Fabien and Laetitia’s wedding at gorgeous Chateau Sogeant in Bordeaux.

Getting robbed of $2700 worth of equipment on the second day of my travels hurt more because of the photos that I lost of this amazing couple performing the Tango. On my last day in Buenos Aires, I caught this street performance at night and got swept away by the passion of Tango one last time in this beautiful city.

I find it incredibly hard to shoot in India even though I believe that India is a country that can give a photographer stunning photos effortlessly. There is so much to shoot here if you are new to the country. I was born and brought up here so I lack that certain excitement a photographer feels and this is a bit sad because India is a photographer’s treasure trove.

If you are fortunate to have perfect weather like I did, Scotland is absolutely charming with its profusion of castles and incredibly affable people. I have to say that Scots are some of the nicest people I have ever encountered.

There is usually a story behind every photo. Some are interesting and some not so much.

I take a ferry from the Island of Mull to Iona one afternoon with the intention of spending the night in Iona, renowned for its tranquility and natural beauty. I get off the ferry and fortunately enough, a nice old lady offers me her cottage for 15 pounds for the night. The quaint little cottage right by the water exceeds all my expectations. I walk out to explore the island and return to the cottage at 12AM marveling the fact that it’s still not dark yet. Once inside, I realize that none of the doors have locks on them and for some reason, right at that moment I remember scenes from the horror film,  ’The Strangers’ that I saw a while back. I cannot sleep the whole night. At 4AM, the sun comes up and I get this shot of the sheep.

The famous 21-arch Glenfinnan Viaduct built in 1901, and featured in Harry Potter.

Budapest, Prague and Vienna are three beautiful cities right out of a fairy tale.

Vienna

I don’t think I have ever appreciated living in New York as much as I do now after my third visit to Europe. Any long trip has its ups and downs and for me, the worst part of my two month sojourn was being in Croatia. In fact, just being in Eastern Europe opened up a whole Pandora’s box of issues for me with regards to race and skin color. However, I will admit that inspite of it’s unfriendly people, Croatia is a very beautiful country.

I decided to take a day trip from Croatia to the beautiful town of Mostar in Bosnia which was ravaged by war a couple of years ago. Mostar was named after “the bridge keepers” (mostari) who kept the Stari Most (Old Bridge) over the Neretva river. During Turkish occupation, the Old Bridge was built and became one of the symbols of Mostar. This bridge was destroyed during the Bosnian - Herzegovian war in 1993. I doubt I can put into words the emotions and feelings that this particular trip evoked. To stand in such a beautiful setting and witness firsthand the evidence of war, to see the shelled, partly ruined buildings and talk to people who fought in the war, a useless war that had no reason to touch Mostar, was a moving experience.

Ljubljana and Lake Bled, Slovenia

Eastern Europe is also home to Europe’s forgotten and overlooked population. The Roma or Gypsies with their unconventional lifestyle face immense prejudice and schools are sometimes segregated with signs reading, “White Only”.

Here a Roma musician plays in front of Slovenian graffiti saying ‘Drop Dead’.

Bratislava, Slovakia

Alastair and Denise   Castelvecchio, Italy  May 2009

A month ago I threw a coin in the Trevi Fountain in Rome, wishing to come back to Rome in the near future. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that this wish would come true so soon. I was insanely lucky to get the opportunity to fly from Prague to Rome to shoot the beautiful destination wedding of Alastair and Denise in an old Italian castle. So when you go to the Trevi Fountain, don’t forget to throw in that coin and make a wish.

VERONA and VENICE

People either hate or love Venice so I stepped in with an open mind. Venice is out of this world and in spite of the hordes of tourists and copious amounts of water, I just loved every minute there.

Verona, the city of Romeo and Juliet.

NORTHERN ITALY (CINQUE TERRE, MILAN, COMO and LUGANO in SWITZERLAND)

Playing chess on the streets of Lugano, Switzerland.

They say, before Rick Steves, Cinque Terre was not on the map. Let me explain..Rick Steves is my favorite travel/guide book writer and Cinque Terre is a set of five beautiful, remote villages in the Italian Riviera where I played the tourist. Pesto and Focaccia, both originate from this region so I tried a pesto focaccia in between hikes.

Via dell’Amore between Riomaggiore and Manarola is Cinque Terre’s lovers’ lane.

TUSCANY (SIENA, LUCCA and PISA)

I initially decided to skip Pisa because I had heard that the leaning tower is over hyped and doesn’t meet expectations. Stefano had to be in Pisa and offered to give me a ride. I went along just for the heck of it. As we all know, this tower is one of the most photographed sites in Italy. Stefano challenged me to take a unique photo from a different perspective. It was a hard task but I did give it a shot and had a lot of fun trying.

Ah, beautiful Tuscany. One cannot think of Tuscany without thinking of the magnificent cypress tree, so quintessential and symbolic of the Tuscan landscape. Guess what, it took me five hours of riding around on a Harley to find the perfect set of perfectly lined cypress trees to take this photograph. Haha..much to my surprise, this area isn’t profusely littered with cypress as one would imagine from gazing at the numerous postcards.

Siena’s shell-shaped Piazza del Campo is probably one of the best squares in Italy. Siena is also very famous for the Palio, a traditional medieval horse race run around the Piazza del Campo each year.

Never did I imagine that I would get to ride on a Harley-Davidson in Italy for a whole day. So the highlight of the visit to Siena was getting on a Harley. Lello was kind enough to lend me a leather jacket to complete my transformation into a biker chick. I spent an absolutely amazing day trying to scout out some cypress trees, with the wind in my hair and the stunning Tuscan landscape in front of me.

FLORENCE A beautiful city but inspite of that I opted to stay on only for a day. By the time I got to Florence, I think I was exhausted and asking myself, why am I here alone and what is the purpose of this if I am not enjoying myself. Traveling alone, one experiences the highs and lows and I think I had hit huge low point. You could be in paradise and living your dream but when you hit a low, everything seems awful.

I happened to be in a campsite two minutes away from the most amazing view of Florence. It rained the whole night and it was so cold that I thought Florence is the city I will perish in alone..haha.

UMBRIA (ORVIETO, PERUGIA and ASSISI)

The Umbrian hill town of Orvieto was a regional power in the Middle Ages and a major Etruscan city centuries before Christ. Towns in Umbria and Tuscany have traces of the long-lost Etruscans who first appeared in the 9th century B.C. The Etruscans were supposedly Europe’s best dressed people. Rome, which was emerging as a major Mediterranean power probably saw the very intelligent Etruscans as a threat and in 509 B.C., Rome expanded capturing Etruscan cities and massacring these people. Apparently the Etruscan prophets had foreseen their own demise, having predicted that Etruscan civilization would last 10 centuries.

In Orvieto, I had the chance to visit fascinating Etruscan and medieval caves where the Etruscans made olive oil and kept their pigeon coops. Pigeons were used for food.

No one really lives in the Medieval city of Civita anymore, hence the name ‘the dead city’. Civita is connected to the world by a long pedestrian bridge and many Etruscan caves have been found here as well.

Everyone says Italy is beautiful. Well, I can confirm that it does feel like I am hopping from one postcard to another.

Italy is no doubt, a photographer’s paradise. I DON’T FEEL LIKE TAKING A PHOTOGRAPH HERE.

This  country has been so well documented in photos that I cannot help but feel there will be nothing authentic about my work. But since I have been lugging this massive camera around, I am clicking away and playing the tourist. In Italy of all places, I am finding it extremely hard to be creative and artistic as a photographer (much to my surprise).

ROME

Rome is a living museum and a beautiful blend of the old and the new, the ancient and the modern. I kid you not, 97% of the people on the streets of Rome either have a guidebook or a map in hand. Everybody (well almost everybody) is a tourist here. One can not cover Rome in three days, maybe three months but not three days.

I went to the Colosseum, the Roman Forum and Pantheon (the best preserved of all Roman buildings, and perhaps the best preserved building of its age in the world), the Spanish Steps, the Vatican and pretty much every church till they all started to look the same. I made the pilgrimage to the Trevi Fountain (always wanted to go there), battled massive crowds and a Statue of Liberty to throw my coin into the fountain.

Trevi Fountain Trivia: Throw one coin into fountain - You will come back to Rome

Throw two coins into fountain - You will find love

Throw three coins into fountain - You will get married

Ok, to be completely honest, I went to the Trevi fountain on all three days and threw in one coin on Day 1, two coins on Day 2 and three coins on Day 3…haha

I also have to add that Italian men live up to their reputation.

I think I was bit taken aback by how small the Colosseum looks when one steps out of the metro and sees it for the first time.

The Roman Forum, ancient Rome’s birthplace and supposedly the most important piece of real estate in Western civilization.

The Pantheon is the only ancient building in Rome continuously used since its construction and because it became a church dedicated to the martyrs just after the fall of Rome, the barbarians left it alone. When it rains, water that falls into the Pantheon through the hole in the 142ft wide dome seeps down through tiny invisible holes in the floor of the Pantheon (as opposed to flooding the interior).

Santa Maria degli Angeli at Piazza della Repubblica was designed by Michelangelo (1561) and built upon remains of a vast and steamy Roman bath complex.

Numerous and ridiculously extravagant churches adorn Rome like Starbucks every three blocks.

And off course, the Vatican City, an independent country of about a 100 acres and 900 people, enclosed in a walled enclave within the city of Rome is the smallest country in the world. Italy is 90% Catholic but not particularly devout with legalized abortion and the lowest birth rate in Europe.

Michelangelo’s Pietà in St. Peter’s Basilica.