Category: Travels for Fun
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LONG-TERM GAINS IN THE AMAZON
Reserva Nacional Pacaya-Samiria, Peruvian Amazon – 1989 ‘Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.’ Edward O. Wilson Those of you in my generation growing up in America probably had the same Sunday evening pastime as my family: we would watch the National Geographic specials. I loved that show and would dream of venturing off to far off, exotic lands in search of untouched natural wonders. On one of those evenings I vowed that someday I would travel to the Amazon. But I didn’t…
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CLIMB THAT GODDAMN MOUNTAIN
‘Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.’ Jack Kerouac There’s one thing I learned early on while working in a mountainous national park in the Pacific Northwest: never let a little cloud cover deter you from climbing a mountain. I had a few days off from my job as a ranger in the summer of 1980 at North Cascades National Park and drove over to neighbouring Mt Baker National Forest to climb up to the…
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ALONE AT NITINAT
‘I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.’ Henry David Thoreau, Walden ‘I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.’ Henry David Thoreau If someone were to ask me what was my favourite trek ever, I wouldn’t miss a beat in replying it was my six-day trek along the West Coast Trail…
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VALE VICTOR
Good friends are hard to come by; endearing friends even harder. Victor was one of my greatest endearing friends and his sudden passing today leaves me in a state of total loss. I greatly admired Victor for all of his photographic journeys and adventurous exploits but what made him such a great friend was his gentleness and kindness. It is easy for great people like Victor to get self-absorbed in their own lives and accomplishments but Victor was not like that. He always showed a concern for and interest in others.…
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CHENNAI TO ADELAIDE
We have safely reached home after a long overnight flight from Chennai via Kuala Lumpur. On our last day Padma asked us what we missed most about home. The boys mentioned beef. They missed their all beef hamburgers and sirloin steaks. Every time we saw a cow on the road I could see them salivating with the thought of beef. For me it was blue sky. We arrived in India at a time when the seasons were changing and as a result we had three weeks of haze. Or it could…
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FAREWELL INDIA
We were overwhelmed by the number of family members who came to the airport to bid us farewell and a safe journey home. Ravi and Minny left Gudur before dawn for a three-hour journey to the airport; Chandra, Sampath, Uma, Kumari came from afar the previous days and Usha, Santhosh, Raju and Sujatha came from Chennai. They all came to have one final chance to say goodbye. Imagine taking a six-hour round trip like Ravi and Minny did just to say farewell at the airport. We arrived to the airport early…
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ONE PHOTO, PLEASE
‘One photo, please.’ I kept hearing their voices all the time. The children asking me to take a photo of them. ‘One photo, please.’ ‘Thank you.’ And I kept thinking of all the times I was thanked for taking a photo of a child, a man or a woman. ‘Thank you, thank you.’ Why were they so keen to have their photo taken? Why did they feel compelled to thank me when all I did was press the shutter release button? Andhra Pradesh was a photographer’s dream for an editorial photographer…
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KASHMIR’S LAKE DAL
Allāhu akbar! The Muslim call to prayer at dawn woke us all from our deep sleep on the houseboat. They must have a special New Year’s Day version of the call because it seemed to go on forever. It was a good alarm clock for me though as I wanted to get up at dawn and check out the lake since we arrived in the dark. From the bedroom window though I could see it was still dark as we were completely fogged in so I went back to the warm…
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SRINAGAR
We said goodbye to the Himalayas and drove a couple of hours down to Srinagar, the summer capital of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. Kashmir is a shopper’s paradise due to its carpet and textile industries so our first stop was a carpet wholesaler. Our home is already well decorated with handmade carpets from Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan and India but we weren’t thrilled with the carpet Padma bought a few years ago in Agra so we thought we’d have a look at some Kashmir carpets to replace it. Big…
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