Category Archives: Travel

Like other Indian cities, Madurai in the southern state of Tamil Nadu offers up some magnificent palace and temple architecture. But, it was the life in the streets that I loved best. I was travelling around South India with a small group. We had driven to Madurai from Thanjavur the day before, stopping to visit […]

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They had me at “walk”. Then they told me I’d visit ancient Orthodox monasteries and be treated to Coffee & Greek Delight. What a joy! I was travelling around Greece with a small group: we had wound our way east from Olympia on the Peloponnese Peninsula (see: In the Footsteps of the Gods), and driven […]

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The air pulsates with dry heat. The sky and earth vibrate with impossible colours. You are surrounded by rusted equipment, reclaimed tyres, and expensive solar panels; it is impossible to discern what is in use and what has been abandoned. Houses are fashioned from old campers and railway carriages, or lovingly created out of mud […]

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Sometimes, individuals make a big difference. In Canada’s British Columbia, the most-recently established Provincial Park helps protect trees that are among the province’s oldest. About 114 km (71 mi) east of the small industrial city of Prince George, there remains a section of North American inland temperate rainforest. Pockets of humid forest patches survive in […]

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Every square inch of Greece has a story to tell. History imbues the ancient structures and the fallen stones. Even without an education in what was called in the West “The Classics”, the names were all familiar to me from childhood, and I recognised many of the stories. At Olympia, I saw Hera’s alter, where […]

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