What are the opening hours?

Monday 9am - 7pm Tuesday 9am - 7pm Wednesday 9am - 7pm Thursday 9am - 7pm Friday 9am - 7pm Saturday 9am - 7pm Sunday 9am - 7pm

The Traveller Trails

Home
India
Shimla
The Traveller Trails

Anchored in place, built form, lived use, present rhythms, and trace-based logic.

The go-to magazine for travel lovers | Bringing you the best destinations, trends, and tips for meaningful adventures.

31/07/2025

These jagged formations in western Madagascar form the core of the Tsingy de Bemaraha Strict Nature Reserve, a terrain of uplifted Middle Jurassic limestone fractured by tectonic forces and gradually sculpted through prolonged exposure to rainfall and groundwater. Known locally as tsingy, or “where one cannot walk barefoot,” the term refers to the sharp-edged pinnacles and dense fissure networks, some plunging over 100 metres, which make much of the surface inaccessible without fixed belays, ladders, or suspended walkways. The vertical corridors trap moisture, sediment, and organic debris, fostering isolated microhabitats along narrow altitudinal gradients where botanists have documented 568 vascular plant species, most found nowhere else. Faunal endemism is similarly concentrated, with several lemur species including Decken’s sifaka and Cleese’s woolly lemur entirely restricted to this karstic ecosystem. The reserve was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1990 for its distinctive geomorphology and high biodiversity density.

29/07/2025

Primarily fed by the Southern Ewaso Ng’iro River and mineral-rich hot springs, Lake Natron evaporates faster than it fills, concentrating sodium carbonate and other salts to extreme levels. The result is a hypersaline, highly alkaline endorheic basin, inhospitable to most vertebrates. For lesser flamingos, though, this caustic chemistry supports a viable nesting ground. It deters many predators from reaching seasonal islets where an estimated 75% of the global population gathers to breed, sometimes exceeding two million individuals in peak years. These numbers are sustained by Spirulina, a type of cyanobacteria tolerant of high pH and reliably available through the critical rearing phase. The birds build raised mud cones on exposed soda flats, working within a narrow dry window when inflow stays low and crusted surfaces are stable enough to hold form. North of Ol Doinyo Lengai in northern Tanzania, the lake’s water levels depend less on local weather than on rainfall across the Kenyan highlands. A sudden rise or drop in inflow can disrupt entire colonies with little advance signal.

18/07/2025

Not a built temple or excavated cave, Unakoti consists of vertical reliefs cut into lateritic cliff faces, with additional forms continuing along the adjacent slope. At the centre is a thirty-foot Shiva head, known as Unakotiswara Kal Bhairava, flanked on the left by Durga standing on a lion and on the right by a crocodile-mounted figure, likely Ganga. On stylistic grounds, the main works are placed between the eighth and ninth centuries, while a set of loose stone sculptures found nearby—now housed in a shed—are dated to the eleventh or twelfth. Included in the UNESCO Tentative List in 2022, it contains no enclosing structure or masonry frame, and the carvings remain in open contact with forest and natural erosion.

16/07/2025

Roughly 52,000 years ago, a fast-moving rock from space punched a 1.8-kilometre-wide hole into the basalt crust of the Deccan Plateau. The resulting crater, now occupied by Lonar Lake, lies in Maharashtra’s Buldhana district and is the only meteorite-impact structure of its kind in India. It was long mistaken for a volcanic feature until the 1970s, when studies confirmed the presence of maskelynite, a type of glass formed only under high-velocity impacts. The lake sits about 137 metres below the rim and holds saline, alkaline water, with slight chemical variations by depth. In June 2020, it briefly turned pink after lower water levels and increased salt concentration triggered a bloom of Halobacterium, microbes that release reddish carotenoid pigments.

08/07/2025

More jumper than glider, the Indian giant squirrel clears five-metre gaps without skin flaps or lift surfaces, using forelimb thrusts and its tail for balance and landing control. Yet when threatened, it tends to go still, relying on camouflage rather than a quick retreat. Most remain high, foraging across fruiting and bark-rich branches and rarely using ground routes to shift feeding zones. Coat colours—maroon, buff, and black—differ across individuals, but nest design and placement remain broadly consistent across the semi-evergreen and deciduous forests of the Western Ghats and central India.

05/07/2025

You can see it from miles away, a standalone monolith with no close counterpart in the surrounding landscape. In northeastern Wyoming, above the Belle Fourche River Valley, Devils Tower is volcanic in origin, though exactly how it formed remains debated. Plains legends link its dramatic 867-foot height from base to summit to a sudden refuge for children chased by a giant bear, with the tower’s fluted sides often read as claw marks left in failed pursuit. In 1906, it became the first U.S. national monument, recognized for its distinctive geological features.

04/07/2025

Just south of Bhopal, the sandstone ridges of the Vindhyan range hold more than 700 overhangs and shallow caves, collectively known as the Bhimbetka Rock Shelters. About a third bear visible paintings—hunting scenes, animal forms, abstract shapes, and fragments of daily life—layered across walls used and reused over generations. Habitation traces reach back to the Paleolithic, with most artwork dating from the Mesolithic through later historic periods. Though a few shelters were noted in colonial records, formal study didn’t begin until the 1970s. The site entered ASI care in 1990 and inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003.

02/07/2025

Down by the Marina Channel, the barrage does more than hold back seawater. It tempers floods, stores freshwater, and doubles as one of the city's breeziest open decks. Most days, you'll find walkers, families, and kayakers out, but on weekends, kite flying takes off first.

01/07/2025

Om Beach doesn’t need a brochure or soft-focus backstory to explain the name. If you’re on a high enough vantage point or happen to catch the aerial view with a drone, the twin arcs do look like the Sanskrit syllable ॐ. Whether the name came from the geography or the geography came to fit the name is hard to confirm, but in the temple town of Gokarna, where pilgrimage routes and beach trails often share the same paths, the reference doesn’t feel misplaced.

23/06/2025

Most know Tannu Jubbar as man-made, fed by hillside channels and seasonal rain rather than natural springs. But in local memory, no human shaped it. The ground opened on its own, and water came uncalled. They say it was once a pasture, then cleared for farming, but the fields, thick with snakes, hardly offered any real footing. One day, eighteen pairs of bullocks were brought in to plough, though midwork the earth gave way, swallowing the animals and the men guiding them, leaving behind a depression that filled slowly, with no inlet ever known. As it settled into the shape we see today, an idol of Nag Devta—the serpent deity—was found near the edge. It was placed beneath a willow, and a small shrine was raised soon after. In one fading strand of the tale, the ones taken turned up days later along the Satluj, farther down at Khekhar.

The lake lies ten kilometres from Narkanda, among slopes of deodars and apple plantations. Further west is Kotgarh, where in the winter of 1916, Satyanand Stokes planted the first Red Delicious saplings in his Barubagh orchard—what followed needs no retelling.

14/06/2025

The dunes at Sam aren’t the tallest in the Thar, nor the quietest, but they’re among the easiest to reach, and perhaps the busiest you’ll find in India. Jaisalmer, some forty-odd kilometres away, feeds the flow and keeps the place alive all year round. Indeed, Sam fits naturally into travel plans built around the old fort city of western Rajasthan. People come for camel loops, jeep safaris, parasailing, folk music at dusk, maybe a bit of stargazing—and all that mix of adventure, spectacle, and stillness common to such settings. But before the rhythm picks up, things hold still—see the man and his camel in our image. Not quite part of the show, not fully apart from it, just waiting, as the dunes often do, between one cycle and the next.

06/06/2025

Its name—drawn from Dorje Dzong, the Tibetan for “indestructible fortress,” a phrase that speaks of wisdom held and protected—pretty much sums up what Dorzong Monastery and Institute is all about. Founded in the early 2000s by the 8th Dorzong Rinpoche, it carries forward the 800-year-old legacy of the Drukpa Kagyu school as a living seat of study, practice, and strict discipline. Not far from Palampur—a town often on the tourist trail—it's quite a hidden gem, if you’re looking for one.

Address

Navdeep Building, Near Auckland Tunnel, Lakkar Bazar
Shimla
171001

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 7pm
Tuesday	9am - 7pm
Wednesday	9am - 7pm
Thursday	9am - 7pm
Friday	9am - 7pm
Saturday	9am - 7pm
Sunday	9am - 7pm

Telephone

+919816091630

Website

http://www.thetravellertrails.in/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when The Traveller Trails posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to The Traveller Trails:

Shortcuts

Unique publication from mountains

The Traveller Trails magazine is designed to showcase the diversity and ease of India as a destination and the specialists who sell it best. The Traveller Trails magazine is a high quality, perfect bound and full color travel magazine published from Shimla, Himachal Pradesh. The publication educates people about the diverse tourist destinations and assists in tour planning by providing the right informative in a simple and logistic manner. Its size and quality clearly separate it from other publications. The Traveller Trails magazine is available at newsstands, bookstores and tourism centers nationally & internationally. The magazine is also distributed through Digital Newsstands like Magzter and Amazon Kindle.