Naturally Nepal

In the early light, the rock shadows on the snow are sharp; in the tension between light and dark is the power of the universe. This stillness to which all returns, this is reality, and soul and sanity have no more meaning here than a gust of snow; such transience and insignificance are exalting, terrifying,

Eco-By-No-Means-Logical

When you hear Laos, the first image most people have in mind is the jungle. This country is said to have maintained it the most pristine in the whole Southeast Asia. This is why we went up these extra few miles to northern Laos, where the hill-tribe treks were supposed to be more eco-friendly and

Guerrillas in the Mist

I’m sitting on a bus to Dalat next to a cheerful Czech professor of construction who speaks perfect Polish. He’s travelling with his friend’s wife, ekhm. We go uphill and can finally breathe normally as the temperature drops suddenly; it’s a sign that Dalat, an old French hill station, is near. There are stretches of

Cormorants Under the Blue Sky of Yunnan

The last Chinese province on our itinerary waiting to be explored after Hong Kong and Macau was Yunnan. There was a brief thought of my other half to skip it and head off to Vietnam, but that would be clearly a deadly sin we would never forgive ourselves. For some travellers, Yunnan with its 25

Mt Emei: Stairway to Heaven

Having explored Chengdu in Sichuan province for a day, we needed to decide how to spend the next 3 days before we caught our train to Guilin just before the Golden Week (the first week of October), which is the annual biggest migration of the Chinese not counting the Chinese New Year. Emeishan, the holy

Room with a View of the Great Wall

The plan was to hike along the unrestored part of the wall from Jiankou to Mutianyu in 5-6 hours and get to Gubeikou, but it was verified by the weather and our hike with a night stay on the Wall extended up to 24 hours. The beginning was quite smooth, we reached Huairou, a nearby