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Story behind the Picture #13 When in Rome . . . .
When we travel, many of us will at least pay a nod to the old saying “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”. I guess that this is generally useful advice, in particular paying attention to socially acceptable dress and behaviour, and I have heard numerous instances of people …
Drama in Tiger Leaping Gorge by Carl Welsby
In the mid 1990’s a company I was working for as a tour leader wanted to capitalise on the Channel 4 TV series “Beyond The Clouds”, the name referencing a mis-translation of “Yunnan” (South of the Clouds), a province of southwest China. I would be the first person from the …
Oh, there’s a dead bloke – by Carl Welsby
I remember an early morning cycle rickshaw ride to Old Delhi station, rucksack on knee. There was a “Public Carrier” by the side of the road with a bloke lying under it messing about. But he wasn’t.
Syria; A Wing and a Prayer
Adventure travel by its nature has a Pandora’s box full of things that can go wrong or at least very differently to what you might be expecting. You might be doing things not usually in mainstream holidays, in countries and locations off the beaten track, accommodation that might leave a …
Feeling On Top of the World
In the slightly rising gloom outside I could hear a muffled coughing and grumbling, and the background clatter of hooves on the road nearby. As I had so many times before, I dragged myself out of bed in the dark and tried to wake myself to appear as if I …
Amateur Emigrants #1 We Reach the Rif Mountains !
One year a bunch of us, family and friends, decided that a proper overwinter expedition to the sun was just what we needed. On a previous trip to Morocco some of us had spent a few weeks in France with friends in Lot-et-Garonne, picking plums off the ground for the …
Story behind the picture #10 Et in Arcadia ego: Fathers’ Day
I am on a sandbank in northern India. There is a full moon. The Ganges is the most sacred river of India if you speak to a Hindu for whom it is a goddess itself, bringing spiritual power from the abode of Shiva, creator and destroyer. It is a monumentally …
Many Happy Returns !
That phrase seems to recur surprisingly quickly around this time, and not just for birthdays. For example, it’s only a few weeks since the swallows came back here – over a month late compared to earlier years. They are one of the reasons that I’m here now, as their forbears …
The best thing to order is what they’ve got
We were on a tour through Ethiopia soon after the summer rains, and much of the country we saw was covered in a green pointillist haze for the time being. We were in Bahar Dar, a substantial town on the edge of Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile. …
Plus ca change; plus c’est la meme chose
Chennai / Madras. From outside the hotel traffic noise begins to filter into my mind around 6.30am, though I’d known of and had felt people moving through the city all night, sporadically waking and sleeping in time with passing truck horns. It seemed that it took until this time of …