Sunday Spotlight – Samarkand

Welcome to the sunniest of Sunday Spotlights, concluding this week’s look at Central Asia. Samarkand is a city full of rich history and beautiful Islamic architecture. Bukhara has a more clear distinction between old and new cities, but Samarkand’s ancient treasures seem to be weaved into the modern city a lot more than the equally …

Continue reading Sunday Spotlight – Samarkand

City Rumble – Dubai versus Astana

Boom! The City Rumble is on again and today the contestants are two cities with an eye to the future and some of the world’s most ambitious architecture. In the red corner, from the UAE in the Middle East, weighing in at a population of 2.1 million is the glitzy Dubai reaching high for the …

Continue reading City Rumble – Dubai versus Astana

Scammed in India – Mumbai

How quickly would it take on my second visit to India to be in strife again? Well, as it turned out, not long! The flight from London was, to say the least, ‘bouncy’. I’d taken dozens of flights in 1999, but somehow I must have missed any sort of decent turbulence. Not so in 2000-01, …

Continue reading Scammed in India – Mumbai

Sunday Spotlight – New Orleans

For this week’s ‘Sunday Spotlight’, let’s take a journey to the states, to Louisiana in fact and perhaps the second greatest ‘party’ city in the USA. Oh. There’s an idea for a City Rumble! Hehe. I’ll be juxtaposing again before I know it.     I visited New Orleans after a long day of flights …

Continue reading Sunday Spotlight – New Orleans

West African Memories Ghana Part One

Hey there, back on a Saturday again! This new series is not quite so new I guess. I thought it would be really interesting to re-publish the first blogs I posted, with thoughts from today, and add a few photos and embellish a little. I headed off to West Africa, which I have always found …

Continue reading West African Memories Ghana Part One

The Beauty of Bagan Part Two – Temples

Hi there! Today I wanted to feature the video I’ve made of the temples at Bagan, however I thought I’d let you know about the four temples that I remember most vividly from Myanmar’s amazing Bagan first. These are the temples that feature primarily in the video.   Bupaya Bupaya is a temple on the …

Continue reading The Beauty of Bagan Part Two – Temples

Sunday Spotlight – Agadez

Hello folks. Today, a place which I can’t really talk much about with words. Agadez is a town in the middle of the desert, in the middle of the dusty, dry and poor West African country of Niger. Niger itself is one of the poorest countries in the world, the capital Niamey is a place …

Continue reading Sunday Spotlight – Agadez