Experience My India
The Journal
First-hand, recurring-access storytelling on spiritual and cultural India, by the guides who are actually there — the continuous version of the one-off feature the media publishes and the “ultimate guide” the OTAs never attempt.
- Written by the people who are there every year
- Owned photographs and real, named bylines
- Fact-checked and sensitivity-reviewed before publish
- Every story links to the journey it inspires
Next in the journal
Holi in the Braj villages, from Barsana and Nandgaon
Vrindavan, Mathura and Barsana across a full festival calendar, by people who are in Braj every season rather than for one week of it. This is the founder's own country — he began as a local guide in Vrindavan at nineteen.
- Format
- Photo essay
- Pegged to
- The Braj Holi season, February–March
- Series
- Braj through the year
- Links down to
- Pilgrimage journeys across India
The editorial calendar
What we are writing, and when it can be written
A festival cannot be reported out of season, so the schedule is pegged to the year rather than to a publishing quota. Each piece belongs to a series, is written by someone who is there for it, and links down to the journey it inspires.
First-hand narrative
The evening aarti at Rishikesh, watched from the steps rather than the boat
Evergreen — the aarti is nightly · The rivers of pilgrimage
Not yet publishedRishikesh, where the Ganga leaves the mountainsPortrait
The boatmen of the Varanasi ghats, and the hour before the city wakes
Evergreen — with consent from every named subject · The people of the ghats
Not yet publishedVaranasi and its ghatsNews-pegged report
The week the Himalayan shrines open, and the queue that forms for it
The Char Dham season, opening in spring · The rivers of pilgrimage
Not yet publishedPilgrimage journeys across IndiaPhoto essay
Dev Deepawali on the Varanasi ghats, from the water
Kartik Purnima, in autumn · The people of the ghats
Not yet publishedVaranasi and its ghatsFirst-hand narrative
A Braj-born guide on the Vrindavan an outsider never sees
Evergreen · Braj through the year
Not yet publishedMeet the people who plan and run your trip
Browse
Explore by theme
Four kinds of story, and nothing else. Each one is something only a person who is there every year can write.
Pilgrimage stories
The walk, the queue, the river at four in the morning. What a pilgrimage asks of the people who make it, told by the people who take them.
In commission
Festivals & ritual
Holi in the Braj villages, Dev Deepawali on the Varanasi ghats, the river fairs. Reported in the week they happen, not summarised afterwards.
In commission
Culture & everyday life
The trades, the music, the food and the ordinary morning on the steps. The history that explains a ritual, written so it can be quoted.
In commission
Guides' own stories
The people who show you all of this have their own version of it. Where they grew up, what they were taught, and what they still go back for.
In commission
What the journal writes
- First-hand narrative — what it is actually like to be there
- Photo essays and portraits of festival, ritual and people
- Culture, festivals, ritual and history deep-dives
- News-pegged coverage of a festival happening now
- A guide's own story, and what happens behind it
What it never writes
- “Best destinations for…” — that belongs to a collection
- “Best time to visit”, trip cost, itineraries — hub spokes
- “{destination} packages” — collections and hubs
- “Things to do in {city}” — the attractions pages
Those questions have their own pages, written to answer them properly. A story that starts answering one has stopped being a story.
The bylines
Meet the storytellers
Every story here carries the name of a real person who was there, and every byline links to their profile — and back again. That is not a formality: an anonymous travel story is worth nothing, and it is the first thing Discover discounts.
Gurudutt Kaushal
Founder, and a Vrindavan guide before that · Noida, Delhi NCR
Gurudutt started in travel as a local guide in Vrindavan at nineteen, turning a passion for showing people the real India into a company he founded in 2018. Under him, Experience My India has hosted more than 50,000 guests from over 35 countries. An avid traveller himself, he has journeyed the length of the country, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, and widely abroad, and that first-hand knowledge shapes how the company plans every trip. He studied at IIT Jodhpur, and was named in Outlook India’s 40 Under 40 list of rising leaders transforming India.
- Started as
- A local guide in Vrindavan, at nineteen
- Founded
- Experience My India, 2018
- Recognition
- Outlook India — 40 Rising Leaders Below 40
Writes on Braj and Vrindavan · Indian pilgrimage circuits · Travel in India
Read the full profileThe guides who will carry the other bylines
Experience My India works with a panel of 500+ local, third-generation guides. They are the authors this vertical is built around — but a byline is a person, and no guide-author appears here until their name, their bio and their own profile are real. The same honesty gate the guides vertical uses applies to a credential on a byline: no “licensed” claim without a verified licence number.
- Full name and the city they work in
- A short first-person bio in their own words
- An owned portrait
- A /guides/ profile the byline links to, and which links back
- Licence number, where a licence is claimed
Series
Stories that belong together
Three running series, each mapped out in advance so no two pieces answer the same question, and each pointing at one place you can actually go.
Braj through the year
Vrindavan, Mathura and Barsana across a full festival calendar, by people who are in Braj every season rather than for one week of it. This is the founder's own country — he began as a local guide in Vrindavan at nineteen.
Mapped, not yet publishedPilgrimage journeys across IndiaA dedicated Braj hub is the cluster's natural down-link target. Until one exists the country pillar's pilgrimage section is the closest real page.
In this series
- Holi in the Braj villages
- The widows of Vrindavan and their own Holi
- Janmashtami, and the night the town does not sleep
- A Braj-born guide on the temples outsiders never reach
The rivers of pilgrimage
One river, followed. The Ganga from where it leaves the mountains at Rishikesh to where it carries the dead at Varanasi, and the Yamuna through Braj — the aartis, the crossings, the fairs on the sand.
Mapped, not yet publishedRishikesh, where the Ganga leaves the mountainsIn this series
- The evening aarti at Parmarth Niketan, from the steps
- Crossing at dawn: an hour in a rowing boat
- The river fairs, and how a city appears on a sandbank
- What the Ganga means to the people who work on it
The people of the ghats
Portraits from the Varanasi waterfront: the boatmen, the barbers, the flower sellers, the families who have kept one fire alight for generations. Photographed and named with consent, never as spectacle.
Mapped, not yet publishedVaranasi and its ghatsIn this series
- The boatmen, and the hour before anyone else is awake
- Learning a trade on the steps
- The musicians of the riverfront
- Manikarnika, handled with the restraint it asks for
Standards
How a story gets published
Four things happen to every piece before it goes out, and one of them is a person from the community reading it.
Every claim is checked
Every ritual, date, place and historical claim is verified against a real source or the first-hand knowledge of the guide who was there, before publish.
Reviewed by someone from the tradition
A guide from the community reads anything touching faith or ritual, for accuracy and for respect. We do not exoticise a religion in order to make a story travel.
Consent, and never spectacle
A photo essay about real people needs their consent for both the image and the story, handled with dignity. No poverty-as-spectacle, no invented quotes, no AI-written “experience” passed off as real.
Corrections in daylight
When something is wrong we publish a dated correction rather than quietly editing it, and anyone named in a story has a route to dispute how they were portrayed.
And what happens to it afterwards
Every story is one of four kinds, and each kind has a rule. It is how a journal stays worth reading in its fourth year instead of quietly rotting.
- Evergreene.g. What it is like to walk the Braj parikrama
- Updated in place and kept indexed. The date moves only when the story really changes.
- Annuale.g. Holi in Vrindavan
- Refreshed each year into the current edition at the same address, so one story keeps its authority instead of splitting it.
- News-peggede.g. The crowds at a river fair this week
- Time-stamped and left standing as a record afterwards, out of the featured slot but never back-dated.
- Retirede.g. A thin or duplicated old post
- Redirected into the stronger story rather than left to decay the topic around it.
Stay with the story
A letter from the road, when there is something worth sending
New stories, the festival that is coming up, and the occasional photograph that did not make the piece. No packages, no offers, no weekly filler — this list exists because a Discover reader we reached once should be a reader we can reach again.
Keep going
Continue your journey
Every story here is about somewhere you can actually stand. These are the pages that tell you how.
The guides who write it
The bench these bylines come from — vetted, named, and yours to book
Editorial policy
Who writes this, how it is checked, and when it was last reviewed
Meet the team
The people behind the bylines, and the trips they run
Varanasi
The ghats, the aarti and the city the portraits come from
Rishikesh
Where the Ganga leaves the mountains
India, the country pillar
The country pillar — where the pilgrimage stories lead
