Author Archives: Ursula With 83 people per kilometre, compared with about two and a half people per km in the Sahara, the Thar Desert – that large arid region that stretches across most of the border between India and Pakistan – is the most densely populated desert in the world. About 85% of this desert is in India, and about 60% of that covers Rajasthan – where it is home to 40% of the state’s population. […]  Easter! In Australia it is Autumn. Easter might include chocolate bilbies (marsupial rabbit-bandicoots) instead of bunnies, but there are plenty of hot-cross buns and chocolate eggs. Because Easter is a long weekend, it is also time for the Byron Bay Bluesfest. First held in 1990 as The East Coast Blues Festival, this annual celebration of music has grown over the years: encompassing music from […]  Winter in England can be grim: cold, wet, and dark early. Finding something to do outdoors with young people in inclement weather can be tricky. I was staying in Hereford late last winter and had friends coming to visit me. I wasn’t sure what they would be interested in, so I sent them a list of […]  “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 […] |
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