Yearly Archives: 2017

With the radio cranked loud, I spent most of last week driving down New South Wales backroads, trying to not tap the beat too hard on the accelerator. The annual Easter-weekend Bluesfest music festival in Byron Bay had finished late Monday night, and I was on the way home with songs in my head and music in my heart. I love […]

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You are taking a chance in the tropics during the wet season! Bali, that volcanic tropical paradise just eight degrees south of the equator, is in the path of the west monsoon from October to April, with heavy rains typical from December through March. But, there are a lot of reasons to love Bali, any time of year. The window of opportunity for my husband and […]

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It’s hard to imagine how the Wachau Valley could be any prettier! “The Wachau” is the name given the narrow gorge where the Danube River runs between the Bohemian Massif on the northwest, and the Dunkelsteiner Woods to the southeast. For roughly fourty kilometres between the Lower Austrian cities of Melk and Krems, the hilltops are dotted with castle ruins and the hillsides are covered […]

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Walking between Ghorepani and Tadapani is like being caught in a Brothers Grimm fairy tale.   The roughly-hewn stone pathways curve up and out of sight through angling sun and patches of low-lying fog, hemmed in by forests of lofty trees coated in lichens and festooned with drapings of Spanish moss. The ground is strewn with pink and red rhododendron blossoms like the trail […]

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There is a mystical magic in the rhododendron forests of Western Nepal … It was day four of a short trek under the patient and watchful eye of our guide Angfula Sherpa, and I was finally hitting my stride. My husband and I were part of a small group walking the Ghorepani/Poon Hill circuit in the Annapurna Conservation Area of […]

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