In Nanjing I waited for the Goldilocks time, not too cold, not too hot – to walk the entire Nanjing City Walls. The winter had been miserable. Snow, ice, rain, puddles. With no heating in my office, I sat and shivered with my feet on a… Read more
All posts filed under “Travel”
Fifty, 500, or 5,000 years old? Ancient cultural landscape in the hills of Central Turkey
‘Fox-holes’ perhaps? Did snipers crouch in these to fire down on an enemy below? What were these little rings of rocks strategically placed high up along the edges of central Turkish gorges? (see the featured image) How old are they? Fifty years? Five hundred? Five… Read more
In the Footsteps of Anthony Bourdain: Restaurant CoCoCo in St Petersburg, Russia
A meal in CoCoCo, a top St Petersburg restaurant? One featured in an episode of TV chef Anthony Bourdain? Would I be blowing a week’s travel budget, just to get a few outrageously little servings, then need to fill-up on pizza anyway? After a few… Read more
‘Woman with nails in both sides of skull’ – the Nanjing Massacre Memorial
Arguably, the most shocking part of Iris Chang’s book ‘The Rape Of Nanking’, comes in its Epilogue. During my 12 months living in Nanjing (sometimes written Nanking) , what struck me was a disturbing lack of even slightly old buildings. There are some old treasures… Read more
Uganda – Hell-train to Kasese
As I lowered my arse out the door of the moving train, with my trousers and undies around my ankles, I saw a terrifying sight. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. I had a vague plan to get to South Africa, kind of over-land. Starting in Nairobi, Kenya, I had… Read more
When Corals Lived in the Mongolian Gobi
Corals in Mongolia – is there a better example of dramatic Earth-change?! The Gobi Altai -the mountains flanking the Gobi Desert, are far from the sea. They are semi- arid, bitterly cold in the winter, with lots of bare rock and virtually no trees. Nomadic… Read more
Tourists and War-Graves in Taganrog, South Russia
The man in the Taganrog Park spun around and said something at us. The only word I made out was ‘anglesky’ (‘English’)- the Russian had heard us speaking. Taganrog is well off the route of the average Western tourist in Russia. We were in Taganrog… Read more
Hey – I tracked a Chinese dinosaur!
A small claim to fame….Last year I found some little dinosaur footprints in China, and the resulting paper has just been published on-line. I spent a year at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology as a Visiting Professor. The first field trip was to… Read more
Nomadic Women’s Underwear – in Greek Tanais on the Russian Don
You’ll see the chick with red and green silk bloomers at Tanais… The River Don is one of Europe’s big ones. Even if you haven’t heard of it, the sound should be somewhat familiar – there’s Danube, Dnieper, and the Dniester. They all contain the… Read more
How to see the Porthole Dolmens of Russia’s Caucasus
Travelling in Russia last year I got a chance to see some of it’s famous prehistoric ‘Porthole Dolmens’. Now there is a solid dollop of ‘Atlantic facade’ DNA in me – i.e. Ireland and Scotland, and one of my pet fascinations is for the ‘megalithic… Read more