, the pair dexterously used their trunks to grasp long grasses and crunch sugar cane stalks. That dinner buffet is long gone, so they are likely munching on some low branches now, we deduce. Consuming 300 pounds of vegetation daily requires around-the-cloc ..read more

When Aanchal Malhotra’s maternal granduncle showed her two age-old objects that his family carried from Lahore to Amritsar around the Partition, it sparked a curiosity in the historian, leading her on a decade-long research project across the subcontinent. This journey culminated in two books, Remnants of Separation (2017) and In the Language of Remembering (2022), both of which delve into the memories of Partition in multigenerational families. Excerpts from the interview with Aanchal Malhotra: T+L India: Your first book Remnants of a Separation explores the stories of objects carried b ..read more

Be it comedic flair in rom coms like De De Pyaar De and Manmadhudu 2, an action hero persona in thrillers like Runway 34 and Spyder, or displays of vulnerability in emotional dramas like Doctor G and Chhatriwali, actor Rakul Preet Singh embraces genres and movie industries with a certain panache. Excerpts from the interview with actor Rakul Preet Singh T+L India: You started modelling at the age of 18. How did you cope with hectic schedules at a young age? Rakul Preet Singh: When kids were playing at home, my parents encouraged me to attend activity classes. I had a timetable for when I would ..read more

While travel is absolutely a rewarding experience, sometimes you just want to go to the prettiest places and do it for the ‘gram. And if you need a little help tracking down those Instagrammable destinations, NZCasinoClub has your back. The online casino analysed city break-related hashtags across European capitals to find the ones Instagrammers love most. To whittle down the results, the team looked at #(city), #(city)travel, #(city)tourism, #(city)break, and #(city)city break. The team then combined the number of hashtags to create an overall total per city, and after breaking down all the ..read more