Tag Archives: travel Another year has rolled around… I normally head for the fresh air of the Alpine slopes this time of year, but we spent this New Year’s Eve at home blanketed in smoke, with out-of-control fires raging on three sides. The roads to the mountains were unsafe, and there is no fresh air to be had […]  The desert is a magically beautiful place. It is also unforgiving. You have to be tough to forge a life in these hostile, barren expanses where almost no precipitation falls. Bedouin or “desert people” – from the Arabic badawī – have made the deserts of North Africa and the Middle East their home for thousands of years. Even […]  What better way to conquer your fears than by facing and embodying them? The Bugamo Tribe – one of the more than a thousand cultural groups that exist in Papua New Guinea – live in Chimbu (Simbu) Province, high in the mountainous central highlands. Completely unknown to outsiders until the mid-1900s, elders tell stories about their […]  Dancing on the wind, dispersing prayers, mantras, and general good will across the landscape, strings of prayer flags hang to the four corners of Boudhanath Stupa. Somewhere, amongst them, were mine! Prayer flags are said to date back to the battle flags used by the Gautama Buddha in the fight against the asuras – malevolent divine beings considered by Indian mythology […]  It is hot, and arid, and a long way from anywhere. The harsh environment is at least part of the reason why the 16+ ethnic groups who live in the far reaches of Ethiopia’s Omo Valley, near the border with South Sudan, have been left alone to maintain their traditional lifestyles and cultural practices. One […] |
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