From the Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range World Heritage Inscription: Set in the dense forests of the Kii Mountains overlooking the Pacific Ocean, three sacred sites—Yoshino and Omine, Kumano Sanzan, Koyasan—linked by pilgrimage routes to the ancient capital cities of Nara and Kyoto, reflect the fusion of Shinto, rooted in …
It was a rainy day in November but the cloudy and gray sky, combined with half-destroyed buildings and ghostly railway tracks, seemed like the ideal scenario for photography. I was wandering around industrial warehouses with broken windows and rusted Soviet machinery. I bumped into a Lenin bust which was surrounded by weeds and located in …
I’ve been in Singapore for a few days now, marking my third time in the city. I was first here in 1999 and was last here during the 2008 Olympics. (Read my previous thoughts on Singapore from 2008.) When I first visited Singapore in 1999 I became fascinated with the city. I read several books …
I’m in Bahrain. The flight was exceptionally short from Qatar. The time I spend on the runway was more than the time spent in the air. As far as I could tell, there are no ferries which run from Doha to Bahrain, and unless you are a GCC resident, you can’t take a bus without …
I arrived in Kuwait last night only to find that the dust storm which had descended over Bahrain was even worse in Kuwait. I looked out of the window of the plane and it was a wall of beige. All of the countries in the Gulf which I’ve visited so far have had very easy …
To say that Dubai is unique would be an understatement. To capture what is going on in Dubai you have to realize that the amount of growth and construction which Dubai has seen in the last 10 years is probably without precedent in human history. While many cities have undergone construction booms, there are few …
I have arrived Israel. 40 years ago, Apollo 8 took the famous photo of the Earth rising over the surface of the Moon. After that photo, many people ooohed and aaaahed about how when you look at the Earth from space, there are no borders or countries and everyone is really just part of one …
What a day. I’m still exhausted even after a night’s sleep. Yesterday was probably the second most grueling day of my travels (the first being the 30 hours I went from the Solomon Islands, to Nauru, to Kiribati, to Fiji, to Hawaii). I got up at 3am in Tel Aviv and left for the airport …
I only have a few hours left in Israel. At 4am tomorrow I take off to the airport for my 7am flight to Rome. I’ll have an eight hour layover in Athens, so I’m going to try and make the best of it and so see the Acropolis in the time I have. It should …