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MikePole
Travelling to understand time and place

Autobiography & Travel

This category brings together autobiographical writing and travel as a form of fieldwork. I have spent much of my life moving through landscapes—sometimes briefly, sometimes for many months at a time—and many of the ideas explored elsewhere on this site have their origins in these encounters.

The posts here range from the usual traveler’s-yarn, to more reflective pieces about place and work. Some are about particular locations, such as New Zealand, Ukraine, or Spain; while others are concerned with the act of travelling itself, and with what prolonged exposure to unfamiliar environments reveals over time.

These essays don’t offer practical travel advice, but focus on attention: noticing landscapes, people, vegetation, and everyday practices. It’s me, trying to get my head around Time and Place – trying to figure out something about the World. Travel, in this sense, becomes a way of learning—sometimes informally, sometimes uncomfortably, but always cumulatively.

Together, these posts form an autobiographical thread running through my broader site, providing a personal context for the scientific, historical, and cultural topics explored elsewhere.

  • Autobiography & Travel

    Mongolia – “Armour-piercing, mate”

    by Mike Pole January 8, 2016
    by Mike Pole January 8, 2016

    “I’ll have to show these to my colleague”. The security guard at Brisbane’s International Airport took the two objects from my bum-bag …

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  • Autobiography & Travel

    Turkistan, Kazakhstan, not Tukmenistan

    by Mike Pole January 5, 2016
    by Mike Pole January 5, 2016

    I’m not at all sure I remembered when all those ‘stans’ appeared on my radar. Did I know about them before the …

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  • Autobiography & Travel

    Cheap Eats Nanjing 10 – Cat in the Kitchen

    by Mike Pole January 4, 2016
    by Mike Pole January 4, 2016

    I thought I had this place sussed. Nice small spot, friendly staff, and a nice noodle dish that the staff kept pointing …

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  • Autobiography & Travel

    Mongolia – The Ghost of Moron

    by Mike Pole January 2, 2016
    by Mike Pole January 2, 2016

    It was on the flight back to UIaan Baatar that I remembered the ghost. My field partner, Nyambayar, and I had been …

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  • Autobiography & Travel

    Cheap Eats Nanjing 9 – make your own soup

    by Mike Pole January 1, 2016
    by Mike Pole January 1, 2016

    I was a bit dark on this place to start with – only because my favourite place suddenly closed just along the …

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  • Autobiography & Travel

    Kalimantan, Indonesia – Twenty minutes from death

    by Mike Pole December 31, 2015
    by Mike Pole December 31, 2015

    The ‘high-wall’ of a mine has been the undoing of many a geologist (if an opencast mine is targeting something flat and dipping, …

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  • Autobiography & Travel

    Mongolia – From Death-threats to a camel-ride

    by Mike Pole December 29, 2015
    by Mike Pole December 29, 2015

    It’s March 2009 in Mongolia and there is an ill-feeling along the Gobi Altai. The year before, and some months after the …

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  • Autobiography & Travel

    Cheap Eats Nanjing 8 – Boiled Dumplings

    by Mike Pole December 24, 2015
    by Mike Pole December 24, 2015

    I’ve been going to this place since Day-One. Fortunately I had a local with me at that time to point things out. Now …

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    Cheap Eats Nanjing 7 – Eggplant and noodles at ‘Have Never Met’

    by Mike Pole December 21, 2015
    by Mike Pole December 21, 2015

    A trendy (the Andy-Warholesque portraits of Mao on the walls are a sort of hint, not to mention the name) up-market (eye-catching menus) …

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  • Autobiography & Travel

    Cheap Eats Nanjing 6 – the ‘Chicken Curry’ place

    by Mike Pole December 19, 2015
    by Mike Pole December 19, 2015

    If you are like me and get a craving for cheese now and again, there are limited options in Nanjing (I haven’t …

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MikePole
  • Home
  • About me
  • Contact me
  • Categories
    • Curio Bay – New Zealand’s Jurassic Fossil Forest
    • New Zealand Geology
    • Supernatural
  • Places
    • Australia
    • Armenia
    • Bosnia
    • Brazil
    • Canary Island
    • China
    • Indonesia
    • Turkey
    • Estonia
    • France
    • Georgia
    • Germany
    • Lebanon
    • Mexico
    • Mongolia
    • Kazakhstan
    • Russia
    • Uganda
    • New Zealand
    • India
    • South Africa
 

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