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Andulka
EXPECTATIONS
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
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Game Changer & Make Some Noise
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izzy's playlists!
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@glendatravels
Iceland in summer? Why not indeed. Beautiful landscapes. Vast places of isolation. Love it! Another place to add to the list. (And here is another video where Iceland has been used as a back-drop, in the "She Wolf" music video, Guetta feat. Aussie Sia:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVzljDmoPVs)
Mid-Pacific, the 40th day at sea, and the radar shows us all alone again. Lunch is the usual offering. The ship rolls in moderate swells, the air is stunningly clear. Joseph Conrad said that the peace of God begins here, 1,000 miles from the nearest land – but who would trade a fortune and months of life to experience it?
A good friend of mine asked me recently where I would be travelling to next, given that I usually try to go on trips that are a wee bit different from the traditional destinations.
So I was pretty excited to come across this travel yarn in the Financial Times on travelling by container ship. Yup, I didn't know that was possible. So it's definitely going on my travel list. It's not cheap, so I'd better start saving.
Palmerston: one of the most isolated island communities in the world
Here's another place to add to the travel list - Palmerston. It's one of 15 islands near New Zealand. It's beautiful and isolated and it takes quite a while to get there, as this lovely long read by Thomas Martienssen on the BBC explains.
Check out this google map to see where Palmerston is located.
I recently returned from Ethiopia and Somaliland and will be posting some photos here: [email protected] do have a look. It was a very enjoyable experience and I learnt lots. Certainly hope to be returning there for a much longer period of time in the future.
'We don't do beaches'
There's a new tour company there's taking niche tourism to a new level with educational trips to some former and current hot spots, such as Bosnia and Serbia, Libya, North Korea, Turkey and Greece.
It's called "Political Tours" and you get experienced journalists - like Kate Adie of the BBC and Nicholas Wood of The New York Times - or historians, bringing you around and showing you where something happened and why. I guess perhaps it's a good example of taking a walk through a news story and seeing firsthand what you would normally see from a distance away on your television set, newspaper or web report.
So is it called a holiday if you are visiting the sites of massacres and the homes of victims? That's a good question that's explored in a travel feature in the Financial Times:
I'm not so sure that we are not vultures, but, then, I am also not sure that the beady eye of the vulture is any worse than the blind eye of the tourist. Travel may broaden the mind, but so homogenised is the international tourist experience, so perfectly do the high-end hotels and galleries replicate one another, that often all I learn is that I can be as bored in a museum in Istanbul as I can in London. This, however, is different. But is it right?
The Economist also has an article that takes in a few other tour companies and what they are doing, while the BBC takes a good look at "genocide tourism", also called "dark tourism", in the wake of England's footballers visiting the former Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camps before the start of Euro 2012:
People want to be challenged. It may be voyeuristic and macabre but people want to feel those big emotions which they don't often come across. They want to ask that very basic question about being human - 'how could we do this?'
(Personally, I travelled to Cambodia's "killing fields" when I was fresh out of high school and found the experience very powerful.)
I've recently returned from Botswana and Cape Town, South Africa on a last-minute work travel junket (I was replacing someone who pulled out two days before the departing flight).
The trip was only for seven days, but I had a mind-blowing time and will be hopefully posting some thoughts here (and photos here) over the next few weeks. It's suffice to say for now that Africa is certainly a continent worth visiting if you haven't yet.
The map above is one that travellers are sure to like - a socket map of the world!
I came across this on Twitter (thanks @AntonyGreenABC) and it's certainly very useful, not just for seeing where you can use what socket, but which countries use the same ones. Then it's just a short leap through history to deduce why - for political or economic or other reasons - two countries are or are not using similar power points.
I soon realised that no journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within.
– Lillian Smith
An important rule of creative travel writing is to show, not tell, wherever possible. Readers want to feel as if they're eavesdropping on a conversation, or being shown something secret and magical.
The Guardian has compiled an excellent list of travel writing tips. They may seem fairly commonsense, eg. having a hook, quotes from people etc, but I think when the moment comes for you to sit down and write something, a lot of the basics go out the window and you may get caught up in trying to get something down on paper instead of actual putting together a good tale.
I'll be posting a bunch of travel photos from my recent trip to Beijing and Shanghai in China on my photo blog over the next few weeks. I'm also hoping to write up some travel stories about my journey to the Middle Kingdom, so stay tuned.
Best travel websites
I was searching for information on my next holiday and came across this good list by The Guardian on the best travel websites. Fab tips from budget accommodation to city guides to travel knowledge.
Recommended!
(via @noodlepie and @GordonMacMillan)
A handy guide for those working with Brits or travelling to the UK.
While reading up on Japan's current nuclear crisis, I stumbled across this beautifully written travel feature about Chernobyl, and the flora and fauna that has emerged in the exclusion zone around the nuclear power plant, 25 years after the meltdown.
The article, Chernobyl, My Primeval, Teeming, Irradiated Eden by Henry Shukman, describes in vivid detail how the radiation-devastated region has evolved from an abandoned zone into a lively new ecosystem -- perhaps representative of how Earth may be after the era of humans ends ...
Adventure travelling tips
I stumbled across this handy 15-point guide to adventure travelling in the Outside magazine. It's pretty good and has tips from what you should at the airport to how you can rescue your friend if his or her canoe overturns.
Short and sweet and worth a read!
The great crab massacre
One of the strangest things I'd seen in my travels was in Tasmania. I was visiting my friend Rose, who lives on this spectacularly beautiful island state located in Australia's south in June this year. We decided to head off to Freycinet Peninsula to take a walk around Wineglass Bay National Park.
We decided to embark on the longest day-trek there - one that includes a walk along Hazards Beach. Now, I'm not sure why it's called Hazards, but the name certainly rang true for the hundreds of crabs we found dead on the beach.
At first, we only saw a handful of crab shells. Intrigued, we snapped a few photos and walked on.
But then we started to see a line of carcasses along the length of the beach (and it's a very long beach!). What was going on?
Some of them looked bleached, like there had been lying there in the sand, forlorn and abandoned, for weeks rather than days.
Then we also noticed the dozens of seagulls bobbing off the coast, looking like they were having their best meal in years.
And sure enough, straight ahead of us were hundreds upon hundreds of dead crabs.
So what happened? Why did they die? Was it a seasonal thing? A change in the water temperature? Does anyone know the answer?
glendakwek:
I’ve started a photo blog on another tumblr page. It’s basically a way to share some of my favourite photos - mostly taken while I’m travelling.
I’m still very much an amateur when it comes to photography, so hopefully the photo-taking will improve as I go along.
Enjoy.
ODE ON SOLITUDE Happy the man, whose wish and care A few paternal acres bound, In his own ground. Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread, Whose flocks supply him with attire, Whose trees in summer yield him shade, In winter fire. Blest, who can unconcern'dly find Hours, days, and years slide soft away, In health of body, peace of mind, Quiet by day, Sound sleep by night; study and ease, Together mixt; sweet recreation; And innocence, which most does please With meditation. Thus let me live, unseen, unknown, Thus unlamented let me die, Steal from the world, and not a stone Tell where I lie.
Alexander Pope
