Green Elephant, Bagan

This is the view at dusk from the much-reviewed Green Elephant restaurant in Bagan. But good luck finding it as both Google Maps and Lonely Planet have it significantly mislocated. To add to the confusion, there are actually two Green Elephants, both under the same ownership, and signboards on the main road through New Bagan […]

Biking Bagan

I’m not much inclined to get up before dawn. The more so when it’s New Years Day and I’m engaged in trying to navigate unlit streets on an ancient bike with no gears. My body is telling me it wants to be asleep, and my brain is just about registering all the signs of a […]

Bengal & Benares

Calcutta, or Kolkata as it is now known, is a huge city and once the seat of British India. You would have to say that they made a pretty good job of constructing such a giant edifice that nobody would doubt their divinely-ordained power. And out the front is a huge open space which has […]

Vini Pu and other Montenegran oddities

I think it is high time I published some thoughts (and photos) on Montenegro. Now I find myself on my last day in Ulcinj in the far south, with the call to prayer at the mosque on Friday the first I have heard since I was in Morocco. The owner of my guesthouse described himself […]

How many foreigners can you fit in a Toyota pickup?

Much touted as a charming boat trip through rice paddies and farmland, this would be a 3-4 hour trip in the wet season. But right now it’s dry…   So a pre-dawn pickup in Siem Reap leads to a crammed bus ride for about an hour to the most upriver point where you can board […]

Popayan, Cali, Medellin, Cartagena

I tend to forget that traveling to unusual countries results in sensory overload on day one. When I arrived last night, I had lots of experiences to recount, but they were bounced (except for one) by the walk around old Bogota this morning. I’d been told that Bogota was a boring capital city, but the […]

Content Protected Using Blog Protector By: PcDrome.