Category: Travels for Fun
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CUSCO: THE FORGOTTEN JOURNAL
Our son, Xander, has left on a grand South America adventure which will take him to Brazil, Argentina and Peru. One of the highlights of the trip will be a seven-day trek along the Inca Trail. I told Xander about my own experiences in Cusco and Machu Picchu when I was about his age. And […]
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ABOARD THE DELPHIN IN THE AMAZON
While a grad student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I took a course on tropical agriculture and studied under the great Amazonia scholar Dr William Deneven. I was mesmerised by his tales of the Amazon. And so was my classmate, Oliver Coomes, who decided to write his PhD dissertation on the riverine peasants – the […]
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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 […]
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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. […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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THE TAJ MAHAL
PHOTOBOMBING AT THE TAJ We arose early to begin a painful long journey by road to Agra and the Taj Mahal. Our travel plan called for us travelling along a modern expressway to Agra. A trip which would have been an easy three hours. But the expressway was closed due to fog as there were […]
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SEVA JYOTI LEPROSY REHABILITATION CENTRE
After Christmas lunch, cousin Joshua asked if we’d like to join him on a visit to a leper colony. I thought at first I was losing something in translation but indeed Joshua worked with lepers and had a scheduled visit. We drove for an hour through little villages and finally arrived at a Seva Jyoti […]
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HITCHHIKING TO THE MORRAINES
FIVE-DAY BLACK & WHITE PHOTO CHALLENGE – DAY 5Kettle Morraine State Park, Wisconsin – 1978Scanned from Kodak Plus-X negative film To conclude this B/W photo challenge, I’m going to go back to one of the first rolls of black and white film I ever shot. You may think that I’ve got an incredible memory to […]
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