It’s pretty safe to say that Fort Kochi (Cochin) in the Indian state of Kerala is a place steeped in history – it was a spice trade centre for over 3,000 years & it was here that European colonisation of India first took root. In many places...
Unfortunately it has been a slow & frustrating couple of days since I finally left the beach at Kovalam, some 160 kilometres further south down the Kerala coast. I’ve taken three bus trips in as many days (although none for longer than 2 hours) to get here...
I’m just about beached out & I’ve had it too with listening to Arabian Sea waves crashing on the rocks below my room balcony. Don’t hate me; after a while it does get tiring. Forget what I said about it being therapeutic upon arrival some days ago now. It’s not....
Today was my third day by the Arabian Sea here in Kovalem in the laid-back state of Kerala, southern India. I took my camera out and took it for a stroll down the coast from Kovalem’s Lighthouse Beach to Vizhinjam, a small fishing village. While it was only a...
It’s September 11, 2012, & I’m in the midst of taking it easy looking out on Arabian Sea waves crashing on the rocks below the balcony of my Rp700-a-night (€10) guesthouse room – it claims to be a hotel but it’s a hotel only in name. The noise of...
Sri Lanka - A Wrap 11 Pictures From As Many Days In 'The Nation Of Smiling People' IMAGE || Riding the rails, Central Sri Lanka. “Sri Lanka was a treat, its scenery amazing, its food delicious, its people some of the most genuinely warmest, welcoming I’ve yet...
Kandy is Sri Lanka’s historic UNESCO-listed second city & cultural centre. The country’s capital in the 16th century, this sacred Buddhist site, popularly known as the city of Senkadagalapura, was the last capital of the Sinhala kings whose patronage enabled...
My adventure in Sri Lanka continues. I’ve spent the last few days in the chilly hill county towns of Ella & Nuwera Eliya (& getting between the two was a real treat). This is tea country – the first tea leaves harvested in Sri Lanka were planted in...
There’s something special about train travel in Sri Lanka. Something very special indeed. Yes, it’s a slow means of transport; schedule times are rarely, if ever, met; the rolling stock, holdovers from the British colonial days of the early 20th century, are rickety...
Stilt Fishing, a tradition still practised by only a few communities in western & southern Sri Lanka, has got to be high up there on the tough-ways-of-making-a-living list. It certainly didn’t look like much fun from where I was standing – firmly on...
I left the beach of Unawatuna for a bit today & paid a visit 6 kilometres up the coast to the historic port town of Galle, the earliest European administrative centre in Sri Lanka, the 4th largest town in the country & the capital of the southern province. The...
The beautiful beach of Unawatuna is located just 6 kilometres south of Galle in southern Sri Lanka, slap-bang in the middle of the southern coastal belt, the most popular stretch of Sri Lankan coastline with locals & foreigners alike – the region’s...
I was between carriages, my bags & I confined to a space maybe the size of a phone box, a space that seemed to be shrinking by the minute, the warm & close smell of body odor, a Indian subcontinent stalwart, strong. There were Sri Lankans everywhere,...
I leave Seoul on Monday for a bit of time ‘down the country’. I’ll have my camera with me but unfortunately I don’t expect to put it to much use between now & the end of August, when I leave South Korea for Sri Lanka. So with that...
Having recently returned to South Korea from Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, I took the opportunity of being here, an Aladdin’s Cave for photographers, to add a few lenses to my arsenal. Having done so I took to the streets of Seoul, the South Korean capital,...
