Category Archives: Nature Even though the ground passes slowly when you are walking, it is amazing how much that ground can change in the course of a day – or from one day to the next – on the Cathar Trail in the French Pyrenees, where tiny villages are connected by quiet country roads and ancient walking tracks. […]  Pai is one of those out-of-the-way and hard-to-get-to places that everyone seems to have been to. Situated in a lovely valley and surrounded by hills which are home to natural hot-springs, elephant camps and numerous ethnic groups (“Hill Tribes”), Pai has grown from a sleepy market town to a mecca for budget tourists, with plenty of […]  It’s a cautionary tale… “It’s raining and blowing down here and your windows and doors are open! Your power and water have been turned off. I haven’t seen your maid at all this year. Your house is full of geckos and who knows what else!” So came the phone call last week from our neighbour […]  Palm Sunday. Hotel Cartier, Quillan. My husband and I sat in the hotel breakfast room, people-watching surreptitiously over our coffee and croissants. The only other occupant of the room was a woman in walk-pants, about my age, with a round quirky face and short curly hair. She sat in a booth opposite us, unhurriedly drinking café […]  Take isolated communities growing rice and raising cows and chickens in rural Cambodia where few roads reach, and you have a need. Take some rail track in disrepair, a bamboo raft and a small motor and you have a solution. Meet “The Bamboo Railway”: the ear-splitting, bone-rattling, wind-in-your-hair, bushes-in-your-face solution to transporting goods and people […] |
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