Bertie Alexander

MD of @Sampan_Travel. Bylines in @TelegraphTravel and @NikkeiAsia. Trustee of @H_4_F_A 🇲🇲 🇮🇳 🇧🇩

[Bertie Alexander @bertie_alexandr]

In November 2026 @Sampan_Travel is launching The Great Hooghly Bazaar.

Visiting sites such as Plassey and Murshidabad, there will be talks in the afternoons by writers and activists on the river's spirituality, migration, and the politics of water.

https://t.co/8yQLeHvHYS

[Bertie Alexander @bertie_alexandr]

Brilliant to have Phekin Konyak in Yangon for our Speaker Series event on the #tattoos of the Konyak Naga Headhunters. Jens Uwe Parkitny was also with us, whose been photographing the tattoos of the Myanmar Chin & Kayin for decades.

More on Phejin here:
https://t.co/jV7uLjW2FD

[Abir Mukherjee @radiomukhers]

Apparently yesterday’s unboxing video was ‘sub-optimal’.

[Bertie Alexander @bertie_alexandr]

Jessami (one of our favourite places in India) and #WW2.
https://t.co/fERvGKfciD via @EastMojo

[Abir Mukherjee @radiomukhers]

The Times calls The Burning Grounds “historical crime fiction at its best” and includes it in its pick of the paperbacks for this month!

[Bertie Alexander @bertie_alexandr]

This Sunday at 11AM UK, I'm speaking to @RobertIvermee as part of @Sampan_Travel's Speaker Series.

Rob will talk about the global history of the River #Hooghly: Mughals, merchants, missionaries and much more.

On Zoom and free to join.

RSVP: yuvi(at)https://t.co/IYzOtWe1Rg

[Nilanjana Roy 📚🦊 @nilanjanaroy]

"I at least have always believed that literature holds power; it is often quiet, but manages to spread ideas far and wide... In the life of the mind, literature has never ceded ground."

~ International Booker 2026 winner Yáng Shuāng-zǐ with translator Lin King

[Bertie Alexander @bertie_alexandr]

Just finished Ira Mukhoty's brilliant book on the Nawabs of Awadh. Beyond the contemporary descriptions of a "decadent city and suspect aestheticism", Ira argues that #Lucknow was "a challenge to both Mughal Sunni power and the increasing parochialism of the East India Company."

[Bertie Alexander @bertie_alexandr]

@SamanAhsan @IKPeshawar That's a different Bertie Alexander. I'm sure the jackets are great, but I am firmly in the travel business, and only on the other side of the sub-contiennt! 😉

[Bertie Alexander @bertie_alexandr]

Our "Rebels at the Red Fort" journey through North India is led by @robert_lyman. We shall be looking at Rani Lakshmibai and other remarkable figures from 1857.

Booking open. More here:
https://t.co/WiZP5pZ9Ko

@Sampan_Travel

[Bertie Alexander @bertie_alexandr]

(It's here that George MacDonald Fraser's Flasman meets her - "the finest garden courtyard you ever saw ... antelope and peacocks strutted on the lawns" - and becomes immediately infatuated with her imperious dark eyes: "here was a woman who'd never asked permission in her life."

[Bertie Alexander @bertie_alexandr]

Hear more about the Rani of Jhansi on @EmpirePodUK's 1857 series, where @DalrympleWill and @tweeter_anita speak to the brilliant Ira Mukhoty.

[Bertie Alexander @bertie_alexandr]

When the EIC took over, she was moved from Jhansi Fort into a small palace.

Although most people ignore it, the Palace cane be visited today: haveli-style, glorious central courtyard with exquisite painted interiors and stone sculptures.

https://t.co/BX4GhW1h0c

[Bertie Alexander @bertie_alexandr]

Among the many figures of 1857, Rani Lakshmibai - Rani of Jhansi - stands apart.

Widowed and without a biological heir, she saw her Kingdom annexed by the East India Company under the Doctrine of Lapse.

Her legal dispute became in 1857 an armed uprising against the British.

[Bertie Alexander @bertie_alexandr]

At All Saints Church in Kanpur (Cawnpore), site of Wheeler's entrenchment during the 1857 Uprising in India.

[Bertie Alexander @bertie_alexandr]

Old #Lucknow, Asaf-ud-Daula's capital of Awadh.

Not just what Brits described as "decadence", Ira Mukhoty writes, "Asaf fostered a Shia renaissance and a glorious, syncretic culture."

"[A] challenge to both Mughal Sunni power and the increasing parochialism of the EIC."

[Bertie Alexander @bertie_alexandr]

Tasting some of the culinary delights of #Lucknow. Biryani, kessariya rabri and Kashmiri tea.

[Bertie Alexander @bertie_alexandr]

La Martiniere College was founded in 1845.

50 boys (6-16) from the College fought at the Siege of Lucknow, becoming the only school in the world to be awarded royal battle honours.

All this and more in @Sampan_Travel's "Rebels at the Red Fort."

https://t.co/WiZP5pZ9Ko

[Bertie Alexander @bertie_alexandr]

La Martiniere College, built as Constantia House by Claude Martin in #Lucknow.

Martin served with the French Conpagnie des Indes in the 1700s, before deserting to join the EIC, then spending 25 years in Oudh (Awadh).

[Bertie Alexander @bertie_alexandr]

Described by one historian as a "border crosser, social climber, chameleon and collector."

Ira Mukhoty writes that he used "bribery, corruption and extortionate usury to amass a truly gobsmacking fortune."