The Kindness of Strangers

On Saturday I wrote a blog about my time in India in 1999. I talked about my experiences in Jalandhar where I was taken in by a family thanks to meeting someone on a bus and spending a few days staying with them, completely impromptu. It turned out to be probably the most rewarding experience …

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Sunday Spotlight – Yangshuo

Let me take the Sunday Spotlight and shine it on the most beautiful spot in China that I have ever visited. Yangshuo is near Guilin, a town revered for its beautiful location by the Chinese. I travelled from Hong Kong, across the border to China and then by overnight train to Guilin, and in the …

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Train Journeys – Darjeeling

Most of the train journeys I have written about so far have been longish journeys, overnighters, epic stories of survival (ok that’s an exaggeration) but not all worthwhile train journeys in the world are like that, in fact some are quite short. Take the seven-kilometre toy train journey from Darjeeling as a prime example. It’s …

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Gateway Countries – Czech Republic (Eastern Europe)

  So folks, for the last one for now in my series of gateway countries, I’m heading to East Europe to a place that so many people are going these days, the Czech Republic. I could have named a few countries I liked more than the Czech Republic, and I was on the cusp of …

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Sunday Spotlight – Astana

Every week I get to Sunday and I have to put up my ‘Sunday Spotlight’, and I gets to thinking, then thinking a little more and then, yes, a little more. No, it’s not that there are no cities left, but that there are so many interesting ones out there that it’s so hard to …

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Train Journeys – St Petersburg to Moscow

Following on from finding my 1999 photos, even though I don’t specifically have any from this trip, I was reminded about it. In Russia, stations are often named after their destinations, a somewhat novel approach perhaps but it makes a bit of sense too I guess. So when you head to Moscow from St Petersburg, …

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