The bus lurched around another hair pin bend and came to a juddering halt behind an old Soviet land rover. Lashed to the roof was a couple of jerry cans, a parasol and a large ram on its side...
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I’m so grateful to those fleas. I would otherwise have never witnessed the blood-orange moon in the witching hour.
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Lake Van is a fathomless salty lake in Eastern Turkey. Nothing lives in it, apart from the legendary 40ft serpent that lurks somewhere beneath its surface.
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With a little more time – and plenty of patience, Cairo is well worth an extra night or three.
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I’ve found that the only place to achieve this morning perfection is in the desert. Gertrude Bell thought so too, describing waking ‘….In that desert dawn was liking waking in the heart of an opal’
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‘I’ve always had a hankering to horse ride like Lawrence through Wadi Rum….What do you think?’ I immediately thought ‘Yes’ – on the one condition that I could come to.
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The other day I came across an old cd of Armenian music. It was given to me by an Armenian musician at the Temple of Garni…
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I’m quite partial to acquiring the odd knick knack when I travel. Some of my favourite items have come from that ancient Silk Road shopping mecca well known for its craftsmanship: Uzbekistan…
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I once turned blue in the desert. A dark purplish blue - indigo to be precise. I didn’t really notice until I was back in the UK in a bath, but I was so pleased with my new skin tone that I couldn’t bear to scrub it off, for it meant erasing the desert, and the time when I felt like one of the Tuareg…
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I’m currently sitting on a wooden balcony overlooking a forest of misty eucalyptus and pine in central Portugal. It’s quiet, peaceful, and soothingly green. Quite different from the country I’m conjuring up to write a love letter too: Libya…
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A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness— O, Wilderness were Paradise enow!* The ‘Astronomer-Poet of Persia’ Omar Khayyam eulogised the picnic back in the 11th century, although personally I’d add a hunk of cheese to his verse for complete perfection…
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During the early months of Covid, friends and well-wishers sent endless creative ‘chain emails’ urging one to pick soothing poetry, recipes, music and books to calm frazzled minds, and not to break the chain. I confess I wasn’t very good at this…
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