Around India in Half an Hour

There is a word in Konkani — borrowed from Portuguese, worn smooth by four centuries of use — that captures something no other Indian language has quite managed to name. Susegad. Quiet. Contented. Unhurried. It is the philosophy of a place that spent 451 years negotiating between the world that arrived and the world that was already here. Goa is India's smallest state by area. It was also the...

India's 26th state was born in November 2000. But its history goes back thousands of years — to the ancient kingdom of Dakshina Kosala, birthplace of Rama's mother Kausalya, site of the oldest known paintings in India, and home to forest communities who have lived in relationship with this land since before recorded history. Chhattisgarh is the rice bowl of central India, the land of thirt...

Before Rome was a city, there was Pataliputra. The Greek ambassador Megasthenes visited it in the 3rd century BCE and declared it the largest, most magnificent city on Earth. It was the capital of the Mauryan Empire — the first to unite the Indian subcontinent — governed by Ashoka the Great, whose Chakra sits at the centre of India's flag to this day. Bihar is where the Buddha attained enlight...

A river so wide you cannot see the other bank. Tea gardens stretching to the horizon. A one-horned rhinoceros moving through the morning mist. And a 600-year-old kingdom that repelled 17 Mughal invasions and never once surrendered. This is Assam — the gateway to India's Northeast, threaded through by the mighty Brahmaputra, and home to some of the most extraordinary stories this country has to...

India's first light falls here. Before Mumbai wakes, before Delhi stirs, the sun touches the Himalayan peaks of Arunachal Pradesh — the Land of the Dawn-Lit Mountains — and India's day begins. The largest state in the Northeast, Arunachal Pradesh stretches from the subtropical forests of the Brahmaputra plains to the permanent snowfields of the high Himalayas. It is home to over 26 major tribes an...

We begin our journey through India in the southeast — on the shores of the Bay of Bengal, in a state that will feed you, surprise you, and leave a mark you weren't expecting. Andhra Pradesh is the rice bowl of South India. Two of the subcontinent's mightiest rivers — the Godavari and the Krishna — pour through its fertile delta plains before meeting the sea. It is also home to the spiciest...

Every great yatra needs a starting point. This is ours. Before Ray takes you through the states and union territories of the world's largest democracy, he sits down to tell you everything — what Around India in Half an Hour really is, how it works, why it exists, and what you can expect every single Tuesday at 7pm when a new episode lands. This is not a show about the India you already know fr...