You turn a final corner and there it is in front of you…the grand 18th-century Palacio Real de Madrid (Royal Palace of Madrid). Protecting the largest royal palace in Western Europe is an elegant, gilded decorative iron fencing in bold black and gold, offsetting the purist white of the magnificent structure beyond.
Continue reading “Soak in the splendour of the Royal Palace of Madrid”
A polite ticket-checker thanks each passenger, bright-red uniformed staff deliver breakfast goodies and pleasant station announcements guide you along the route. Office-going commuters jostle barefoot villagers at smaller stations. You’re rewinding to memories of childhood train travel. Racing the electric poles, beating the running tracks. Vibrant green fields climax into a glorious last stretch of lush hills-and-valleys between Delhi and Jhansi. You’re in a trance…hypnotised by the languorously curving slow train, blackened old monuments of Datia town and the muddy Betwa river cross-over. From Jhansi, its a 45-minute taxi ride down a narrow road through thick of a forested landscape. Prelude to a drama waiting to unfold in the unusual temple town on the banks of the Betwa. Aptly named Orchha (the “hidden”). Ready or not, here it comes…
Continue reading “This is how to soak in the forgotten splendour of Orchha”
Your brain is still woozy from absorbing the red-gold autumn flamboyance of the Lovcen National Park and the raw wilderness of the rocky Dinara Alps, as you drive down towards Budva. Thank the rocky limestone mountain screen that paints Montenegro’s highway. Its a breather from the final spectacle that awaits. Ready or not, here it comes. Right after the final bend.
Continue reading “This is one of the oldest towns on the Adriatic”
You’re driving southeast of Srinagar on the road to Jammu, silently applauding the unmatched spectacle of nature. Towering mountains, frothy streams, leafy canopies, juicy apple orchards and golden haystack fields…paradise has a permanent home in this blessed valley. An hour and 30 kilometers later, you arrive at your destination on the right bank of Jhelum river. Here stands a huge pit, at least 20 feet deep. The skirting of a modest row of tin-roof houses against a wallpaper of the lofty Himalayas is incongruously striking. But its not a pit…its a 1913-dig of crumbling ruins. Fragments of a broken puzzle from the recesses of the past, which only an imaginative eye can piece together.
Continue reading “An 1100-year old ancient temple that lies in ruins”
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