Tag Archives: Hiking

travel diaries: the caucasus and talysh mountains

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Mountains come in all shapes, sizes, and colours in Azerbaijan. 🙂

Dear Diary,

After exploring the Himalayas and Hindu Kush in recent years, I thought I knew it all about mountains. Those soaring peaks on our earth which reach out to the heavens. Could I be further from the truth. I instead learnt, whilst in Azerbaijan, that every mountain range has its own soul. Even if they happen to be geographically right next to each other.

During my 2-week stay, I travelled into the very inner recesses of the Greater Caucasus Mountains in the country’s north, the Lesser Caucasus Mountains in the west, and the Talysh Mountains in its south-east. And was always, both equally charmed and awed.

Though most travellers focus their Azerbaijan travels to the capital Baku, and the much-touted Absheron Peninsula which surrounds it, a mere few hours on impeccable roads takes one to pristine mountain landscapes and towns curled up in the lap of nature.

I thought I would collate some highlights from those days. For posterity’s sake. Continue reading →

south africa 5: kwazulu-natal history—from rorke’s drift to kamberg to shakaland

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isandlwana1
At the historic Anglo-Zulu battlefields in northern KwaZulu-Natal. What you see behind me, to the right, are sand storms in action. 

Day 1: Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift: Where heroes were made

An endless expanse of dusty plains and stunted thorn trees sprawls for miles in front of me. We’ve been driving for five hours now. I’m on my way to Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift and am told it is just beyond the last mound that shimmers in the horizon.

It is incredible that these barren expanses in the middle of nowhere, absolutely nowhere, were once the scenes of key battles fought during the Boer-Zulu, Anglo-Zulu and Anglo-Boer wars.

The few travellers who trickle up north to make this journey tend to be British, military buffs, or those tracing their family tree. But you don’t have to be any of them really. Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift are a celebration of the human spirit during war, of courage against all odds. In the former, the valour was that of the Zulus. In Rorke’s Drift, the heroes were the British. Continue reading →

hiking in the tatra mountains

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Last year I traveled through Eastern Europe, through fairy tales, castles, medieval squares, expressionless communism, and the other side of Eastern Europe – the mighty High Tatra Mountain range with its granite bulk towering over the skyline of Slovakia and Poland, as I drove through gentle undulating hills to reach its midst. Continue reading →