City-based traveller documents India’s unique festivals, unexplored places

After working in the corporate sector for years, Mahesh Venkateswaran quit his high-profile job to attend to finer things in life which are more of his passion and interest. It included travel, music and photography and he decided to travel every alternate year to see places and meet interesting people and learn and understand the world out there. He started the journey when he turned 50, four years ago. When Mahesh turned 54 on August 14, 2019, he launched an overarching umbrella for all his travel adventures called The Miro Project.

“Miro in Latin means to marvel and I will be including the details of all my previous travels and upcoming ones. The intent of documenting my travels is to inspire people to visit places, experience different things and meet interesting people and give an idea of what is out there. The Miro Project will cover the theme of heritage, nature and people,” he tells us.

Mahesh started documenting his travel journey when he turned 50, four years ago, with ‘Project 1.86’ where he covered different things that are factors of 50 — 50 places of worship, 25 nature spots, 10 festivals, 5 unique villages, 2 unique personalities, and 1 personal project. “Though it was a personal project, one of my friends asked me to post the travel details on Facebook and surprisingly, a lot of people started giving me suggestions on where all I should travel to, what all I should do and so on,” shares the travel enthusiast.

When he turned 52 (in 2017), he launched ‘Project 52’ (52 weeks that year) and decided to do 52 things. He covered this based on five themes — something new, something warm, something old, something calm and something gala. “In this series, ‘something warm’ was about meeting people, who have accomplished something exceptional in their lives. This project piqued the interest of many. I love meeting people, who have done amazing things in their lifetime and inspire us to do more or question our way of life. These people aren’t there on any social media platforms. Using certain keywords I search for ‘people who have done extraordinary things in their lives’ on the internet and reach out to them,” says Mahesh.

Mahesh celebrated his 54th birthday recently and to mark this occasion, he decided to explore the world. “I realised I love heritage sites — something about these places makes me feel there was a very advanced human civilisation before our current race and I wanted to visit these places to admire them and learn about their existence. I also love nature in the purest form. That’s something we often take for granted until we experience them that makes you feel how small you are. I will be visiting 50 global UNESCO World Heritage sites and also some exotic places in the world (from Antarctica to Greenland),” he concludes.

When he is not travelling, Mahesh focuses on his music initiative, MadRasana, which presents classical art form in an intimate setting to bring artistes and the audience close to each other to have a better connect.