Tag Archives: blog Pashupatinath, three kilometres northwest of Kathmandu on the Bagmati River, is home to one of the most sacred of Nepal’s Hindu temples and cremation sites. One of the “seven groups of monuments and buildings” that make up the UNESCO-listed Kathmandu Valley, Pashupatinath Temple and the Bagmati Cremation Ghats are also on just about every tourist’s itinerary while in the city. So, the site hosts a mix […]  “Spring” – that season of new life and fresh growth – is a concept originating in the temperate regions of Europe. There is nowhere quite like an English country-garden to herald Spring in all its traditionally subtle beauty. The gentle rains – for which the countryside is so well known – coupled with slowly increasing sunlight, give […]  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 […]  Oh, Saigon! It was a name familiar to those of us who grew up in the West: first as an exotic part of France’s colonial empire, until – as Saïgon – it achieved a hard-won independence in 1955, and then as a component of the evening news for its pivotal role in the Vietnam War; the city now known as Ho Chi Minh (HCM) has been at a […]  One of the many joys of Byron Bay Bluesfest, that annual Easter long-weekend festival of blues, roots, and just about every other kind of music, is – for me – the very range of styles packed into five days, and the depth of talent offered up on the five+ stages. Although Americans tended to dominate the […] |
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