Collecting STUFF. We all do it in some way or another but collecting passport stamps as a pursuit in itself, rather than incidentals that just happen from time to time always veers a bit close to braggadocio for me. Nevertheless just as train and car number plates fascinate some people, so do passport stamps. It takes all sorts ! (I have to admit my own peccadillo is collecting CAA airport significator codes – LHR, DEL, MCW etc).
Podcast version here
In the mid 1990’s I was working for a tour leader for a well-known UK adventure holiday company, leading small groups into the nether regions of Asia and the Middle East. The company wanted to capitalise on the Channel 4 TV series “Beyond The Clouds”, the programme name referencing a mistranslated “Yunnan” (South of the Clouds), a province of southwest China. Read more . .
I had completely forgotten that my name might arouse some amusement, to say the least, when I went on a trip to Central Asia. Bob, you see, means a bean in Russian (also Hungarian for that matter), and a polite but wry smirk crossed the face of every Intourist guide and receptionist for the next few weeks.
The predominant images of China are dominated by its huge population, by the dramatic pace of urbanisation and industrialisation, but vast areas of China tell a very different story. Southeast China in particular has spectacular mountain scenery around the Yangtse River and south to the border with Burma (Myanmar) there are many isolated but self sufficient ethnic minorities with characteristics very different from the Han majority. All the images here were taken by my talented friend and fellow Tour Leader Carl Welsby
The question of value, and of values, can often be highlighted by travel in countries with which we may only have a passing acquaintance. The commonest example of this disparity is when people part with money willingly. It stands to reason, I think, that when people dive out of a tour bus in a small town to get a few bits of fruit or whatever from the market; one, you’re a stranger to local prices; two,Europeans are usually unversed in haggling over prices; three, whatever you’re asked for a bunch of bananas e.g. will be still be trifling compared to what you pay at home; four, as a foreigner, you’re likely to be one of the richer people around and therefore fair game for what I like to call “skin tax”.
Podcast version here
A collection of images from the natural and the human world especially the geometric forms found in Islamic architecture. The structure of lichens is of endless fascination, and they are easily found in most landscapes if you take the care to look. The strictures in Islam against the representation of living creatures produced an ingenuity of construction and of pattern that almost makes the onlooker dizzy with detail, and a source of continuing pleasure.
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. A normally wide and shallow outflow within walking distance of our lakeside hotel allowed us a view of the waters at the start of their long journey through Ethiopian gorges until debouching onto the lower lands of Sudan, at Khartoum, where our Nile joins the White Nile, already well travelled from Lake Victoria. From there the combined waters would irrigate an intermittent strip of habitation until reaching Egypt where the population crowded around the river as far as the Mediterranean. Read more . .
