GENERAL
Could be my vintage, but far too many things make me feel nostalgic these days. Photographs and memories bring it on of course. As well as my mother’s handwriting on yellowing sheets of paper. A flowing river never fails to take me back to my childhood home. Sunsets on the East coast – where I live […]
Read MoreConsidering my blog is about the world through my eyes, this week’s challenge should have been a cakewalk. But it wasn’t strangely. I found it hard zeroing in on a single image that as per Cheri’s specs. ” ……shows a command of your frame. Lead our eyes somewhere. Make us focus on something“. So I stopped […]
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Old is when you suddenly find yourself on the wrong side of the generation gap. When you take time to figure out ‘LOL’ does not actually mean ‘Lots of Love’. When your boss is (was) a decade younger than you. When your four year old child/grandchild can make your smartphone do astonishing things, that you would […]
Read MoreWhen I got married, my culinary skills were limited to brewing tea and coffee – and not very well at that. It helped that I went into a plantation house with an army of household help or R and I would have starved for sure 🙂 My mother worried endlessly, not so much for R’s […]
Read MoreI hate diverging from my focus on travel on this blog. But the events of the past few weeks have forced me to make an exception. A reputed gallery threatened for showing a nude art retrospective by renowned Indian artists. (Kudos to Ashish Anand for not buckling under pressure.) A ‘Fatwa‘ issued against a teen girl band. Salman […]
Read MoreI wouldn’t be here if not for the travel editor of our local daily, who edited butchered my article to accommodate his own piece in a weekend supplement. That decapitated article led to the birth of ‘The Urge To Wander’, exactly a year ago today. The start of an uncharacteristically unplanned journey, that I half […]
Read MoreNo words or images can do justice to the spectacular desert landscape of Wadi Rum, whose simple, large hearted nomadic inhabitants and their warm welcoming hearths moved us as deeply as the savage land itself. Traversing this surreal sea of sand and cliff was a near spiritual experience. Its vast stillness underlining the immensity of nature, and the insignificance of […]
Read MoreTo those that can dream there is no such place as faraway Welcome to The Urge To Wander. I’m Madhu. I love design. I design interiors for a living (currently on an intermittent sabbatical.) I love reading, and I love desserts. But travel is my passion. And although I started travelling – and blogging – […]
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“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” ~ Robert Browning Perched precariously atop the pinnacles of steep sandstone cliffs, resembling lofty aeries of some giant predatory birds, the monasteries of Meteora beggar belief! Built in the 14th century to escape persecution by the invading Ottomans, with no access save baskets […]
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“I regard myself as a soldier, though a soldier of peace” For a generation far removed from the struggles of the freedom movement, Mahatma Gandhi seems to have been reduced to just a face in their history books and on their currency bills. Neither the high flying, tech savvy, middle class Indian on his race […]
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According to local lore Cusco city is said to be laid out in the shape of a puma crouched over the Saphi river. And its streets denote its body parts. For example: Pumakurko street stands for the “Puma’s Spinal Column”, and the head is supposed to be located in Sacsayhuaman or “speckled head”! Furthering that myth, (rather shiny) brass plaques […]
Read MoreIndia has a thriving contemporary art scene and some of the big names such as M F Hussein and Tyeb Mehta have fetched huge sums in auctions worldwide. Since I cannot afford even the serigraphs of these master painters, I shall introduce you to some comparatively lesser known artists, whose works hang on my walls. […]
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