For two days, we’ve drifted past schoolchildren waving from grassy banks and coconut groves, watched fishermen untangle their nets at dawn, and played endless games of travel backgammon on a rickety little table on the deck, as the kettuvallam houseboat glides through Kerala’s sleepy backwaters, greeted by kingfisher calls and the gently bobbing palms that …
Read more “Sailing the Backwaters of Kerala in ‘God’s Own Country’”
Wes Anderson Style Wanderings on the Rittner Bahn – A Belle-Époque train travel journey If you ever want to feel like you’ve stepped into a Wes Anderson film, I highly recommend a nostalgic trip on the Bahnl (as the locals call it) – a vintage Belle-Époque wooden train that shuttles gently back and forth along …
Read more “The Meteorologist, the Violin Case, and the 11:16 to Klobenstein”
“Istanbul is a book that is never finished; it is a novel that keeps writing itself, with every step you take in it.” – Turkish author, Selim İleri This time, I travel from Asia to Europe, crossing the Bosphorus from Kadıköy to Eminönü. It is late afternoon and the sun glints off the waves, seagulls …
Read more “Salt, Cinnamon and Stories: A Literary Walk Through Istanbul”
There are two Cubas: the Cuba of the imagination, and then there’s the Cuba I remember. Twenty years ago. The imagined version was shiny, idealistic, full of 1950s glamour. It’s all revolutionary zeal and Hemingway, brightly-coloured Cadillacs and palm trees. The Cuba I remember is not quite the same. There are wind-battered palm trees on …
It was Tove Jansson’s classic, The Summer Book, that first introduced me to Scandinavian summers and archipelagos strewn confetti-like with tiny islands, those in turn dotted with brightly painted wooden cabins. The all-too-brief passing of the northern summer months, the sense of urgency to seize every moment of sunshine and dappled light, before “it is …
Read more “Embracing Slow Swedish Summers – Island Cabin Living”