Tag Archives: walk

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 […]

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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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There is a mystical magic in the rhododendron forests of Western Nepal … It was day four of a short trek under the patient and watchful eye of our guide Angfula Sherpa, and I was finally hitting my stride. My husband and I were part of a small group walking the Ghorepani/Poon Hill circuit in the Annapurna Conservation Area of […]

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I lived within easy reach of Australia’s Blue Mountains for many years, and while I’d take visitors up there regularly for day-trips and hikes, I guess I rather took them for granted. I knew some of the stories of the hardships the early explorers (Blaxland, Wentworth, Lawson, and their unnamed servants) faced trying to find a […]

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Once upon a time, a giant took a large rock and threw it away. The rock made a great hole where it landed. When the giant looked around, he saw a white surface, and he exclaimed: “Look, a white lake!” This exclamation is quite literally the meaning of the Mongolian name for Great White Lake: Terkhiin Tsagaan Nuur.  The real […]

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