The Journal

What the journal covers

• First-hand narrativewhat 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 the journal will never write

• 'Best destinations for…'that belongs to a destination hub
• 'Best time to visit', trip cost, itinerarieshub spokes cover those
• '{destination} packages'that's what our tour pages are for
• 'Things to do in {city}'the destination guides cover that

Four themes

• Pilgrimage storiesthe walk, the queue, the river at four in the morning; what a pilgrimage asks of the people who make it.
• Festivals & ritualHoli in the Braj villages, Dev Deepawali on the Varanasi ghats, the river fairs, reported in the week they happen.
• Culture & everyday lifethe trades, the music, the food and the ordinary morning on the steps.
• Guides' own storiesthe people who show you all of this have their own version of it.

Series in progress

• Braj through the yearVrindavan, Mathura and Barsana across a full festival calendar, told by people who are in Braj every season.
• The rivers of pilgrimagethe Ganga from Rishikesh to Varanasi, and the Yamuna through Braj.
• The people of the ghatsportraits from the Varanasi waterfront, photographed and named with consent, never as spectacle.

How a story gets published

• Every claim is checkedevery ritual, date, place and historical claim is verified against a real source or first-hand knowledge before publish.
• Reviewed by someone from the traditiona guide from the community reads anything touching faith or ritual, for accuracy and for respect.
• Consent, and never spectaclea photo essay about real people needs their consent for both the image and the story.
• Corrections in daylightwhen something is wrong we publish a dated correction rather than quietly editing it.

How stories age

• Evergreenupdated in place and kept indexed; the date moves only when the story really changes.
• Annualrefreshed each year into the current edition at the same address, so one story keeps its authority.
• News-peggedtime-stamped and left standing as a record afterwards, out of the featured slot but never back-dated.
• Retiredredirected into the stronger story rather than left to decay the topic around it.

Who writes it