It’s autumn now; days of misty mornings, soothing cold, refreshing and sporadic rains and shades of red, vermilion and gold leaves blowing in the wind. It feels dramatic. It reminds me of my visit to the Princeton University Campus during one such fall.
Tag: Colors
Around 11 am, my jet-lagged eyes saw the October morning brimming with autumnal lights for the first time in Berlin.
This year, the 22nd Berlin Festival of Lights will unfold 9–18 October 2026, each evening from 7 PM to 11 PM, transforming historic buildings across the city into canvases of art and illumination.
Summer had trickled into autumn, unlike California, from where I boarded the flight two days back. I treated myself with a cup of coffee and sat down to peep into the city from my hotel window.
It almost felt like a Facebook feed because of its continuously changing scenes. Then I decided to open the window a little and instantly the city came alive.
The aroma from the Pizza shop, the sound of laughter and conversations, and the people made it real and intimate, unlike the virtual world.
The open streets that I could see from above have an allure that’s hard to avoid.
Therefore, without wasting much time, I quickly planned to see the ongoing Festival of Lights in Berlin, Germany and walk the history-filled roads of Berlin.
Keukenhof is the world’s largest flower garden. Located in Lisse, Netherlands, it means “kitchen garden” in Dutch and is also known as the garden of Europe.
This 32 hectare garden with more than 7 million tulips, daffodils and hyacinths offers a rainbow that can be touched. Here I present a photo essay of the world’s most beautiful spring garden.
In this social media and digital era, our minds are increasingly getting saturated with images and videos in different forms.
Manipulation, reproduction, and distribution of images and videos can be done within seconds using a powerful software that is accessible to all.
From my understanding, these have manyfold results. People have the power to express and distribute their work like never before.
But, the lack of uniqueness and originality leads to relentless production in order to remain in the top of people’s minds.
This overproduction leads to saturation, and nothing really registers in the minds of the viewers, good or bad.
In other words, the shelf life of such images or artworks has decreased significantly.
I being a blogger, who extensively uses various mediums to tell a story, always try to find the subtle balance between art and its commercial and mass appeal, a difficult task in this world of excess.
When I heard about the exhibition on the effervescent pop art of Andy Warhol at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art or SFMOMA, I turned to the pop art maestro for inspiration and motivation to keep on creating.
Before driving through the Blue Ridge Parkway in reality in my 30s, I drove through it in my dreams during my twenties! My dream was to drive miles after miles amidst unbound beauty and was not limited to any particular country.
In reality, when I drove through the Blue Ridge Parkway, I felt exhilarated not because it is one of the most scenic routes in the USA but because the reality connected me to my long cradled dream.
Eventually on the way, on many occasions, my thirty-something me met my twenty-something me.
This post began years ago as a memoir of that drive, and I have kept every word of it. But I have also added what I wish someone had told me before we set out: when the leaves actually peak, which overlooks are worth the stop, how the mileposts work, and where we slept.
Siddhartha, our daughter Chirantana and I drove the North Carolina stretch in late October. The memories are mine; the practical details below are current as of fall 2026, and this guide is written for the family planning the same drive.
