Tag Archives: travel

The archaeological remains and artefacts that survive to attest to the richness of the almost 30 centuries of civilisation we now call Ancient Egypt (3100-333 BC ) are mind-boggling. That people between 3000 and 5000 years ago conceived of – and built – the pyramids, tombs, mausoleums, and temples, that scatter along the Nile amazes […]

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Colombo, the commercial capital of Sri Lanka, is a multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural city of 5.6 million. Thanks to its large natural harbour and its strategic position along the East–West sea trade routes, the city has a long and colourful history, some of which is still evidenced in the historic colonial buildings dotted between temples and […]

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Mark Twain described a “solemn, silent, sail-less sea” and called it “California’s Dead Sea”. Mono Lake is, indeed, other-worldy. The air is hot and still: July afternoon temperatures range from the high twenties (29°C; 84°F) into the mid-thirties (35°C; 95°F) – and rapidly drop into the single digits at nightfall. The waters are dense and […]

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Life isn’t easy in the lower reaches of Ethiopia’s South Omo Zone. This is a harsh environment: an arid region with low annual rainfall, where indigenous groups have mastered flood-retreat agriculture on the banks of the Omo River. For generations, a number of distinct ethnic groups have managed to hold onto their languages and cultures, […]

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It is one of those iconic images: one of the world’s largest monoliths rising out of a sea of gravelly sand, with colours all along the red spectrum, ever changing in the light. Uluru.  Sacred to the Indigenous Anangu people, this giant sandstone rock formation was said to have been created in the very beginning […]

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