Traveller's Tales

“We travel not for trafficking alone;
By hotter winds our hearts are fanned:
For lust of knowing what should not be known
We take the Golden Road to .....”

(You fill in the gap)

Apologies to James Elroy Flecker, whose poem I've plagarised.

I was a bit terse and stuffy about some recent posts in the thread "Off on my travels" in Abstract Gallery, which as it name suggests is intended for topics predominently containing images.

However, the posts to which I refer contain many interesting anecdotes and warrant a thread of their own: hence 'Traveller's Tales'. I had to think carefully with the title; the posters to which I refer worked in a professional capacity in various countries, whereas I regard myself as a mere 'tourist'. The title 'Traveller' is a sort of compromise between the two.

So this new thread is for you - and if you can include some appropriate images, so much the better.

From SLS

All terribly amusing! The nearest tribe were Himba, who are nomadic and if they’d come across this car park, they’d probably have made use of the barriers for firewood. Given the lack of wood, some of the barrier was whale bones.

As it happens, we took our chances and escaped the clutches of the local parking attendant. I suspect they may have been trying to fill the vacancy at the time. The only person we saw on the road for about 500 miles was a chap walking from nowhere to nowhere. We stopped and offered him a lift. It turned out he was the ticket attendant, general manager and general dogsbody and quite possibly sole permanent employee of a sea lion sanctuary. I’m sure Roy has been to see the seals at Blakeney in Norfolk, as have I. I’ve even been to the Icelandic Seal reserve in Northern Iceland, in winter. I remember it was 20 March because it was my son‘s birthday. He was in Paris at the time. Rather than just wish him happy birthday birthday by text, I rounded up the only people I could find, who happened to be four Chinese diplomats from New York, got them to sing him happy birthday and posted it on YouTube. He liked that.

Anyway, having given the ticket attendant a lift, I then gave him some money, and we went to say hello to about 150,000 sealions. The smell was something else. If they had that many sealions at Blakeney, no one would go to Norfolk.

Also from Stephen (SLS)


England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Germany, Spain, Yugoslavia, Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Israel, Jordan, Turkey, USA, Canada, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, China, Hong Kong, Macau, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Namibia, Mauritius, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Switzerland and some others I’ve probably forgotten … what gets me is the places we’ve never been, like Australasia and South America, and hardly stepped foot east of the Rhine.

Quote Originally Posted by hifinutt View Post
yes not a safe place to go sadly !! tunisia seems off limits too now
We went on a trip from the synagogue in D’Jerba along the north of the Sahara through the Berber mountain villages and into Muslim Douz and the Red Lizard Railway in the Selja gorges close to Algeria, which all became a bit Al Qaeda a few years ago. We arrived in Tunis and left on the day of the Arab Spring. You just have to take care you have a trustworthy guide that isn’t inclined to ransom you.

Last year we were up near the Tibetan border with India on the Dalai Lama’s birthday and we gatecrashed a party, courtesy of our guide for the day who was from a family of nomadic goat herders who were camped nearby. That’s been a hotspot for years and was closed until the mid 1980s. I went there in 1987 and it was OK. It was clear some Tibetans had come over the border for the celebrations and a piece of cake. The Free Tibet flag on the back wall would get them in trouble back home.

The recent disputes are as much over access to grazing land as politics.
https://flic.kr/p/2pLUWJ4
https://flic.kr/p/2pLQqb4

From Sherwood:

Quote Originally Posted by SLS View Post
That’s the place. You been? We were staying at a place 250 miles north of Cape Ross. The car park was on the way. It’s a quiet part of the world.

Here’s my birthday video. A load of cameras on display.
https://youtu.be/khPFKzbye4o?si=lXYwiWTFtqsHAQy-
I worked there at the time of Independence (1990) designing a large health project on the Angolan border for the Finnish government. The Fins had a long involvement with German SWA through Lutheran missions.

I returned in 1998 for three and a half years as Team Leader for a big multicomponent EU health project. Alongside, neighbouring Botswana where I worked several times from 1987 onwards, some of my favourite parts of Africa.

I deeply miss the night skies. With very little rain or cloud cover, and virtually no light pollution, the sky is ablaze with stars. The Milky Way stands out as a ribbon of light blue across the horizon.

250 miles north of Cape Cross? Not much see see there. Not Opuwo by any chance?

From SLS:

Quote Originally Posted by Sherwood View Post
250 miles north of Cape Cross? Not much see see there. Not Opuwo by any chance?
A company got a concession for an eco-camp on the coast no further north of the Hoarusib river. No one is allowed further up the coast. The deal was you drove up to Mowe Bay and they picked you up and it is about 40 miles north over the dunes. We were one of the first visitors, a few weeks adfter it opened, for the first couple of days we were there only guests.

I wanted to go ever since a client of mine went down the coast from Angola in the late 1980s and took some great pictures. It was about that time that Eric Hesemans came down from DRC and played a big role in opening the area up. We went ballooning with Eric over Sossusvlei, where my hat disappeared and I got to wear his infamous hat, that could be mistaken for a sea lion.

I know one or two people who used to go down that way by boat and would often stop at Walvis Bay. I've no doubt my greatgrandfather, who got a British passport as a resident of Cape Colony, stopped at Walvis Bay on his trip to England.
https://flic.kr/p/2bqLXFK
https://flic.kr/p/My6Jpf
https://flic.kr/p/29o7fu1
https://flic.kr/p/28mXP3S

From Phil (hifinutt):

Quote Originally Posted by Sherwood View Post
I worked there at the time of Independence (1990) designing a large health project on the Angolan border for the Finnish government. The Fins had a long involvement with German SWA through Lutheran missions.

I returned in 1998 for three and a half years as Team Leader for a big multicomponent EU health project. Alongside, neighbouring Botswana where I worked several times from 1987 onwards, some of my favourite parts of Africa.

I deeply miss the night skies. With very little rain or cloud cover, and virtually no light pollution, the sky is ablaze with stars. The Milky Way stands out as a ribbon of light blue across the horizon.

250 miles north of Cape Cross? Not much see see there. Not Opuwo by any chance?
fantastic , I went to the borders of Afghanistan and all over Pakistan looking at TB healthcare . fascinating and very sad as this disease is rampant partially due to fake drugs , poverty and non concordance with treatment

Reply from Geoff (Sherwood):

Quote Originally Posted by hifinutt View Post
fantastic , I went to the borders of Afghanistan and all over Pakistan looking at TB healthcare . fascinating and very sad as this disease is rampant partially due to fake drugs , poverty and non concordance with treatment
Tell me about it. I managed to contract TB whilst working in Bangladesh in the 1990s, almost immediately after leaving my University post to work as a self-employed consultant. Despite having been vaccinated, the absence of any sense of personal space in Bangladesh facilitated easy transmission. It's a nasty disease as is the multi-drug therapy which takes many months. One spectacular side effect of the treatment is that it turns one's urine a vivid Lucozade colour. This helps doctors confirm that you are treatment compliant, though it does result in some strange side glances if peeing in a pub urinal. Vaccine deniers as well as the factors you mentioned have seen a resurgence of the disease in many parts of the world.


I spent some time in Pakistan in 1990 helping the National Institute of Population Studies model the costs and effectiveness of reproductive health services. I was based in Islamabad which I found quite sterile and boring. However, nearby Rawalpindi was much more interesting and vibrant so I tended to drive there for dinner. I managed to find time to drive up to the Himalayan Hill stations of Murree and Nathia Ghali in an old long wheelbase Landrover. Spectacular frosty views each morning of the misty mountain ranges.Very bizarre drinking tea on the terraced lawns of an old Victorian era hotel with the mists parting as the sun rose.


It was a bit of an incongruous wild frontier back then. The promenades of the Victorian empire with red post boxes and stalls selling candy remained. However, this contrasted sharply with countless arms vendors selling assault rifles and other miscellaneously weaponry side by side. Nearby Abbottabad was where Osama Bin Laden holed up and where he was finally “eliminated”.

And from Phil:

wow fantastic . we loved Islamabad and Rawalpindi , i will post a pic sometime of our time there . glorious park in Rawalpindi

we went up to murree . wonderful place