Where is Chitrakoot, Kishkindhya and Panchvati?” Vikrant Pande had asked his friends two years ago, questions many didn’t have the answers to. “Most people could not point Ayodhya on the map, though it was on television every day for political reasons,” he says. It was a desire to discover locations mentioned in the mythological epic Ramayana that led Pande and Neelesh Kulkarni to follow in the trail of Rama. Chitrakoot became the first place they visited in August 2018, a trip that led to the drafting of a chapter that got their publisher to green-light the project. It now finds space in In the Footsteps of Rama: Travels with the Ramayana (HarperCollins), their new title. 

The Ramanathaswamy temple in Rameshwaram, Tamil Nadu, where it is believed the lingam was consecrated by Rama the day after the coronation of Vibhisan