The India Adventure... part one...

India is one of those places that drives you crazy and amazes you all in the same breath. It is the quintessential travel destination - you really know you've gone somewhere when you get off the plane, or more particularly, when you start to negotiate for a taxi to leave the airport.

India gave me so much, so I'm giving you a little taste... this first post covers Mumbai, Kerala and Goa. Rishikesh and Dharamsala will be in subsequent posts.

The dynamic, complicated and fascinating history of India is everywhere you look. It is hard to describe the feeling you get when you're there, all I can say is that whatever India has been, and is today, it is most certainly itself.

I'll mostly let the photos speak for themselves, but I'm happy to take any questions!

Namaste...

Navigating the taxi queue... Mumbai

 Local tourists at the Gateway to India, Mumbai

 Taking a photo of me taking a photo... Trivandrum Zoo, Kerala

An old colonial house, now a museum, Trivandrum

...and then I went to stay at an ashram (view from the apartment block, of the Kali Temple)

 In a fitting ending to my stay at the ashram, I then starred in a 'Mollywood' film in Cochin...

 This little cafe in Cochin became our favourite haunt - tea and cake, how can you top that? At Teapot.

 Gorgeous Portuguese architecture in Fort Cochin.

Boating on the backwaters, central Kerala

A houseboat in all its decayed splendour

More gorgeous Portuguese architecture in the Goan capital of Panaji

Cows... and cricket... on the beach, Vagator, Goa

Los Angeles: Lofty heights

So some of you may be aware that I was just in the USA for three weeks on holiday... I intend the next few weeks to be filled with posts about the inspiring ideas I had on my trip.

In Los Angeles I was overawed by the ambitions of architects with grand visions and seemingly unlimited budgets. In the midst of this sprawling city, awash with dry heat, stood various buildings so extraordinary, enormous yet elegant, that I felt compelled to blog about them.

One of my favourite buildings was the Getty Center, perched high on a hill overlooking LA. Not one building but a series of buildings all intertwined, this center is a homage to geometry. To the glory of the grid, more specifically. Each panel on the buildings, each railing, even the distance between each tree, is measured according to a specific grid. The architect was Richard Meier, who listed Frank Lloyd Wright as one of his key influences.

I'm not exactly a grid person, myself. But in attending the architecture tour at the Getty Center, I was inspired by the vision of the architect and his ideas about order and disorder. For example, by laying the gardens out in an accurate grid, he was able to interchange plants and trees to create a sense of order in disorder. That for me is a wonderful creative insight that can be applied to craft and design in many other areas.

Other buildings I adored included the silvery curves of the Walt Disney Concert Hall (not a Mickey Mouse in sight, thank goodness), the LA County Museum of Art and for design of an earlier era, the Richard J Riordan Central Library and the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.