Tag Archives: Travel Blog

Any visitor to these pages knows I love my music festivals. While small festivals (eg: Thredbo Blues, Thredbo Jazz, and Vancouver Island Music Festival) have their charm, the granddaddy of them all is the annual Easter long-weekend Byron Bay Bluesfest. I first attended back in 1999 when it was a three-day celebration of local and international […]

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I loved the unique charm of Fort Kochi (Cochin). Kochi, the financial and commercial capital of Kerala, is a major port city on the Malabar Coast, home to shipping, industry, and the only international marina in India. Called the Queen of the Arabian Sea, with its commanding location on the southwest coast of the Indian […]

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The American novelist, short story writer, and essayist, Henry Valentine Miller (1891-1980) was enamoured of Greece. I must say: I was too. I didn’t travel in the same style as Miller: he was there for nine months – originally at the invitation of author Lawrence Durrell – and spent his time in the company of […]

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It is remote. And rugged. We were met with a mock war-dance: warriors sporting black body paint and carrying bamboo spears and arrows charged at us, while other villagers crowned in feathers danced and sang. Welcome to West Papua! The island of New Guinea has been populated for tens of thousands of years – mostly […]

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The first day I was on Dal Lake – the centrepiece of Srinagar in the North Indian territory of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), I felt like I was in a dream – or a Monet painting (see: Floating in a Dream). The air is hot and thick. The stillness is punctuated by the plunk of boat oars in the water, […]

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