Bazarduzu: Forbidden Mountain of the Caucasus
Regular readers might have noticed that each autumn my friends and I take a foreign mountaineering trip. This habit started with long weekends in the Alps and Pyrenees, but in recent years we’ve been a bit more adventurous, pulling off trips to Morocco, Kazakhstan and Georgia. This year’s was possibly the best yet, a six-man trip to […]
Changing Plans in the Caucasus, Part 1
Nothing went according to plan on this mountaineering trip to Georgia and Armenia. Which is probably why it was so much fun. The Caucasus have rarely been more prominent in the British consciousness. Two recent TV series have featured the region, Levison Wood’s “From Russia to Iran: Crossing the Wild Frontier” and “Russia with Simon Reeve”. […]
Moroccan Zen: September’s Outdoor Sleep
I found myself reaching for the word ‘Zen’ to describe the state of mind induced during and following my recent mountaineering trip to Morocco. But what exactly is Zen? And why did this single three letter word seem to be a more accurate summation of my experience than any I might aspire to craft from the 8000 words […]
Time travel using Google Earth: Kudle Beach
Google Earth image of the beaches of Karnataka, Southern India. Anticlockwise from top left: Gokarna Beach; Kudle Beach; Om Beach It is tempting to regard travel in terms of physical movement, but when one travels it is through both space and time. One does not merely visit a place, rather one experiences a unique […]
Urban exploration in New York
When this guy realised I was from Scotland he started singing the praises of George Galloway, who is now something of a celebrity in the US Last week I had the opportunity to travel to the US with work. My itinerary took me to New Jersey, just outside the great city of New York. This was my […]
New York
The anti-terror paranoia that pervades New York City had started to rub off on me. What if they were out to get me? Manhattan from Staten Island Ferry Train from Summit NJ to New York Penn Station The skyscrapers of the New York skyline, about twenty miles distant, appeared through gaps in faintly autumnal […]
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