explore

Research takes you places — literally and otherwise. This page is a running record of the places I've been, the rides I've done, and the things outside the lab that keep me curious about the world. More gets added as life happens.

Click any marker for the location name. Zoom in to explore.

India

The South — Tamil Nadu, Kerala & Beyond

Four years at IIT Madras meant Chennai became a second home. From there I made my way through Tamil Nadu's temple towns — Thanjavur, Madurai, Kanchipuram, Rameswaram — and down to the very tip of the subcontinent at Kanyakumari. The Kerala coast through Thiruvananthapuram and Thrissur, and more recently the Andaman & Nicobar Islands. South India has a different pace and a completely different relationship with food, architecture, and water.

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ISRO Campus Visit — Sriharikota

A visit to SDSC SHAR (Satish Dhawan Space Centre) at Sriharikota during my time at IIT Madras. Seeing the launch infrastructure up close — where India's space programme is built and launched — is one of those visits that stays with you. The scale of what gets done there with the resources available is genuinely remarkable.

The North & Central — UP, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, MP

Home ground in many ways. Lucknow for undergrad, the Ganga towns of Varanasi and Prayagraj, the Himalayan foothills through Rishikesh and Haridwar. Rajasthan is a different India entirely — Jaipur and the different parts I've moved through have a texture that's hard to find anywhere else. Delhi NCR as a recurring transit and work point. Madhya Pradesh in between.

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Kolkata

Kolkata deserves its own mention — the city has an intellectual weight and a relationship with literature, food, and football that doesn't exist quite the same way anywhere else in India. Worth every visit.

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Europe

Vienna & Hallstatt, Austria

Vienna for THERMEC'23 — presenting my FSW research at the University of Technology Vienna. Arriving in Austria to present at an international conference was a full-circle moment from years of lab work. Hallstatt was a day trip from Vienna: a village on a lake in the Alps that looks like someone designed it to be photographed, and somehow still feels genuine despite it.

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Paris & Rome

Two cities that carry an enormous weight of expectation — and mostly deliver. Paris for its architecture and the particular way light moves across stone in the afternoon. Rome for the collision of two thousand years of history into a single functioning city, where ancient ruins sit between coffee shops and scooter traffic.

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On Two Wheels

Cycling

Long-distance cycling became a serious part of life during my MS at IIT Madras. The campus has a strong cycling culture, and the Pedal Storm event became an annual marker — pushing for longer distances and better times each time. Competed at PAN IIT cycling events with podium finishes. There's something specific about the combination of physical effort and distance that doesn't translate to other exercise — you actually go somewhere.

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