With the coronavirus pandemic raging around the globe, nobody knows when we’ll be able to travel for leisure again. But this doesn’t mean we have to cut short all our explorations and adventures, does it? This time is ripe for exploring all that’s there in our own backyards, unearthing the little secrets of our hometowns and (re)discovering them in a whole new way. You might be of the opinion that you have seen it all and done it all but trust us when we say there’s plenty left to seek, to see! For starters, you can pick up from this list of twelve options. And no, you don’t have to step out of city limits.

Get a mask on and set out. Happy exploring!

Go on a Themed Walk

The best way to explore a place, any place but especially cities and towns, is on foot. Most of our walking explorations are impromptu; we go where the heart takes us but every now and then we love to plan ahead. We pick a theme, build a route around it, and set off! Sometimes it’s a food tour, sometimes it revolves around specific architectural styles, and sometimes the theme is a diaspora. In Calcutta, the city whose tongue we dream in, you can build walks around 19th and 20th-century mansions, Khidderpore’s many imambaras, colonial Calcutta’s lovely churches, or the many moods of jatrapara. You can hop from ghat to ghat, taking in their varied idiosyncrasies or, go on an eating spree at the city’s legendary cabins. You can go on a ghost tour if that excites you! In Bangalore, you can serenade the darshinis and military hotels. In Hyderabad, Pune, and Mumbai, a walk centred around the Irani cafés is a must-do. In George Town, Penang, we went on a Baba-Nyonya walk to discover more about the life and culture of this community. Even if you have lived for decades in a place, there’s always something new to learn about it!

Tour Local Markets

Local markets, especially those in India and other parts of Asia, are bright, vibrant, and chaotic. They are a portal into the pulse of the place, the culinary culture of the communities that reside that, and so much more and even if you have visited the local market a hundred times, you’ll always find something new to discover. A little curiosity is all you need: How about asking the vendor about that product you don’t know and never cared to find out about? How about striking up a conversation about their lives and livelihoods? Trying to find out about the source of your food? Or, inquiring if that seafood is sustainably harvested? In markets around the globe, you can find hawker stalls selling excellent food: post exploration, fill up on some jhalmuri like we do in Calcutta, or dig into a feast of curries ala Penang’s Chowrasta Market.

Play Culinary Historian

Culinary history is our newest passion! That plate of biriyani we are digging into with such abandon? What’s its story, its history? How about the chingri malaai curry or the aloo posto? If you are interested in food, this might be a great way to learn about your hometown. Rediscover your relationship with your city through its gastronomy. Network with fellow food enthusiasts and grandmothers (because their treasure troves of food stories are unparalleled), visit restaurants and ask questions, read books about food (and that library in your neighbourhood might have some excellent volumes that all seem to have forgotten about. Recently at Thanjavur’s Saraswati Mahal Library, a manuscript with lost recipes from the royal kitchen was discovered!) and document it all. Need ideas? How about creating a culinary timeline of your hometown? Or, retelling its history through a gastronomic lens? Perhaps, gathering some forgotten ingredients and testing recipes with them like Akash Muralidaran?

Take a Cooking Class from Grandma

Around the world, many recipes are drowning in the tides of time every day. Festive food, complex preparations that are labour and time intensive are disappearing from kitchens. In India, where culinary knowledge is passed from mother to daughter and so on are hardly ever documented and lack of documentation means that recipes are lost forever. Visit grandma or your friend’s grandma and jog their gastronomic memory. Write down recipes, cook with her, and learn about heirloom recipes. Food, be it produce or cooked preparations, is steeped in traditions and folklore and almost all of it is passed down as stories down by grandparents to their grandkids. And in these recipes, hand-me-downs from ancestors and in-laws, are hidden stories of culture and traditions, folklore and history.

Learn about Minority Communities and Diasporas

How about a mini ethnography of the minority communities and diasporas who call the place home? In Calcutta, we have the Anglo-Indian community and Armenians. Then there are the Chinese and the Afghans and the Tibetans and the Iraqis. Many like the Greeks have come and gone. And many more continue to travel from other parts of India and the world to work in and live in this city. Wouldn’t it be exciting to document the lives (and adventures) and the food (especially the food!) of these diasporas? Where are they from and why did they migrate? How long have they lived here? What businesses or trades are they involved in? What do they eat and how is their food different from the gastronomy of the land? Are there recipes that got lost in transit, or food from the homeland they miss? Researching about ethnic communities in your hometown is a sure way to find out more about your hometown and its history.

Visit Local Libraries

In most of India, you will find forlorn libraries. In Kolkata alone, there are countless such libraries stashed away in neighbourhoods and back alleys that not many know about or frequent. But in these dim-lit rooms, stacked on shelves you might chance upon books on local geography, history, culture, and heritage. Track these libraries down and spend some time reading about your hometown from the eyes of varied travellers. What did they think of the place? What were their experiences? What did they eat? Did they participate in a local festival? Did they write about a place that you haven’t heard of? And if your library loans videos and movies, check some of those out too for a peek into the socio-economic conditions and, of course, the skyline and the streets of days gone by.

Find the Sound of your Hometown

As Anthony Bourdain said, every city has its sound. What’s the sound of your hometown? Every place has its own soundscape. A cacophonic mix of dialects and indigenous eccentricity that mesh into an identity. The tram bell that rings through Calcutta’s College Street or the sound of tok tok sellers going about in the alleys of old Penang or Beethoven’s Für Elise ringing out from Choon Pan trucks in the streets of Colombo, each sound contributes to a place’s sonic identity. Then there’s music born and breed locally, music that is a product of art as much as it is a product of politics and socio-economics that become integral to a place’s story. The association that New Orleans has fostered with Jazz or Shantiniketan with Rabindrasangeet lends to the cultural identity of the space and her people. Is there a song, a composition that is quintessentially the soul track for your hometown? Listen, and you too will be able to hear the sound of where you belong.

Pop into Legendary Institutions

Those little tea stalls and eateries and pubs have been patronized by folks for countless years. The ones that do only a handful of items but do them so well that everything’s sold out in a jiffy! A place like Allen’s Kitchen in Calcutta. A place like Nam Heong in Ipoh. A place like Lafitte’s Blacksmith’s Shop in New Orleans. I’m sure your hometown has a place like that too. Return into their welcoming maws. Sniff at the history adorning the atmosphere and drink and dine and be merry. And when done, head out in search of the age-old hyper-specialist shops that are institutions in their own rights. In Calcutta, we love to pop in every now and then to learn about the stories and the owners. In the dinghy alleys of New Market, in Shobhabazaar and Burrabazar are shops selling anything from chanachur to silverware. Stop by Pou Chong to hear about the story of their sauces or at Braganza and Co., Calcutta’s oldest music shop. In George Town, Penang, there are old shophouses manufacturing and selling sesame oils (Ghee Hiang, for example) and stamps. Every city around the world has shops like these and it’s worth checking them out! Often, they are filled with heirloom furniture; step in and you are transported centuries back in time.

Hunt for Architectural Gems

What are the architectural gems in your hometown? Who built them? For whom? Take, for example, the Maghen David Synagogue in Calcutta. Most of the Armenian Jews who called the city home have sailed away and now the synagogue stands tall and empty, a reminder of the city’s once bustling Jewish diaspora. Or the many mansions that grace North Calcutta. In the lanes and bylanes of cities like Delhi, Lucknow, and Hyderabad, you can stumble across crumbling mosques and cenotaphs whose grandeur has faded over decades of sun and rain. Go looking and you are sure to find a gem!

An old house in Shyambazar, Kolkata

Start a Project

There are countless themes for projects centering around your hometown. Pick a topic and set off! Need ideas?

Oral history project: How did the older generation experience this place you call home? What was different? What changed? What do they miss about this place? An oral history project is an amazing way to learn about the history of a place. You get to learn about stories and perspectives that almost never make it to the historian’s notes. For inspiration, head to Aanchal Malhotra’s poignant oral history project on the 1947 partition of India.

Botanical illustrations/Pressed Florals: Look closely at the local flora. What’s in bloom this season? Walk around examining the trees and plants, shrubs and moss. Take samples home and dry them and mount them. Or, draw them in a notebook and make sure you label them. And if you don’t know the names, there’s always Google Lens. For inspiration, check Lara Gastinger’s Instagram.

Architectural inheritance: Maybe you can try documenting some unique architectural quirk of your city. For inspiration, head to the Messbari Project, an extraordinary attempt at documenting Kolkata’s old boarding houses, or Calcutta Houses (their Instagram bio says, “A tableaux of photographs and illustrations of Calcutta Houses”).

Etymology: Dig into those library tomes again and/or ask around about names of neighbourhood and streets. Why is it called what it is called? What’s its story? And soon you’ll have an entire compendium of etymology entries about your hometown. Check out our Etymology project!

Neighbourhood guides: We love creating neighbourhood guides! Spend long stretches of time exploring your neighbourhood. Drop by local stores and eateries. Ask about the local history. Write about the best places to eat, to shop at, and things to see. Write about the best cafes and bookstores. If there’s a tattoo parlour, write about it too! Is there anything particularly striking about the place? Anything about the demographics or architecture?

Learn about Local Crafts and Textiles

Few quests are as enthralling as a quest for local crafts and textiles and no matter where in the world you are, there is a chance that there’s something unique being produced in your backyard. In Calcutta’s Chitpur area, there’s the Rangrez community who specialise in dyeing fabrics; you can see yarns and lengths of dyed fabrics left to dry on terraces in these areas. Around the world, in cities and towns, are communities like the Rangrez who create some of the most beautiful crafts in the world. You can visit their workshops and studios, learn more about the community and their craft, and support them.

Bommai Dolls Thanjavur
Bommai dolls, Thanjavur

Fall in Love with your Hometown (again)

Visit your favourite spots. Do your favourite things. Go down memory lane and do all these things you enjoyed doing as a child, as a teenager. Visit those game parlours and arcades you frequented, those bookstores and comic book stores. Perhaps that place of worship your parents and grandparents dragged you to for early morning prayers and sermons? Spend an evening at that diner you went to on your first date or that hole-in-the-wall you ate at with your friends. This is your hometown. Fall in love with it again. And we? We will go drink lebu cha at Shyambazar’s National Economic, then ride the tram to Coffee House again!

Waldo Lake, Oregon

Mohana & Aninda

Mohana and Aninda are travellers and advocates for car-free travel. Two-together is their travel blog where they document their travels to encourage and inspire readers to seek solace in new places, savour local cuisines, and relish both unique and everyday experiences. When they are not travelling, they are actively researching trip ideas and itineraries, obsessing over public transport timetables, reviewing travel budgets, and developing content for their blog. They are currently based in Edinburgh and exploring Scotland and beyond by public transport.

18 responses to “Exploring your Backyard: A Guide to (Re)Discovering your Hometown”

  1. Anna Avatar
    Anna

    These are some great suggestions, I feel inspired to get out and explore my own hometown now! I especially love the suggestion to ‘take a cooking class from grandma’ as there are so many culinary delights fading away with older generations that we should learn & preserve & treasure!

  2. Sarah Camp | In Search of Sarah Avatar
    Sarah Camp | In Search of Sarah

    I’ve been doing this a fair bit this summer! I’ve had a lot of fun finding restaurants with different cuisine and exploring things around me that I didn’t even know existed! It’s good to know we can still have fun locally!

  3. Sharon Avatar
    Sharon

    What a wonderful collection of ideas! I live in San Diego, which is a tourist destination. But I’ve written very few posts about San Diego because to me it’s not a place to travel. Now I’m inspired to get out and tour my own city!

  4. Devin Held Avatar
    Devin Held

    I’ve been guilty of not exploring my hometown very often. I haven’t done much this summer yet either because I’ve been hiding in the country! I hope to get back to Toronto and explore soon.

  5. Farrah Avatar
    Farrah

    My family is still mostly just sheltering in place + I moved back to my hometown just late last year and I’ve been wanting to do this for a while. These are all really great ideas! :]

  6. Danielle in Wanderland Avatar
    Danielle in Wanderland

    These are some fantastic ideas!! I have only just started travelling around my local areas and i love it

  7. josypheen Avatar
    josypheen

    Learning to cook from Grandma is the best tip ever!! I wish I had a grandma here in Canada to learn about their traditional food…I had not thought of asking my friend’s Grandmas!

    My Gran is back in the UK, so I can’t see her while we’re not able to leave Canada. 🙁

    We have mostly been exploring where we live via walks – but you have so many other good ideas. 🙂

  8. Kez Avatar
    Kez

    Love these tips, so handy for the current climate and travel restrictions!

  9. Francesca Avatar
    Francesca

    These are such great and unique suggestions! I particularly love the one about the history of favourite dishes. I’ve recently started paying attention to learning about food origins and it’s fascinating!

  10. Dhananjay Avatar
    Dhananjay

    The best way to describe !!
    Looking forward for more blog !
    Keep the great work !

    https://thelandofwanderlust.com/tour-destination/yolo/

  11. Dhananjay Avatar
    Dhananjay

    The best way to describe !!
    Looking forward for more blog !
    Keep the great work !

    https://thelandofwanderlust.com/tour-destination/yolo/

  12. Melissa Roos Avatar
    Melissa Roos

    I really love seeing other bloggers writing about topics like these. I’ve been so passioned about rediscovering my own home country during these times and it’s so much fun!

  13. Erin Avatar
    Erin

    I love these ideas for reconnecting with one’s hometown! Especially right now, when most of us can’t travel internationally, it’s the perfect moment to put time into re-discovering where we live or where we’re from. Thanks for this inspiration!

  14. Emma Avatar
    Emma

    So many brilliant ideas in this post! And so relevant right now, when a lot of us are going to be doing a lot of staycationing! This has definitely given me some good inspiration.

  15. kmf Avatar
    kmf

    These are all fabulous suggestions when exploring your own backyard. I started my staycation last summer and have discovered so many cool things I never knew existed – and all so close to me.,

  16. Avantika Chaturvedi Avatar
    Avantika Chaturvedi

    Such a thoughtful post – especially nowwnow long term travel is not possible in the near future, this is the best time to explore the stories within our own backyards! Thanks for sharing this lovely piece with the world 🙂

  17. Anwesha Avatar
    Anwesha

    Loved reading this guide. I too have started viewing my hometown Kolkata in a different light. Growing up, I have always been outside of the city so I sometimes feel that I don’t know Kolkata very well. Hope to change that a bit.

  18. Paula Martinelli Avatar
    Paula Martinelli

    I love this so much! You inspired me to search and explore more on my home town, I live in the US but I am not visiting my hometown in Brazil – I am going to start tomorrow to explore more, as I got super inspired by you and your ideas. The pictures are amazing!

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