A crisp fall day at 11,000 feet outside the Potala Palace, boyhood home of the Dalai Lama, in Lhasa, Tibet. The Chinese were converting the old city opposite the palace into a sort of mall.
Detail at a temple in Kathmandu.
Luang Prabang, Laos -- a spectacular and beautiful city.
Detail from a wall at Angkor Wat, Cambodia. At Angkor Wat you tend to look at the big-picture palaces, but the detail of many of the public area carvings is astounding.
Yacht harbor in Monaco. Earlier in the day we had been in Milan, coming out of the Italian Alps and headed to Barcelona. We could not for some reason buy a ticket to Barcelona so we got one to Monaco. The train was leaving for Monaco and the departures board also listed Innsbruck and Salzburg -- not cities on the way to Monaco. I went back to the ticket window and the seller pointed at the platform and told us to run. I said, No, I want to go to Monaco. He said, Yes, Monaco! I said, No, Monaco! We went back and forth like this for a while. Turns out the Italian word Monaco means Munich -- Monaco, the principality along the French Rivieria, is something different. Anyway, we made it, had dinner, walked along the harbor, felt very out of place, and got a ticket heading on to Barcelona.
We took a local train to Sighishoara, Romania and this guy sauntered in to our cabin. He insisted on chatting with us although we shared not one word in common. As we were approaching Sighishoara he started pointing to his stomach, making scissor-cutting motions, and asking for money. We tried to ignore him. We tried to ignore lots of annoying people on our trip. It never works.
Easter morning at Mt. Cook, South Island, New Zealand. We were biking and camping, and it was cold. Somehow Laura arranged an Easter egg hunt around the tent.
A memorable day. We were on a camel trek in southern Morocco and Hamil made "le pain du desert" -- bread of the desert. He made dough and buried it in the sand and stacked rocks atop it, then built a fire atop it and let the coals burn. Bread done, he pried the coals and rocks off. It was about 110 degrees when I took this picture. Hamil spoke five languages, including Arabic and Hebrew, but not a word of English. We got by in French.
Diwali festival at the Paropakar Orphanage, Kathmandu. Diwali is the festival of lights -- a combination Christmas, New Years and Halloween. Laura volunteered at Paropakar, playing games with the boys. They invited us to the festival, where the boys were given gifts of fruit and incense.
Temple near Kathmandu.
Laura in southern Morocco. One of the best photos of the trip, taken on a magical afternoon with a sort of stillness which does not exist today.
Laundry day in the Nepalese Himalaya. We were lucky to find spigots and concrete pads where we could do laundry. We'd usually use a special bar of soap we could buy for a buck or so. It had an abrasive agent which really scrubbed clothes clean but also wore them down quickly. This was on about the tenth day of a three-week hike around Annapurna.
Me looking quite emaciated after three weeks of hiking in the Himalaya -- and about to board this hulk for the eight-hour rumble back to Kathmandu. This bus was anything but "Peace and Heaven."
