Common Sense and Whiskey

Missing: One Formerly Great Inland Sea

Speaking of studying your maps like a good little schoolboy, I was in school during the Soviet period and learned all about the Soviet Union's great lakes. I knew them well, west to east, the Black Sea, then the Caspian, then the Aral (Lake Baikal was in Siberia and thus off schoolboys' maps). By now I've been to the Black and Caspian Seas, but I'm afraid we may all be running out of time to see the Aral.

Tom Bissell took us there and told us as much in his 2004 Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia, and now there's a nice update in Prospect magazine: the Aral Sea has shrunk to ten per cent of its original size and contends for "the worst pace on earth."

Name That Stan

Most of us world travel fans who studied our maps in school will be able to tell you that Ashgabat is the capital of one of the five Stans that emerged from the Soviet Union - Turkmenistan, to be exact. NPR reporter Frank Langfitt didn't know where Ashgabat is, but he filed an entertaining little piece yesterday on "extreme travelers," in which he interviewed two of the top-ten-ranked people at mosttraveledpeople.com.

Just personally, as far as "where you've been" websites go, I like passportstamp.com better. Mosttraveledpeople.com is klunkier to get your information into, and passportstamp.com lets you map your visited countries on a fun little map you can use elsewhere, like so:

More from Morocco: Wednesday HDR

One more from our friends Carol & Bobs' recent Moroccan adventure. Bob says it's a traffic jam in Tineher. It was the Aid el-Kebir (The Grand Festival). Worshippers were leaving an outdoor morning service to head home and, as is traditional, sacrifice a sheep.

Processed from a single RAW in Photomatix Pro & finished in CS5.

Around the World in 100 Days

It was our personal tour de force, the best thing we ever did. It changed the way we've seen everything since. Sixteen years ago today my then-future wife Mirja and I set off on our first (of three, and counting) round-the-world trip.

I always enjoy reading the writing of Andy Jaroz, on his blog 501 Places. I think he's an inspired, original  writer. Inspired by his blog post Around the World in 64 Days, I went searching for the itinerary of our trip.

Rooting around in the basement I found, dusty and with its face turned to the wall, a four month planner with the trip plotted out in its almost final form. Here's our itinerary, albeit with a few gaps.

I was 38 at the time, Mirja a lot younger, but this trip grew us up a whole lot.

26 December 1994: Depart LAX 2015, Air New Zealand flight #1

28 Dec:  Arrive Auckland 600, quick run into Auckland

28 Dec: Depart Auckland 935, arrive Brisbane 935, Air New Zealand flight #89

30 Dec: Depart Brisbane 945, arrive Cairns 1155, Ansett flight #62, hotel Acacia Court, ocean view

31 Dec: Great Barrier Reff, full day outer reef tour on the Quicksilver

1 January, 1995: Depart Cairns 1345, arrive Sydney 1740, Ansett flight #951, hotel Old Sydney Park Royal, the Rocks

6 Jan: Depart Sydney 1300, arrive Melbourne 1420, Ansett flight #27, transfer to the ship Spirit of Tasmania. Depart Melbourne 1800

7 Jan: Arrive Devonport, Tasmania 815, pick up rental car

8 Jan: Hobart, Tasmania

9 Jan: Depart Hobart 1725, arrive Sydney 1900, Ansett flight #194, Sheraton Airport Hotel

10 Jan: Depart Sydney 1100, arrive Hong Kong 1700, Qantas flight #27, hotel New World Harbour View

Scene of the Crime

Independence Square in Minsk, Belarus, where "hundreds had been arrested and hundreds more severely beaten" in elections Sunday.

*****

Following the Belarussian elections, here's a depressing collection of headlines from Belarus Digest:

As Anne Applebaum wrote yesterday,

"By midnight, tens of thousands of people had been chased out of the main square in central Minsk, hundreds had been arrested and hundreds more severely beaten. Young people limped away from demonstrations with broken arms, bloody heads. Seven out of nine Belarusan presidential candidates were in jail."

"Police arrested journalists, too, breaking into offices and shutting down their operations. Later, they also arrested artists and actors at home."

And there's this grim view of the world by the organization Charter 97:

Applebaum argues that "it was a stunning display of the regime's weakness." So does a Guardian editorial, which invites the regime to collapse.

I don't know. Back in August, we were in Minsk for a wholly inadequate time to get the lay of the political land, but what I took away was a sense of widespread and deeply held cynicism, and a rueful joke - that Lukashenko will be President until his (six year old) son Nikolai is old enough to take over.

There are photos from around Minsk in the Belarus Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

 

 

Tropical Diversion: Wednesday HDR

With the snow and cold weather sweeping over so much of this country and Europe this holiday week, I thought something tropical might be in order. Here's the ruins at My Son, Vietnam, near Da Nang, from a wickedly hot day about this same time of year a few years back.

From EarthPhotos.com. See more HDRs in the HDR Gallery and nearly 400 photos in the Vietnam Gallery.

The More Things Still Don't Change....

Fifteen years ago, on our trip to Burma:

"First thing, I took a walk to the waterfront. It's just across Strand Road. I determined the ferry that just goes back and forth across the River Yangon and climbed on. Dark was creeping up.

The boat, "Autobus 1," had three bare bulbs overhead and a hundred eight-inch tall by six-inch wide wood seats that you grabbed and sat down low on, so I did. Pretty soon I was surrounded by three boys, maybe 17, 15 and eight. We didn't speak a common language, so we just sat and smoked. What the hell.

Maybe 150 people on board for an eight minute trip to the village across the way. When we chugged up to the far side Mr. Eight Year Old and a buddy gathered the little stools in a big pile for use by the next batch of passengers.

My other friends hopped off the boat and negotiated beers from a vendor who sat by the light of two candles on the dock. Directly across the river, line of sight from the downtown of the capital city of this country, there was no electricity. Just candles."

Howard French has been to Rangoon recently and from his reporting, it sounds like fifteen years later it's pretty much the same.

(Photo from the Burma Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.)

 

Thwarted

Only one of our dogs was interested in a 3:00 a.m. stroll. So Betsy, our big black dog and I bundled up and set out in search of last night's total lunar eclipse. We spent a half hour during totality looking up and waiting for a break in the clouds, but none came, and we did not see the moon.

As James Carroll wrote (in a different context entirely), yesterday's solstice was the shortest day and the deepest night, and for my money, the darkest night, too, at least for a full moon. There wasn't a peep of light from the other side of those clouds. When Betsy would run out a little ahead, she'd disappear.

The weather was better elsewhere. People in Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Nebraska and elsewhere posted their photos to SpaceWeather. And Laurence Mitchell caught the eclipse from Norwich, U.K., just at sunrise (see his comment).

So now we'll wait for the next total lunar eclipse. It's next July. It's not visible in North America but the following one is, on 10 December, 2011. Here's NASA's list of upcoming lunar eclipses.

Captain Beany Paints Himself Orange: Silly Museums #7

Meet Captain Beany, Curator, the Baked Bean Museum of Excellence, in Port Talbot, Wales (Which looks like it just may be in Captain Beany's back room).

Or, maybe, don't.

Eclipse Night!

Sure, totality isn't until 2:41 eastern in the U.S. tomorrow morning, but if the weather co-operates where you are, maybe you can set up your camera tonight, then go to bed early and rise around 2:30, bundle up and head outside.

A good blow by blow of what to expect is here.

This is the total lunar eclipse of 20 February, 2008, as we saw it in north Georgia, USA. Right now this photo is sixth most popular on EarthPhotos.com as voted by visitors.

If you do manage to get out of bed, you probably won't be disappointed. People travel across the world to view solar eclipses in which totality lasts a mere few seconds. Tonight, totality lasts 72 minutes.

Friday Photo Quiz #97

It's a famous, exotic lake. See if you can guess where it is from these clues:

- It straddles the borders of two countries.

- at 12,500 feet, it's the highest commercially navigable lake in the world.

- It's the biggest lake by volume on its continent.

Can you name the lake? The countries on its border?

The answer is after the jump.

A good weekend to all from Common Sense and Whiskey & EarthPhotos.com.

(Photo from EarthPhotos.com.)

The Ship-Busting Yards at Chittagong, Bangladesh

Deep in the process of vetting travel spots for two available weeks of Asian travel next summer, I know one place we won't go - the ship breaking yards at Chittagong. We've looked hard at Dhaka and Chittagong. The photos are compelling and I'd love to shoot my own. But with just two scant weeks available and a whole continent out there, maybe it's better not to try to force ourselves into one more place where we're not welcome.

On the other hand, some photographers have managed to take pictures there, and I'm glad they did. Michael Reichmann arranged a visit through a friend with an NGO in Dhaka. The resulting article is posted on Luminous Landscape. A blogger named Rich has posted bunches of photos on a blog called Adventure Travel. And 60 Minutes did a story a few years back.

There are dozens of photos from a fellow who calls himself Jimbojack at the bottom of this post on the Digital Grin photography forum. And there's a book, called Breaking Ships, by Roland Buerk.

 

Chestnuts Roasting on a... uh... well... a metal stove kind of thing.

This week's Wednesday HDR: Selling chestnuts at Christmastime, just off the Duomo square in Milan, Italy, about this time last year.

Northern Lights

 The TV just told me that right now in Yellowknife, Canada, it's 40 below fahrenheit. Weather.com backs 'em up:

A while back, we posted resources for planning specialty travel that included travel to see the northern lights, including this neat aurora forecaster, which shows as I write that for aurora viewing, Yellowknife would be a great place to be right now. Check out, too, this informative Guide to Seeing the Northern Lights on GeckoGoneBlogging.

Coincidentally, the Wandering Aramean has just been in Yellowknife in the last week or so and has several posts, some including pictures, and this one including pictures of the northern lights. His succinct review: "Downtown Yellowknife does not have a lot to recommend it."

Kim the Young 'Un

A star is (desperately trying to be) born. From Toronto's Globe and Mail:

There’s wistfulness in the young man’s eyes, a longing for home as he walks purposefully along the edge of a lake that looks to be somewhere in Central Europe. But he doesn’t dress like the locals. Even thousands of kilometres away from the place of his birth, the young man proudly wears a collarless grey Mao suit and military-style greatcoat, the favoured attire of his grandfather, Kim Il-sung.

This photo could be the first painting of Kim Jong Un. The story is that a Canadian tourist named Percy Toop photographed it on October 27, 2010, at the Rajin Art Gallery in the northeast region of North Korea.

There is a long, long analysis of the photo by Ruediger Frank, a professor of East Asian Economy and Society at the University of Vienna, ona web site that analyzes North Korea called 38 North. But not so fast - Daily NK, a North Korean dissident publication in Seoul, says it ain't so.

Friday Photo Quiz #96

In the spirit of the cold weather in our part of the U.S. this week, here's a winter photo featuring an iconic symbol of a medieval European town. Thirty statues line this bridge, most of which were originally erected between 1683 and 1714. They have since been replaced by replicas. Construction of the bridge itself started way back in the 14th century.

Can you name the bridge? The city? The country? For extra credit, can you name the river it crosses?

The answer is after the jump.

A good weekend to all from Common Sense and Whiskey & EarthPhotos.com.

(Photo from EarthPhotos.com.)

Fiji: A Story

Last month I posted a story about our visit to the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu. We visited Fiji on the same trip, a few years back. Here's a little taste of that trip from the eventual book, Common Sense and Whiskey:

The only sounds at Koro Sun, Vanua Levu island, Fiji are four: The palm fronds, the birds, the overhead fan, and if a truck rumbles by. Sixteen bures sit in a ring around a garden and the sea is across the road.

Tony and Paula, our proprietors, greeted us, Tony with that just slightly perplexed look I swear is endemic to Kiwis, and Paula, a Dutch woman with a slow, rigid manner and huge round eyes, unblinking.

Paula fixed us a vodka welcome drink, “Strong - I thought you might need it,” and we settled in to introduce ourselves. They knew we’d been traveling some 27 hours. They knew we’d be frazzled, and sunburned Tony offered again and again to arrange anything we’d like - or nothing if we’d like.

Nice folks, they set us up with bure #1 and sent a six pack of Fiji Bitter beer to the fridge, then followed that with fruit and cheese platters. We alternately sat on our porch, gazed at the sea and poured sweat, doused ourselves in the freezing shower, and napped, and that was all we did on the first day.

*****

Dew dropped from the roof, the sea lay gray and smooth as ice, and birds called from the tops of the coconut palms. The first pickup truck of the day lumbered by and color began to return to the earth as the sky lightened on the morning of the second day. The yard boys collected last night’s fallen palm fronds.

I sat with coffee (poured under the watchful eye of a gecko perched on the wall) on the front porch after I could sleep no more, and Mirja caught just the last few minutes of sleep. I had lain in bed trying to store the feeling of the pre-dawn cool, under the ceiling fan, to summon back later in the day.

A British couple who stopped to commiserate about our long flight (everybody knows everybody’s business here, apparently) said yesterday had been the hottest of their six weeks here, and indeed I took a reading of 90 degrees in the cool of our bure, in air hanging with humidity. The fan had a mighty five speeds: 1, 2, 3, 4 and on, and “on” would whip the air furiously but to little cooling effect.

*****

Vanua Levuans have the time and disposition to be open, affable and curious. And honest. We asked a waitress what she knew about Vanuatu.

“Oh, they are MUCH blacker than we are,” she told us, and laughed uproariously.

Selective Use of Color: Wednesday HDRs

This week we have several HDRs that manhandle color for photographic effect. Generally we'll tonemap our HDR using Photomatix, then open it in Photoshop CS5 and use various tricks and effects to get the final image we're after. For this series, the general idea has been to select one or more areas in CS5, extract them and move them to separate layers, and then gently desaturate the rest of the photo. Click them all to see bigger versions. Here we go:

This is a café in Riga, Latvia.

A loom at a tourist shop in Hoi An, Vietnam.

The rail yard at Spietz, Switzerland.

A tourist train in Tallinn, Estonia.

Cairo, Egypt souk.

About to set sail from Windhoek, Namibia.

Friday Photo Quiz #95

This skyline is deceptive, because it makes this remote metropolis seem bigger than it really is. With a population of about a million and a half, this is one of the world's more isolated cities. The nearest city with a population of a million or more is 2,104 kilometres (1,307 mi) away.

Can you name the city? The country?

The answer is after the jump.

A good weekend to all from Common Sense and Whiskey & EarthPhotos.com.

(Photo from EarthPhotos.com.)

Flight Search with Hipmunk is Fun

We're enjoying using Hipmunk, a new flight search tool. The way Hipmunk displays results represents a real, substantive advance, displaying all flights on a single page in a graphic form that shows flights' departure times and duration at a glance.

No more changing the date format to suit every different site. Just enter, say, "Aug 28." Never thought about it before (while looking around to see if the site I'm on requires "08/28/2010" or "8/28/10"), but that makes sense, because with most flights only bookable eleven months out, there's really no need for the year.

No more looking for the "One Way" or "Round Trip" buttons, either. You set the departure date and return is "optional." If you don't enter one, Hipmunk will figure out you're only traveling one way.

Results presented graphically in a way that gives you more visual information than the usual lists. Less hunting around for each sites' peculiar protocols. More intuitive. Simpler. More fun. Try it.