Category: Uncategorized
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Chennai
Back to the mainland, after two hours of flight across the Bay of Bengal. Back to the chaos and noise of Chennai, the city with too many cars and too few attractions. But I was pleasantly surprised by the neighborhood of Alwarpet with its many trees and quiet side roads. Still an Indian city but…
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Boats of Andaman
The islands are connected with sleek private ferries and with “government ferries” that look more like factory ships with a passenger cabin below deck, at 1/10 the cost. Port Blair’s old harbor is mostly silted up so they moved all ferries to a new one further away. It appears that they forgot a few ships…
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Quiet Havelock
The island is great for long hikes. The main beaches are busy, but walk a couple hundred meters in any direction and you have the beach all to yourself. There are stalls selling things to visitors. In Europe that would mean bright plastic beach toys, ice cream, and other junk. Here it’s clothes, coconuts, and…
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I work well under pressure
More diving! It’s a long dive boat trip to South Andama Island, to a reef with big fish and a forest of soft white branching corals. There is also a Japanese ship sunk here for the enjoyment of divers. Visibility wasn’t great though at 25m.… Read the rest
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Germany, nice city!
Back in civilization, defined as having usable network access. So I’ll post some pictures from the past few days on Neil Island, which is small and beautiful and cut off from the world. Geographical knowledge is not their strong point but everyone is happy and helpful. Some new critters I saw when diving, and I…
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Christmas
What did you do on Christmas? I went scuba diving near Neil Island.… Read the rest
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Tropical Christmas
After a couple of long ferry rides I am now on Neil Island, one of the smallest inhabited islands of the archipelago. Part of the point of this trip was escaping the shopping season, and so far it had worked well. But look what the Sea Shell resort, where I am staying for a few…
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Ross Island
Ross Island is just 15 minutes by boat from Port Blair. It used to a kind of “Paris” for British colonial officers, so called because it had luxurieslike a rather small pool. I guess none of them had ever been to the actual Paris. An earthquake destroyed all buildings, and nature took over until it…
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Andaman Islands
In 2020 I was in Bangladesh, planning to continue to Calcutta and fly from there to the Andamans, but then someone in China ate a bat or something, a lot of people got sick, and India closed the border. Now it’s 2025 and they let me in. I am in Port Blair, the capital of…
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Templed out
My round trip through Tamil Nadu is ending, and I think I have seen rather enough Hindu temples already. But here are a few more at night where they got creative with ornaments. Is that Rudolph? This is Kanchipuram, a few hours west of Chennai and the end of a nine-hour trip involving a bus…
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Palace
Thanjavur also has a palace. Lovely courtyard garden, tons of stone god statues (literally), and for some reason a whale skeleton. The most interesting part is getting there through the perpetual construction zone where they are tearing up the walkway while you walk on it. Nobody seems to have an issue with that.… Read the…
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XXL
Whenever you think you have seen the most magnificent temple of all, India has a bigger one. Brihadishwara Temple in Thanjavur is the third-largest Shiva temple complex in India, and the tallest of all. The walls and pillars are all intricately carved, and everything is in excellent condition. This temple was the heart of the…
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Shiva
Sri Sabhanayagar Temple is one of the most holy Shiva temples. It’s quite enormous, with four ornamental portals and numerous temples and shrines, built with beautiful carved pillars, painted ceilings, and colorful statues. They also have a large lake they call a tank. In the first courtyard was a scary long line of people waiting,…
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Gingee Fort
Gingee is a town one hour by bus west of Pondicherry. It’s more typical of small Indian towns – a loud and chaotic main street, full of honking scooters, shops and stalls along the sides (don’t even look for sidewalks), lots of people going about their business. No Western tourists and no tourist infrastructure beyond…
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Temples and churches
I have been to India six times and probably a hundred towns, but I think I like Pondicherry best. It’s so quiet, has a beautiful ocean promenade, most streets are narrow and shaded by old trees, there is lots of restored colonial architecture which is much nicer than what passes for architecture in modern times.…
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Pondicherry, India
Chennai, aka Madras, has the international airport but Puducherry, aka Pondicherry and three hours south by bus, has the charm. It was once a French colony and the old part on the Indian Ocean shows it. It’s beautifully restored and very clean and relaxed, which more frenetic Indian cities aren’t. Old trees line narrow streets,…
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South Africa
This country is different from other African countries I have visited, probably as a result of its colonial, and quite brutal, history. It feels very western, both the cities and countryside. The apartheid regime has been replaced with democracy in 1994, but only the government changed, not so much the culture. It didn’t feel very…
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Cape Town
The banner image is the Malayan quarter, one of the oldest parts of Cape Town and known for its brightly colored houses. That exact photo is one of Cape Town’s signature postcard pictures. Unlike Johannesburg, Cape Town has proper attractions and that’s one of them. Cape Town is also quite hilly, allowing proper views of…
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Cape of Good Hope
South of Cape Town is a long peninsula, and at its tip is a lighthouse. It’s quite far up, they have a funicular and a lot of steps, meaning it’s in the clouds much of the time and was not in use much for that reason. But the view from up there is great! The…
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Table Mountain in Cape Town
Cape town is South Africa’s second-largest city after Johannesburg, and it’s safe to walk here. The main landmark is Table Mountain overlooking the city, so called because a large section is flat on top. A circular cable car with a rotating floor goes up to the top. There are many viewpoints connected with paved trails,…
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Scenery
It’s a long way from Oudtshoorn to Cape Town, 500km. It’s part of the Garden Route but it doesn’t look like a garden. Rolling hills, a big sky, mountains, few trees, one monkey. The southernmost point of Africa, called l’Agulhas, is nearby but the road there is bad and there is no bus. Too bad,…
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Kango Caves
There is a huge cave system near Knysna, 2.4km long, of which I visited the first 600m. The rest is accessible if you can fit through a hole that is 27cm wide; I couldn’t. The halls and passages are impressive. Huge cathedral-like caverns with curtains of stalactites and stalacmites; sometimes the two merge to form…
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Garden Route
The garden route is a section of South Africa’s southern Indian Ocean coastline hetween Port Elizabeth – renamed to Gqeberha last week – and Cape Town. It’s not really a garden but it’s a very scenic drive. Gqeberha is not especially attractive. It has long sandy beaches and a hill with a pyramid built by…
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Pretoria
Pretoria is the capital of South Africa. Downtown feels like a smaller version of Johannesburg including the To Let signs, aimless people at street corners, brutalist architecture, and dilapidated little parks with dead grass and buildings missing their roofs. But it also feels friendlier, especially after I found the pedestrianized Helen Joseph Street where street…
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Pilgrim’s Rest
That’s the Name of a village a couple hours northeast of Pretoria. It also feels like stereotypical small-town America, this time really time the white picket fence type. Take a look… They also have tourist trap down by the river. This is one of the first places where gold was found in South Africa, kicking…
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Kruger National Park
This is one of the great African protected parks, and safari destinations. It’s large, over 20,000 square kilometers and again that much in neighboring Mozambique. I joined a jeep tour and traveled over 250km in the park, getting within a few km of the border to Mozambique. Lots of elephants, giraffes, zebras, antelopes, and buffalos.…
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Blyde Canyon & Potholes
Blyde Canyin is the third-largest canyon in the world, cut by the Blyde River. There is a trail along the edge of the cliff with great viewpoints. It was a little hazy though. On the other side are the three Rondavels, cylindrical peaks that look like rondavels, the local word for round straw-thatched huts. A…
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Dangerous?
Ok, there’s no arguing with statistics, but everyone I have met in Johannesburg was then nicest and mist helpful person imaginable. Everyone – police, street cleaners, shop workers, skateboarders on the street – is smiling, greeting, eager to chat. I guess there must be rougher neighborhoods than the ones I have visited. I am now…
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Johannesburg Zoo
After all the time spent in the city it’s pleasant to spend time in the Johannesburg Zoo. Quiet, green, big old trees, nicely landscaped, with large tracts where amimals can roam freely. It’s a really nice place, although it would be much nicer if they had more animals. “This enclosure is currently unoccupied” signs are…
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Soweto
The name means South-West Township and that’s its location from central Johannesburg. During apartheid, black people and immigrants were forcibly relocated here. Today over a million people live here on 210km², it’s the largest township in Africa. Parts look nice and suburban, but really are overcrowded with several families sharing a home. Others are just…