Apr 26
While in Valencia for Spain’s famous Las Fallas festival, I found my way to Valencia’s best kept secret – La Albufera, a national park on Valencia’s countryside. Home to the largest lake in Spain, rice paddies and potato farms, small fishing settlements, pine forests, and El Saler, one of Valencia’s finest beaches, a trip to Albufera is highly recommended on any list of things to do in Valencia. Read more
I’m not a big fan of cities, but Madrid was almost love at first sight. Maybe because it was just the start of spring, or maybe because the city is just that beautiful! I spent most of my time by the River Manzanares in Madrid, strolling along the parks and squares of Madrid, exploring Madrid’s markets and cafes, and discovering its quirky neighborhoods. In this photo essay, I share a roundup of some of the best unusual things to see and do in Madrid, including local hangouts and relatively secret places, that are sure to make you fall in love with this Spanish city too. Read more
What a month March has been. I’ve travelled along the mountains, rivers and rice paddies of Thailand’s north, revisited with much nostalgia the familiar streets of Singapore, revelled in the festivities of Las Fallas in Spain, and finally made that illusive trip to India’s northeast to live with the Mishing tribe of Assam and explore the wilderness of the eastern Himalayas.
And in the midst of all these adventures, I’ve been overwhelmed to see my travel story about Turkey’s Black Sea region, published in BBC Travel, a travel publication I’ve always held in such high regard. Read more
Guest post by Jack Montgomery.
In my blog announcements at the start of 2013, I declared The Shooting Star travel blog open for guest posts. This first one comes Jack, who lives in the Canary Islands of Spain, off the west coast of Africa. He showcases Tenerife, often called one of the last paradise isles in Europe, from the lens of a local. Read more
It lies before us in all its splendour, brought to life by incessant cheering and booing. Men in white togas, and women dressed in colourful long tunics, keep their eyes glued to the pit below. The chariots have circled the arena, and the dust kicked up by the hooves of their galloping horses is slowly settling down. Armour-clad gladiators take centre stage; battle-hardened men who know this might be their last fight. The smell of sweat hangs heavy in the air, as their bravado drives the fourteen thousand spectators wild. The crowd is baying for blood, as a strong sense of anticipation mixed with dread engulfs the atmosphere. I am forced to look away from the bloodshed, towards the calming expanse of the emerald blue Mediterranean Sea that this Roman amphitheatre overlooks. I shake off these musings and smile at my vivid imagination. Read more
After my recent trip to Spain, many of you have written to me to ask questions like what’s the best time to visit the country, and whether it’s really possible for a vegetarian to survive without eating supermarket food. I’ve written travel tips for a first trip to Europe before, but I thought it would be a good idea to dig specifically into Spain this time. So here goes, ten travel tips to make your life travel planning to Spain simpler: Read more
While boarding my flight from Barcelona to Delhi a few days back, the familiar heartache crawled its way back to find me. My month-long adventures in Spain were ending; I already missed the gorgeous olive countryside, the long lunches, the longer siestas, the best sangrias in the world, and the cobbled streets of sleepy old towns that first made me fall in love with Europe. Admittedly, getting upgraded to business class on Turkish Airlines helped nurse the pain, but it wasn’t until I started chatting up my co-passenger on my second flight from Istanbul to Delhi, that I knew I was on my way to new adventures. Before you start getting ideas, this isn’t about that Bollywood story where girl meets boy and the rest is predictable! Read more
Ibiza has always conjured up images of wild parties, loud music, lots of alcohol, and the Vengaboys song for me. In fact, the only people I personally know who’ve been to this little island in the Mediterranean Sea, off the east coast of mainland Spain, are the kind who would drink and dance till they drop. It is probably a good time to confess that I consider myself too old to hit the clubs all night; yes, I’m twenty-four, but as they say, life is short! So when Spain Tourism decided to fly us to Ibiza, I found myself secretly craving an escape on the gorgeous countryside of Spain, for a cosy little wine bar and small-town intimacy with the locals. I couldn’t anticipate then, that Ibiza offers just that in the off season from October to March, when the weather becomes chilly, the parties slow down, and life on the island slips into rejuvenation mode. Read more
A cold wave swept across Spain in the last two weeks and temperatures dipped dramatically. I was travelling in Almeria and Jaen in southern Spain, which are supposed to be among Europe’s warmest regions in winter. It rained incessantly. The skies frowned with dark clouds. My summer wear went deep into my backpack. Many cafes remained shut. Many people remained indoors. It was still beautiful, but in a dull, gloomy way. So two days ago when I arrived in Cordoba and saw uninterrupted sunshine for the first time in what felt like eons, I knew I had to share what that brief stretch of freak winter had taught me! Read more
In vino veritas. In wine there is truth. And on the Spanish countryside, truth of a different kind; one that lays bare a love affair I never knew existed.
My romantic tryst with wine starts on a rainy morning, on the Cister route in the province of Tarragona, an hour’s drive from Barcelona. We drive alongside lush green valleys, partly covered in mist, as a bleak sun shines over the surrounding hills, promising to warm up an unexpectedly cold day. As the rain slows to a drizzle, we stop next to a stretch of carefully manicured vineyards and let the aroma of the grapes intoxicate us. We are in the premises of the Santa María de Poblet monastery, and as we’ll soon learn, these vineyards produce black wine, a darker version of red; there are hours to wait before we can try it. Read more
I quit my corporate job in the summer of 2011 and decided to travel for a living. I've lived with the White Thai tribe in a remote Vietnamese village, hitch-hiked along Turkey's Black Sea coast, swum with black-tip sharks on Malaysia's east coast, spent a night in the highest inhabited village of the Himalayas, and fallen in love with so many people and places, that I've lost count.
My travel stories have appeared in National Geographic Traveller Magazine, The Times of India, The Hindu and Lonely Planet, among others. I've been featured as an intrepid woman traveller in the New Woman Magazine and as a volunteer travel enthusiast in DNA, and interviewed on All India Radio.
In January 2012, I co-founded India Untravelled, with an aim to introduce travel enthusiasts to responsible travel experiences in rural India.
Contact me at shivyanath@gmail.com or on Twitter @shivya.
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