Category Archives: Landscapes It was a long day. Long, bumpy, and noisy. I’ve said it before: Cross-country travel in Mongolia is not for the faint-hearted – or for those who are weak of bladder! The Russian UAZ (Ulyanovsky Avtomobilny Zavod) four-wheel-drive vehicles that are tough enough to negotiate the matrix of mud, rocks, dirt and potholes that pass for a road network across the expansive steppes of […]  We’d heard the stories about the Costa Blanca (White Coast) on the Mediterranean in Southern Spain: cheap flights from the northern parts of Europe makes this area a playground for “hens parties”, retirees, and school-leavers. On our recent stay in Alicante Province, Spain, my husband and I met representatives of all these groups. We were staying in the planned resort […]  It looks like such a short drive: From Terkhiin Tsagaan Nuur in Tariat, Arkhangai Province, in Mongolia’s central west, it is just 203 kilometres through the Tarvagatai Mountains to Tosontsengel, in the western province of Zavkhan. That is about three and a half hours “without traffic” – and we expected none. Plus, we had the bonus of paved roads […]  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 […]  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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