Tag Archives: travel

I love driving into Thailand’s green, jungle-draped mountains, where the clouds hang so low they look like snow patches, and the sun traces the outlines of dark post-afternoon rainclouds and glints off the golden Buddhas and bejewelled temple rooftops. If you turn off the highways, however, it is not long before the ornate temples – and […]

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Pashupatinath, three kilometres northwest of Kathmandu on the Bagmati River, is home to one of the most sacred of Nepal’s Hindu temples and cremation sites. One of the “seven groups of monuments and buildings” that make up the UNESCO-listed Kathmandu Valley, Pashupatinath Temple and the Bagmati Cremation Ghats are also on just about every tourist’s itinerary while in the city. So, the site hosts a mix […]

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Travelling around Switzerland is like luxuriating in a box of the rich, truffle-filled chocolates that the country is famous for. Everywhere you go, picture-postcard scenes meet you. And, if you have Swiss friends to guide you and a Swiss Travel Pass in hand, you don’t even have to work hard: accessing these magic places is easy. […]

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The remote, mountainous corners of northern and western Thailand – and neighbouring  Laos and Myanmar – are home to countless small villages of “mountain folk” (ชาวเขา), or ethnic “Hill Tribes”.  These Hilltribes/Hill Tribes are not a unitary group. In Thailand alone, there are six major distinct ethnic minority groups – the Akha, Karen, Meo or Hmong, Yao, Lahu, and Lisu, plus a few […]

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If you want to be a successful traveler, it pays to do your homework. For example, checking the expected temperatures all around a region – not just on the coast – and packing accordingly! This was not the first time I’d been caught out by weather in Asia: last year, my husband and I “forgot” […]

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