Siobhan McDonough, Writer
I twice read Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi this December, and in the last few pages – I won’t spoil it – in the last few pages, I was suddenly in Chicago in winter seeing the trees spangled with lights, and remembering a different life, one in which I wandered around ancient monuments each weekend. It was…
When I moved to Delhi, I bought a beautiful, hardwood bed, with spring mattresses. My roommate asked why I had done such a thing, and I said that it was because I was planning to stay. I wanted to stay for years. We went to the furniture market in Munirka after dark. Every front shop…
The ease and relative low cost of public transit in Delhi was one of my top five favourite things about living there. This is partially was because I’m an American used to expensive and broken public transit, but I’ve also lived in Europe, and Delhi public transit is better than that too (I’ve never been…
I am in awe of Delhi’s monuments. I was always aware if the privilege I had of living there, that for the change in my pocket you can get on the metro (itself amazing) and end up at buildings from every century of the last thousand years. Delhi reminds me of the ocean. When you…
I went to Shimla in the beginning of December to work. Early December is the best time of year to go; the days and nights are like chilly New England autumn and the town is filled with the whispers of snow. There isn’t very much to do in Shimla, if you’re looking for things to do. The capital…
The travel blog is back! After barely leaving Delhi for the first half of 2019, I’ve been able to take a lot of trips since September. Since I find blogs from other travellers, and solo female travellers specifically, invaluable, I’m hoping this might be helpful! The first solo trip I took in India was to…
It is the middle of a pandemic. I am in the rain in a windy city, looking through all the writing I’d meant to post on this blog. *** January 16th, 2020 The best time of year in New England is September and October. Everyone who’s been there knows this. It’s the time of year…
I haven’t left India in almost a year. As always I have complicated feelings about this, but sometimes less is more when it comes to self-reflection, and as multiple people have told me: “not everything needs to fit into some clean narrative, sometimes you just have to live life and deal with the consequences” (thankfully,…
The first time I flew into Delhi in early February, I had the sense we were descending into an abyss of smog. It was like a vortex below us; clear blue sky above, grey clouds of particulate matter below. I wondered when I would see the sky again. The sky came back, blue-grey, in March….
Last Sunday, I walked around Mehrauli Archaeological Park. Families picnic and cricketers play near thousands of years of ruins, jumbled in intervals through a silent forest. It is lovely, not yet well-known to tourists like the adjacent Qutub Minar, not yet manicured. Plants creep up the rusted gates of tombs. Even on a Sunday afternoon…