So where the heck is Smyrna? I’d heard a little about the awful days of 1922, but despite having made a few trips to Turkey, I’d never noticed Smyrna on a map. It wasn’t until I read Giles Milton’s book: ‘Paradise Lost: The Destruction of… Read more
All posts filed under “Travel”
Nominated: Content Catnip award for Most Interesting Blog on WordPress!
Last week I checked my email, to find that I had been nominated for the Content Catnip award for Most Interesting Blog on WordPress. That was a nice start to the day – thanks a lot! Content Catnip describes itself as “a quirky internet wunderkammer… Read more
That Rich Woman in the Slovenian Forest
We don’t know what she looked like, because most of her upper body has vanished…. Most of you probably don’t know of my ‘secret’ ambition – to ‘time travel’ by recreating life-like images of people from long ago. I’m keen to know what those corroded… Read more
A Chilling Thought about Travel – is it mostly Hoarding?
Seven months of travelling nearly done, and I’m siting in a plane, about to watch a documentary on Martin Phillipps of ‘The Chills’. My trip started in Ukraine/Belarus. Then I moved south to Turkey – more precisely the Kurdish far south-east. An underlying theme was… Read more
A Postcard from the Pripyat, Belarus
The young woman walked up to me, and, without a word, began rearranging the coins on my hand…. *** References to the Pripyat Marshes, near the border of Belarus and Ukraine, keep popping up in books as the area where the Slavic languages appeared. I… Read more
Excuse me, I’m looking for the bog – Yelnya, Belarus
This all started in Minsk with my CouchSurfing host Alex’s Mum, Olga. Alex wasn’t home from his tutoring work, so Olga thought she would show me some photos of Belarus on the internet. Among a slew of truly stunning landscape shots, a few reached out… Read more
Desperately Seeking Cool Cafes in Odesa, Ukraine
My first impression of Odesa was not good. It was back in 2006 when I was merely transiting on the way to neighbouring Moldova and Transdnistria. From the train, I needed to jump almost directly onto a little shuttle bus. After an overnight trip from… Read more
The antifragile (?) tree-ferns of Omatepe, Nicaragua
“We’ll follow these guys – they’re three local hoodlums”, This from my local guide on Omatepe Island, Nicaragua. I was sitting behind him on his trail bike, and we were burning down the road after walking up Volcan Maderas, the smaller of the two volcanoes… Read more
One Night in San Salvador (El Salvador)
The first Salvadorean who I asked about visiting his country advised me to avoid its capital, San Salvador, entirely. “I love my country, but….” He urged that I get a bus direct from Guatemala (where I was based) to a beach town, chill there, and… Read more
Yes – Go to Nicaragua now
The news coming out of Nicaragua back in October 2018, was uncertain. Violence from the political situation seemed to have abated, but various travelers and locals were reporting that the tourism infrastructure was in chaos. Hostels had closed down, buses weren’t running, etc. I went… Read more