The Guides of Tskaltubo
Memory was fading from Tskaltubo’s long hallways and grand rooms, trapped echoes of grand aspirations from the other side of a political fight but the same side of our human struggle to find… Continue reading
Category Archive: Photos
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The Spas of Tskaltubo
As with all proper legends, Tskaltubo’s story begins with a shepherd. Or a chieftain. And undoubtedly somebody tells it as a virgin who first found the miraculous healing hot springs in what is… Continue reading
What Covid did to Travel: the Good, the Bad, and the Better
English teachers call it a “feedback sandwich.” A discouraged learner might disengage, so you wrap the hard part between two tastier layers. At the end of the first tourism year after two rough… Continue reading
Kyrgyz Trek – Day Six: Going Back, Going Forward
Walking those last hours of descent back to pavement and electrical outlets was a time of comfortable contradictions. Steps tentative with battered ligaments, but perhaps a tiny bit of swagger after traversing the… Continue reading
Kyrgyz Trek – Day Five: Looking into the Abyss
That first hot cup of tea was glorious after a long cold night, and when I tipped my tent to dry in the morning sun and panes of ice cracked and fell off,… Continue reading
Kyrgyzstan Trek Day Two – Orcas and Golden Spirals
Sometime in the mid-1980’s my family went to Seaworld, in large part to see Shamu the killer whale. (We didn’t know any better.) My brother had recently been given one of those thin… Continue reading
Kyrgyzstan Trek – Day One in the Mountains of Heaven
On Day One of my 6-day hike in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan, I had no idea what to expect. Apparently my guides were playing it by ear a bit too. The route normally… Continue reading
European spring 2022
The night before my first tour of Europe after two years of covid-enforced sabbatical, I wrote a post about the energy filling my mind and rattling through my body. But then I took… Continue reading
The Salt Mines of Salina Turda
Have you ever taken one of those glass-sided “sky elevators”? Up the side of the Victor Emmanuel Monument in Rome, in the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid, and China has a doozy or… Continue reading
Sighisoara Dreams
Never judge a city by its train station neighborhood. They tend to be grimy, cracked, and carry a certain energy that makes you want to put your hand on your wallet and leave… Continue reading
