Cities acquire a name and a character based on the people that inhabit them. Cities develop ‘human’ traits and inherit the genes of their people. They are  born, they bloom, they age and apparently die too.

Like cities acquire character through its people, residents of a city also take on the spirit of the city. In India, famous poets have made their identity synonymous with cities like Daag 'Dehelvi', Jigar 'Muradabadi', Josh 'Malihabadi', Saahir 'Ludhianvi', Majruh 'Sultanpuri'.

This relation through the nom de plume between the city and its poet was not merely one of identity or obligation but reflected the love and belongingness the poets had with their cities. Cities provided anchors around which individual identity could be built while being grounded in a collective existence.

Even today, cities continue to be spaces where individual experiences can flourish. Cities  allow for cultivation of all aspects of human faculties including mind, body, spirit, and material. Despite the individuality that cities guarantee, they also provide a society where diverse people come together and develop a commonality. 

A city and its citizens also develop a commonality and together forge a symbiotic identity. This joint identity could be manifested as creative, innovative, smart, playable, passionate, adventurous and so on.

In our travels, we hope to come across some such cities and citizens and experience the identities they have created individually and together and how the identities are imprinted in time and space.

Nagarnagar signifies not only the noun nagar as much as it also holds a hidden “to” or “से”between the two nagars making it the verb which our journey is, between the nagars. 

We left from Delhi, beginning our NagarNagar travel. We expected the monsoons to be our overwhelming companion but they kept us waiting. We set off from Delhi with a  test run first to Jaipur; Jaipur to Udaipur; Udaipur to Surat; and then Surat to Pune. This was a literal 'run' covering 1700 kms in 72 hours with only night-halts. We wanted to test our driving stamina, our timings, our observations, our conversations and a lot of other things that we intentionally and unintentionally unraveled to ourselves in the process or did eventually.

As we drove through Rajasthan and then length of Gujarat and much of Maharashtra, we saw the winds and screens change through our windscreen. We started into the semi-arid western plains of Rajasthan dotted with hints of Aravalis on the sides till Jaipur and then moved on to sub-humid western part of mild green Aravalis till Udaipur. We then left the Aravali rocky mountain lows for the alluvial plains of Gujarat going past Sabarmati, Mahi, Narmada, Tapi and others. We entered Maharashtra through the Konkan division and drove into the emerald green Western Ghats. After this non-stop journey, we left for Ratnagiri, which was our first stop where we stayed for more than one night.

After this, we drove continuously with halts of two to three days across multiple nagars around India. From Ratnagiri, we traveled to Kolhapur through the western ghats again and then entered northern Karnataka in Belgaum. Moved on to Raibag, Badami, Hampi, Shivamogga and then again through Agumbe, reached Mangalore and then Mysore. Took a work break at Bangalore and then again moved into Tamil Nadu through Salem, Erode, Namakkal to Madurai. From Madurai we reached the tip of land at Rameshwaram and Dhanushkodi.

Reversed our direction along the east coast and came to the vintage Thanjavur. Through Trichy reached Puducherry /Auroville and then Chennai. Through Sriharikota and Sri city, we entered Andhra into Nellore and then Ongole. Met Krishna (river) again when we entered Telangana for another work break at Hyderabad. Next stops were Vijayawada, Rajahmundry, Vizag, Bimplipattanam (2nd oldest municipality in India). Then we moved to Odisha through Rambha and then Puri. After a adventurous meet with dolphins in Chilka, we moved to Bhubaneshwar and then to Kolkata. Eastward we drove through Asansol, Dhanbad into Gaya. Then through the Shershah Suri's Sherghati and Sasaram and crossing the Sone river, we reached Banaras. Through Allahabad, Firozabad, Shikohabad, we reached Agra. Through Agra we traveled towards Rishikesh and then through Dehradoon, Paonta, Panipat, we made our way back to Delhi. And as soon as we reached back Delhi, Tarun had to go to Ljubljana, capital of Slovenia, a city he had never heard of.

We continue to seek and visit more Nagars whenever possible and we hope to keep this blog updated. 

The (black) pins in the map below are the places we visited during the road trip. We covered a total of 11,000 kilometres over about 4 months. We have been adding more nagar s to our travels (shown in a grey colour) and also in this map as and when possible. Adjust the zoom for specific locations.