Travel + Leisure India & South Asia — October 2017

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Team Note

OCTOBER 2017

Postcards From Us

This month for our Middle East special, we open our travel albums and share

extraordinary experiences from this diverse region that have stayed with us.

SIMON CLAYS

Luxor’s West Bank.

Parched from a morning

chasing Queen Hatshep-

sut, I break at Howard

Carter’s house for a local

beer. The brew, coupled

with King Tut nostalgia,

sees me headed off on

foot towards The Valley

of the Kings. Half way

across, I spy figures.

Bedouin faces, eye me

suspiciously, as do their

rifles. Stoney faces.

Stoney silence. Then,

toothy grins as wide

as the Nile and they let

me pass!

APEKSHA BHATEJA

At the swanky Yas Viceroy, I opened the glass

door to my balcony and the shriek of an F1 car

echoed in my ears. Blink, and I would miss it—the

trace of a reverberating buzz the only signal that

they zoomed past. Never a fan before, I sat there

for hours and watched the scene with mixed

emotions of glee and nervousness.

ANWESHA SANYAL

Quite accurately, when we reached Oman,

everything fell out of place—the call sheet,

the story line, and in one occasion, our model

India Woods (she fell into the infinity pool and

we had a laugh later). I suppose, the learning

I took from this is that the best equipment

you can travel with, is your crew. Especially,

when you’re up against such a landscape.

This issue, we worked with shadows, and how

they sometimes make life extraordinary,

just like happy mishaps on a shoot.

You know you’re in for a surprise when the outside your window

is a racetrack with F 1 cars swishing by. Now that’s one room with

a view that I had never experienced before.

I’ll never forget how I nearly claimed my own

tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

Destination shoots can never be planned before you

reach the location. That’s what our photographer,

Ashish Chawla, advised me before my

 rst cover.

CLOCKWISE: BILDAGENTUR-ONLINE/GETTYIMAGES; ASHISH CHAWLA; DAVID DAVIES/GETTYIMAGES

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