Monthly Archives: March 2016 “The palace of great happiness or bliss.” That is how Pungtang Dechen Photrang Dzong translates from Bhutanese. Also known as Punakha Dzong, it has been an auspicious fortress for many years. Punakha Dzong was the seat of the Government of Bhutan until they moved the capitol to Thimphu in 1955. It is still the administrative centre for the Punakha District, and houses a number of precious […]  Iceland, that tiny Nordic island nation in the North Atlantic, sits just barely outside the Arctic Circle and has more glacier-covered land than all of continental Europe. With a terrain that has been ground flat by successive periods of glaciation and rendered relatively tree-less by human predation, the winter landscape looks cold and white and eerily bleak from […]  Namibia is big. It doesn’t seem particularly big if you are looking at a map of continental Africa, but that is only because Africa is HUGE. Namibia is the 34th largest country in the world. And if your bottom is on a seat in a truck, and you are being driven almost 4000 kilometres in less than two […]  Everywhere you look in Hereford, in the British Midlands, you see history. As a city it dates back to Saxon times, when the Bishop of Hereford was first installed some time between AD 676 and 688. But it has operated as a cross-roads market-town for as long as anyone can remember. Today, its historical buildings serve as reminders of those past […]  “What are water puppets?” asked one of our travel companions from Argentina. We were on a small bus from Hanoi to Halong, and had stopped in Yen Duc Village for a show and an early lunch. “Ahhh, they are a unique local entertainment; you have to see them once.” I replied. “But only once?” he responded, with […] |
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