Recently, a friend of mine busted his new Ferrari California while driving on the chock-a-block bandra roads. And all he got was a broken suspension and a bruised ego! But in Zillertaller Hohenstrasse, Austria the story plays out differently! Here you can wring the throttle to the hilt without breaking a suspension or rattling your guts. The interesting bit is that you can rent luxury cars like the Ferrari California, Maserati GranCabrio, Merc SLS AMG and a variety of Porsches and drive your way through the twisty Alps. The company that offers such power-packed holidays is Elite Rent and they source out not only roads but also customised driving itineraries. In short, you get to choose your kind of car as well as the roads you wish to drive your dream car on.
This part of the stretch is about 40 km long and situated high up in the Austrian Alps in the Tyrol region. It starts at Ried im Zillertal, which is approximately around 50km east of Innsbruck. In fact, Hohenstrasse has long straight stretches coupled with some twists and turns to keep you dialing in a few steering corrections from time to time. This road is really not about cutting corners because just after a brief lull, there are other corners where you'd like to unleash some serious horsepower of the thoroughbred V8 of either the Ferrari, Maserati or Porsche. There's a particular section in Hohenstrasse which is quite similar to the road from Manali to Leh. But unlike the Manali-Leh road, most of the hairpin bends have good visibility so you know well in advance what's coming up from the other side. Frankly, this is the part where you have all the fun with late braking and hitting the gas pedal hard while exiting corners. But hey, try not aping Michael Schumacher at all times as even a Maserati or a Lamborghini can wiggle its rear owing to the Electronic Stability Program (ESP) working overtime! You might even come across the odd trucker. But barring these sporadic occurrences, you'll definitely get hell loads of adrenaline rush with icy wind blowing straight off the snow-capped peaks.
Poets, artists and single girls have a love-hate relationship with these winter months. Yes, it's that time of the year again! Winters have got the cortege of Sunday brunches, romantic operas, art shows and mid-life insecurities and all call for the best. The art scene is truly glistening almost everywhere in the world including here in New Delhi. But London caught my eye this season with its Drawing Fashion exhibits at the Design Museum London. Showcasing fashion illustrations by the likes of Coco Chanel, Alexander Mcqueen and Christian Lacroix, the collection, has turned London into fashion lover's Medina (Paris is still the Mecca!). Joelle Chariueu an illustrator himself took over 30 years to put this collection together, which has become a sort of historical testament to the beauties that walked the ramp. It is on till next year March, so do try and catch it when you are in London next time. Closer home, New Delhi, at Exhibit 320 an independent art gallery, hosted something rather contemporary and equally fun called Feminine Recitals. Six female artists through their works voice various global issues; this is feminism with a twist, where the artist is not merely concerned with the rights and wrongs of feminist ideologies, but paints a bigger picture around it. Using the stream-of-consciousness technique, the artists voice these concerns through simple acts of cooking and cutting vegetables, through the Hindu rite of ‘Kanyadan’, etc. That’s not all; The Museum of Modern Art New York is also displaying the works of five Indian artists alongside the works of Picasso, Hessee etc. Titled On Line the exhibition traces the evolution of drawing from being just lines on paper to the huge mix-media medium that it is has become today. Rajani Shettar caught my attention, in particular with her eccentric installations made from bees-wax and lights! Another Indian-born artist Alia Syed dealt with issues of identity through her documentaries – one was about a dancer called Priya. Expression of the dancers stunning moves in colour tones was simply mesmerizing. I also came across a few works by the late Pakistan-born artist Nasreen Mohamedi. Known for her minimalist abstract drawings inspired by ideas of modernity and geometry of Islamic architecture, her work spiritual. Looking forward to the ever expanding canvas of the modern artist. After engulfing time, space and motion wonder what will it take on next.
