My Yunnan travel plans crumbled under the onrush of the torrential rains that hit the province in the early summer. The news were not reassuring, the high mountain roads unsafe, the prospect of outdoor ...
... without staying one night in town. As I travelled north I noticed that the sky became clearer, the sun shonestronger, and the temperature went up.
Starting from Larabanga junction, the road becomes unsealed, ...
... funeral is organised the body is somehow preserved in the hospital morgue until everything is ready. Relatives and friends travel distances to gather, typically from Friday evening until the Sunday thanksgiving ...
... only see through the eyes of imagination. We travelled across a hilly landscape with sparse farmhouses, yurts, cattle and horses. Finally, we arrived in sight of beautiful pine forests, of very tall cylindrical ...
... it might be ours. However, back at the market, a man offered to take us in his lorry without even waiting. And we were lucky because the Taiwan girl, who was now travelling with three boys from her country, ...
... The population is however mostly Uyghur. It would be naïve and selfish for the traveller to expect a traditional lifestyle today as if time had stopped from the epoch of the trading caravans across the ...
... travel by train. I have a good memory of my last trip back to Beijing two years ago which made me feel nostalgic even before leaving. Whichever means of transport, the end of August is a critical period ...
... Uyghurs were the predominant component. Upon entering I felt curious gazes riveted on me and returned a few welcome smiles. Many faces looked as if they had never seen a foreigner, especially not one travelling ...
... ticket to Kashgar starting in the afternoon. This is a non air-conditioned, slow train that will take 36 hour to travel the 1,500 km to the south. She has not found a sleeper, but only a hard seat. I promise ...
The night bus is about to start its 12 hour long desert crossing. This passage will mark my entrance into Xinjian from Gansu where I have been travelling all along, practically since the beginning of my ...
I reach Dunhuang after another short trip, in the range of half a day, the last before the big jump west and the enormous distances I’ll travel in Xinjiang. The modern vehicle travelling on a well-surfaced ...
... to invaders from the west, it fell into disrepair over time and was only recently restored to its former glory. Now its imposing beauty is a gem in the middle of the barren landscape.
Travelling from ...
... time to act in the role of improvised travel agent and answer his questions about flight duration, route and fare to Europe. Then, pointing to my bus, I crept away with the excuse of its imminent departure. ...
... joints.
His utterance is jittery and his speech is eccentric. Overhearing our conversation, the Japanese traveller bursts out into an uncontrollable giggle that I have a hard time to ignore while I keep ...
When I’m travelling I like to look for recurring themes that like a red string indicate that my journey is following a symbolic route. It was not difficult to find one in Bulgaria.
The day I arrived I ...
... authorised him to tick it off as a visited country.
I’ve never understood people who want to do the tour of the world, especially in this way. For me the philosophy of travel does not reside in visiting ...
... room, or a bus, or anything I happened to need. As an experienced independent traveller, I can’t say that that without this assistance I would have been at a loss; quite the contrary, I often prefer getting ...
... station, but the conversation is not fluent anymore. All has been spoiled by silly greed.
I have a long wait before me. The station is all confusion with people travelling to and fro at the height of ...
... left immediately and arrived in under an hour. From Adwa, there was no bus to Adigrat, but a student coming from Addis Ababa, who’d spent the last two days travelling home for his semester break, suggested ...
A refreshing glass of beer on an empty stomach before tackling the injera made me slightly intoxicated, but the effect was certainly compounded by a very long day of travelling. It’s night time and I’m ...