Tourism has come slowly to Bangladesh. It's a poor place, with little to invest in enticing visitors or building tourist resources. Now it principally attracts the adventurous, curious and backpacker set. The country is often…
I first visited castles along the Rhine with my sons in the late 80s. At a restaurant, I tried to order food with the little German I knew at the time. When the waiter left,…
For centuries, in the eastern part of Poland and Slovakia, as well as the western part of Ukraine, the secular world has been quite unsettled. Russia, Germany/Prussia, Austro-Hungary, Tatars, Mongols and even Sweden – all…
It’s all about the journey, not the destination. We’ve all heard that line before, whether noted about the potential of travel or preached about life’s passage. Over the years, for us, travel journeys have usually…
Molded by hand out of dust and clay, like the Adam of Genesis, and given life by invoking God, the legendary golem carried a dual power. Intended as a protector of the Jewish community from…
Often travel is best when it surprises. Even when we plan the arc of our trips - X days here, check out this site there, Y days here, and so on - we keep things…
Most of us vaguely recall the story. Some duke gets killed in Eastern Europe and all hell breaks loose in World War 1. That story gets a new depth with a visit to Zakem Konopiste…
Mostly you notice the natural beauty. Driving the roads and trekking the trails across Bhutan, we traced the bulges and hollows of the richly forested mountain sides. We ascended and descended steeply sloped valleys one…
By 1616, Ngawanag Namgyal aka Zhabdrung, a revered leader originally from Tibet, unified the divided fiefdoms of Bhutan into a holy Buddhist empire. All over the country you see golden statues and images of Zhabdrung…
The Tibetan branch of Buddhism starts about the 8th century with Guru Rinpoche, the most revered of the Buddhist teachers, then was imported into Bhutan by him and his disciples shortly thereafter. Over time its…