Tag Archives: Travel Blog

Prayers and dal bhat for breakfast. It doesn’t get much simpler than that. An overnight stay at the guesthouse at the Thrangu Tashi Yangtse Monastery, some 40 kilometres from Kathmandu, Nepal, is like stepping into another world: a timeless space where the drone of Tibetan Buddhist chanting – punctuated by gongs and cymbals – resonates through the crisp, crystal […]

View full post »

It is always a joy to meet someone who loves their work! Brett Weingarth is an oyster farmer who is so excited about oysters, and the environment they grow in, that he conducts regular tours of the oyster leases on the tidal waters of Pambula Lake (Broadwater), just off Australia’s southeastern Sapphire Coast. Brett grew […]

View full post »

A serpentine track of crushed rock switches back and forth across the almost-empty Mongolian landscape. One has to wonder why there are so many bends in a road of ruts and rocks and puddles when it only has to cross a relatively flat plateau! Yet, our Russian UAZ (Ulyanovsky Avtomobilny Zavod) four-wheel-drives refuse to follow a straight line […]

View full post »

When I think of northern India, it is the incredible Rajput (Hindu) and Mughal (Islamic) architecture of Rajasthan that I remember: fortified walls and sandstone edifices climbing across hillsides; exquisite turrets floating in the hot, dusty air; delicate lattice work shielding windows and casting intricate shadow patterns in the cloistered rooms behind them. But, I also think […]

View full post »

Charlemagne (c.742-814), the medieval emperor who ruled much of Western Europe from 768 to 814, dreamed of traversing the European continent, from the North Sea to the Black Sea by water. All that was needed, in theory, was a trench around 3,000 metres (9,843 ft) long, connecting the Rhine River and the Danube. In the absence of pumps, […]

View full post »