Yearly Archives: 2017

It is always a treat to explore one’s own back yard – especially when that yard includes some spectacular coastline. As much as I love travelling, it is nice to spend some time at home – particularly when the weather is right for walking! My husband and I have been members of the National Parks Association […]

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I love Papua New Guinea. I love it with reservations; the same kind of reservations one has about a disordered cousin whose heart is in the right place, but whose life is always a tumult of chaos. I admit: I was cautious at first. I had been warned before I booked the flights for my […]

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Religion permeates Balinese life. According to Balinese Hinduism – Agama Hindu Dharma – the Gods, natural spirits and ancestral spirits all live on the volcanic mountains while the demons and bad spirits live in the sea. The land between is the humans’ domain, where good and bad spirits battle until eternity. All aspects of daily life try to […]

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After five days of bumping across the rough roads of Mongolia’s seemingly endless grassy steppes, it was with a sigh of relief that I watched our Russian UAZ (Ulyanovsky Avtomobilny Zavod) four-wheel-drive vehicle climb into the Altai Mountains that run along the north western border of the country.  Mongolian guides G and Segi of Shaman Tours were looking after myself,  a small group of photographic […]

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Vienna. City of Mozart. And waltzes. And that other Strauss: Richard – known for his operas, and familiar to my generation thanks to his fanfare from Thus Spake Zarathustra that was used in Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey. But when I think of Vienna, I always think of Billy Joel, or of Leonard Cohen’s melancholy three-quarter time […]

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