From Jaipur’s magical pink palace to the summit of North America, we share our top Instagram posts of 2024
It’s been another busy year at Atlas & Boots. In May, I reached the summit of Denali, one of the coldest and harshest peaks on the planet, bringing me a step closer to my dream of climbing the seven summits.
Kia spent most of the year busy with her next book, What Happens in Dark, which is out next June. She did, however, manage to fit in a beach holiday to Greece for some much-needed rest and a trip of a lifetime to China.
Our final blog post of the year takes a look at our top Instagram posts of 2024. We’d like to take this opportunity to bid you all a Happy New Year. Thank you for following along. We look forward to sharing another year with you both here and over on Instagram.
January
Hawa Mahal, or ‘Palace of the Winds’, is one of the most iconic sights in Jaipur, India. Built in 1799 by Maharaja Sawai Pratap Singh, the grandson of the founder of Jaipur, the palace was an extension of the women’s chambers in the City Palace. It was designed as a viewing screen through which women of the royal household could freely watch the vibrant bazaar while remaining unseen.
We stopped only briefly at Hawa Mahal to take some pictures during a jam-packed day on our Essential India tour but it was enough time to snap this shot, one of our top Instagram posts of 2024.
February
Another iconic moment from India was our visit to the Taj Mahal, one of the New Seven World Wonders. The scale of the building is magnificent and the symmetry is stunning, made all the more affecting by its origin story. The Taj was famously built by Emperor Shah Jahan as a memorial for his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died giving birth to their child.
Poet Rabindranath Tagore described it as ‘a teardrop on the cheek of eternity’ while writer Rudyard Kipling called it ‘the embodiment of all things pure’. Needless to say, it was the number one highlight of our trip to India.
March
In preparation for climbing Denali, I spent a week in Scotland on a Winter Mountaineering course. Based in the Western Highlands, close to the iconic peaks of Ben Nevis, Glen Coe, Aonach Mor and the Mamores, I spent the days on the snowy slopes practising a variety of winter skills.
It was, of course, outrageously good fun but more importantly, it prepared me for the wild slopes of Denali, the highest peak in North…
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