A day on the Routeburn Track
I get a kick every time I tell people how the Routeburn Track got its name. The Routeburn Track- one of New Zealand’s nine Great Walks- started out as a trail in the 1860s...
Category: stories
One Tree Hill
I’ve been counting my footsteps here in New Zealand. It takes me 701 steps in about six and a half minutes to reach Cornwall Park from where I stay in Auckland. Next to Cornwall...
Meeting Paul Theroux
Sometime in 2001, I discovered my mother’s copy of The Great Railway Bazaar. It was an old Penguin edition, hiding on her bookshelf outside my parents’ room. Many of the pages had...
A nice kind of dizzy
It happened again yesterday. The first time I felt or thought I felt the ground swaying was on Olkhon Island in Russia two years ago. About a year later, I felt the floor move...
It’s not new if it’s already out there
I don’t usually write about writing, but I will today. I don’t make it a habit to write about writing because I don’t always consider myself entitled to do so. People shouldn’t be critical...
Postcards from the Namib Desert
Sometime in mid 2013, I came across this photo: I don’t remember where I saw the photo but it came with a link to the National Geographic website. This was a real photograph of a...
Going up Table Mountain
“A man is the head of a house but a woman is the head of your money.” “Love is a pain no doctor can explain. It strikes the heart and affects the brain.” “If...
On Sudan, fizzy drinks and walks by the Nile
Some countries are clear-cut tourism magnets. Other countries, when you tell people you’re planning a visit, they stop whatever they’re doing, turn to you and ask, “Why?” That was the general reaction I...
The case for disconnecting
It was the sound of flapping that woke me up that night. Wings, somewhere in the dark. It wasn’t anything large, for that would have been terrifying. It was a small insect, but...
A weekend at a Malaysian homestay: Looking at stars
The last time I spent the night in a kampung or village with my family was decades ago. I don’t even remember how old I was. We were at my paternal grandmother’s house and...
