A homebound travel writer revisits her favourite destinations through art
- Under lockdown in Chennai, photos and paintings stand in for physical adventures to other lands
- Picture perfect destinations range from the fairy-tale streets of Cesky Krumlov to the pristine lakes of Fraser Island
As a travel writer who has spent two decades exploring the globe, Covid-19 has brought my work to a standstill. I was supposed to be in California in March, but cancelled the trip in February, foreseeing the pandemic’s course.
At home in balmy Chennai, on the South Indian coast, I went into lockdown with my husband and son, ordering groceries online, doing Zumba remotely with my trainer, keeping our outside jaunts to a bare minimum.
I had been dabbling in art for a couple of months, as a creative outlet and indulging a childhood passion I had forgotten in the hustle and bustle of a career and motherhood. Now, having time to look at hard drives full of travel photographs taken over the years, I started drawing on my digital memories, capturing my favourite moments on paper with ink and watercolours instead of words. After all, to quote author Vivian Greene, “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain.”
These are some of the results from the past few weeks, each recalling a special memory from a different part of the world. And each infused with the hope that one day I will travel again and capture more memories in words and photographs.
A fairy-tale land
Growing up on a diet of fairy tales, I thought they existed only in books – until I arrived in Cesky Krumlov, in the Czech Republic. A stately castle on a rocky promontory, towers with conical roofs, red-tiled houses, the waft of freshly baked bread in the air, a winding river down in the valley … all the town needed were fair maidens in long trailing gowns and fierce lance-wielding knights strutting down the twisting lanes.