As we wander, we wonder
Portugal feels like it’s currently having its ‘It’ moment for the past five years or so and will continue to be the defining place for new generations to come and for good reason to. Good weather, progressive government, multilingual and educated population, gorgeous architecture, interesting sea-faring history.. the list goes on. As for us, the […]
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Perhaps it is the struggle to fully embody gratitude that always leaves me with mixed feelings about most of my life choices. That and just eternal indecision. After a year or two of returning back home, I developed the indefatigable itch to relocate. I yearned to go back to the Middle East – a region […]
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We dropped by here on our way back from Saadiyat Island to Dubai in the summer of 2022. It was one of the main ‘must-see’ in Abu Dhabi obviously, and am glad we did. It’s hard to find something in the UAE that belongs to the region’s heritage. So much of it is borrowed and […]
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La Villa Bleu was captivating in a way that a St. Regis could never understand. Drenched in originality, covered with the most charismatic patina and perched over Mediterranean mysteries. My only regret was staying here for only two nights. It was dreamy, romantic, unique, melancholic. Here, I had cigarettes over coffee, washed my gaze with […]
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It took me quite late in life to understand that the psychology behind the perfectionist was often motivated by low self-esteem. The idea that without having accomplished something admirable, then one didn’t have much value. The shame and self-hate that accompanies not being perfect was crippling and unnatural. This was a recent epiphany I’ve been […]
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The perks of living in an internet age today, with millions of travel bloggers and websites populating the net is that we can land up in a seaside town quite spontaneously and still be able to organise a trip to a nearby village based on a quick google search on the very same day! That’s […]
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I selected Hotel Palacio de Santa Paula in Granada ultimately because it was a Marriott Bonvoy property, and well we are trying hard to crack on those points to achieve lifetime platinum membership. Other bonuses included the fact that it was a historical property, and perfectly situated between the Old Town of Albaysin and in […]
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Lately, I find that there is a different quality of thoughts in my travels. In my youth, I traveled to seek for a new life, metaphorically and sometimes literally. I was seeking to find a space I could see and know myself, a place for a future self. Every city was attractive in its own […]
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Sintra was as gorgeous as a quaint European town rich in history, adventure and fabulous architecture can be. We were recommended to take on a day’s trip there with an Airbnb guide and it was a day well spent. We started the day with a walk at the historic centre with our lovely guide Miguel […]
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My visits to the desert are few and far between, but every time it happens, it confirms my affinity for this specific terrain. It brings a unique silence, a potent moment for meditation, and an aesthetic magnetism that transcends the beauty of the sea or the mountains. Maybe it’s the way the sky converges with […]
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It’s said that desire is half of life, and indifference is half of death. These days, I’ve been swimming in the shores of death. As the year draws to a close, I review all that has been in the past 11 months and I’m surprised by the richness of its activity, yet its poverty in […]
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There are times when I wonder if social media travellers have spoilt the fun for us. I imagine that if I stumbled upon Sidi Bou Said without having a strong impression of its instagram imagery beforehand, I would have fallen more deeply in love. However, having known what it looked like before seeing it live, […]
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It was the beginning of a hot gulf summer, and we decided to take a short weekend trip to Saadiyat Island from Dubai. The selection criteria were – outside of Dubai but within less than 2 hours from Dubai, a hotel on a beach, and preferably a Marriot Bonvoy property so I could collect some […]
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I fancied myself a pretty competent independent traveller but things became shamefully co-dependent once I got married. In a recent long flight on my own where he wouldn’t be waiting at the airport, I was a ball of nerves. What if I got lost at immigration, what if I didn’t find my bag, what if […]
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Tunis has been floating in my dreams since I was a youth.. in this curious fascinating seductive strip of North Africa lies memories of the Roman empire interwoven with a melange of different languages, culture, history, hopes and aspirations…whatever remains today is only a whisper of the majesty that once was but already it moved […]
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Hot yoga has been around since the 70s but it only slipped into my radar about a decade ago. Friends who have tried said it was satisfying to perspire that much, but no one could really confirm if it had added health benefits to other forms of yoga. Still, the novelty factor got me intrigued […]
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I stumbled into the yawning jaws of mild depression in the last quarter of the past year. It was mild because deep inside I had some confidence that I would eventually come out of the tunnel. That eventually, the compulsion to wallow in terrible melancholia will slowly start to ebb away. In its replacement, a […]
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The idea started a few months ago. My friend and I were trying to figure out what to do to amuse ourselves during the incessant lockdown and suggested we could do some painting. Initially I scoffed at the idea given my non-existent artistic prowess (pretty sure the last time I did art was when I […]
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For anyone who has been following me, I can only apologise for the state of this blog since April this year. It’s just been such madness and sadness of a year and writing wasn’t something I could really commit to. There’s also always this tendency for wanting things to follow a specific system and order […]
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Questioning the merits of living life in a value-bubble has been with me for awhile, even pre-Covid. Essentially, as we get older and accumulate a better sense of our identity, likes and dislikes, we start to remove people and circumstances which don’t fit with our life values. There is a logic and usefulness to this, […]
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A few conversations lately made me recollect the first summer holiday I enjoyed as a young adult with a best friend, and not my family. It was the summer of 2001, and I couldn’t have felt more grown-up. Whatever ambivalence we have about our past, there’s no denying the intoxicating excitement of being so young […]
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I had dinner here twice circa October last year. My friend read a good review and initiated us to give it a try. I loved how it looked from the outside – something different, fresh, inter-galactic. I felt like I was transported somewhere else, another city, another country, another time in a zeitgeist quantum of […]
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The blog has been shuffled into the background as life got in the way, and inspiration ran dry. As KL shifted into yet another semi-lockdown, new daily patterns emerged and reflecting on the interior self became harder. I decided that I would only write if a musing pursued me, instead of me pursuing musings. And […]
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It’s been almost two months since my last update. Life during a pandemic has been a little bit surreal. While living in the thick of it, our vision is myopic. In hindsight, and hopefully there will be a time for hindsights, the individual and collective human experience will probably be understood better. Initially the journey […]
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Recently, in order to break away from the nauseating routine of our days at home, we stayed for a night in town at the Ritz Carlton. There was a really good promotion on offer and being a Marriott Bonvoy point collector, it seemed like a lovely opportunity to collect some points and not face the […]
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Different themes of retaliation often whirl through my thoughts. It is the one feature of human behaviour that has debilitated our growth as an individual, a community, a nation and geo-politically. There are countless examples of how cycles of retaliations eventually demolishes us into human rubble – World War II, the Yugoslavian conflict, Rwandan genocide, […]
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My sister and I agree that we are visual creatures. Everything that has aesthetic value fascinates us and we are often poring over various images of different fabrics, homewares, interior designs, architecture and exchanging notes about beautiful things throughout our travels. She recently came across these exquisite tiffin carriers and fell in love with both […]
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Looking for The Higher Self 