Nita Bajoria

Allan pointed toward a distinctive Scottish baronial–style building and said, “This is where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle found his inspiration for Sherlock Holmes.” “But what was he doing here in a hospital? He was an author, right?” I asked, oblivious. “Not all authors begin their careers as writers. Conan Doyle was originally a physician,” Allan laughed. A local author himself, he was my literary tour guide that afternoon. Goosebumps prickled my skin as I stared at the old surgical hospital on...

As soon as I set foot in Winchester, I allotted the first day of the English summer to a visit to Jane Austen’s literary home in Chawton. My relationship with her can be traced back to my teenage days, when I grew up reading Emma and Pride and Prejudice by borrowing them from the school library. Regarded as the first modern English novelist, her stories had a great influence on every growing girl even 200 years after they were written. More so, as we could relate to the myriad emotions that...

From the heights of Table Mountain, Robben Island looked like a lonely scrap of land floating in the vast Atlantic—one tiny dot in the constellation of Nelson Mandela’s extraordinary life. I couldn’t wait to step onto this World Heritage Site, to feel, even faintly, what it might mean for a person to endure 18 years of confinement here and still walk out as the president of a nation. The ferry ride to Murray’s Bay was a bumpy forty-five minutes. Black African Oystercatchers with their bright...