Scotland Archives - Comfortably Numb

Book review: The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd

`The most appalling quality of water is its strength. I love its flash and gleam, its music, its pliancy and grace, its slap against my body; but I fear its strength…the mysteries in its movement…(the way) it slips out of holes in the earth like the ancient snake.` To read THE LIVING MOUNTAIN (Canongate…

Photo Feature: Parks visited before Covid

This is a wistful post. A plaintive post. A post featuring parks, meadows, downs, fields, trekking routes I`d give anything to revisit, like RN. All photos by Sheila Kumar and subject to copyright. Mysterious Ritigala in Sri Lanka , where you walk and walk and walk amongst venerable trees and shrubs, stone bridges…

Book review: The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell

The Bookseller`s Tale Shaun Bythell, a Scotsman of slightly curmudgeonly nature and a deep and abiding love of books, buys a bookstore in Wigtown and sets about making it arguably the most popular bookshop on the Scottish isle. In between trips hither and thither to look at book collections and buy as he sees…

Photo Feature: Picture Postcards

All photos by Sheila Kumar and subject to copyright. The Alexandra Book Café in Budapest is one of the most ornate coffee shops I`ve been to. All that Baroque gilded moldings, the glittering chandeliers, the striking…

Photo Feature: Ullapool on Isle of Skye, Scotland

Sometimes, you pull out a plate to heap sliced tomatoes on, and it opens the door immediately to a Nostalgia Trip: to Ullapool, a fishing village on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. All photos by Sheila Kumar and subject to copyright. The crockery cupboard at the charming B & B, Rosslyn Cottage, where…

Travel: Scotland`s Lochs

SCOTLAND Water world Scotland’s lochs offer some of the most beautiful bounties of nature I am standing at the edge of Loch Ness. It is a dark and stormy afternoon; the huge mass of glowering thundercloud gathered above echoes the slate colour of the roiling waters. It is fascinating weather in which to gaze upon…

Photo Feature: Scotland

The Highlands All photos by Sheila Kumar. All images are subject to copyright. Scotland`s national flower, the thistle. `Braveheart` William Wallace, and no, he looks like nothing like a certain Mel Gibson….