Post Travelling Depression

Post Travelling Depression

Experience #176, 355, 528, 872 & 1643 (This is something I wrote years ago following my return home after my first big overseas trip.)   So you’ve just got back from an overseas adventure? Riding the wind, following the sunset, discovering new cultures? You’ve finally returned home to the joy of friends and family – who make you feel like the star of the show, as...

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The Joy of the Journey

The Joy of the Journey

Today I bought a piece of wrapping paper, not because I had a gift to give – nor in fact will I likely use it to wrap a gift – it’s too nice. I bought it because the images on it caught my eye. I bought it for what those images represent. It is a collage of old advertisements for grand international hotels and stately cruise liners, mixed with old luggage tags and different-shaped stylised...

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Black Water Rafting

Black Water Rafting

Experience # 174 Leave to the Kiwis to take caving one step further to create an adventure sport called Black Water Rafting just so they can clean their clothes. I went underground for the full story. I first discovered New Zealand as a backpacker in 1990. I spent three months traversing the Land of the Long White Cloud and fell in love with every cm of its 2,000kms from tip to toe. I’ve...

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Parisian Sub-culture

Parisian Sub-culture

Experience #126 On your next trip to Paris why scale the heights of the Eiffel Tower when you could be exploring the depths of the city’s catacombs? For a tourist destination on the dark side, walk the skull-lined corridors getting up close and personal with more than six million past Parisians.   I love Paris. Sorry, j’adore Paris. Although, I didn’t love it on my first trip and...

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The Seven Trials of Tibet

The Seven Trials of Tibet

Experience #936 Hoping to tread the path to enlightenment I took the Tibetan challenge and travelled the rough road from Katmandu to Lhasa discovering a rural land trapped in time and ruled by religion. Himalayan hidden and oft-shrouded in secrecy, Tibet has always attracted attention because of its blocked borders. More recently Tibet’s political plight and the Dalai Lama’s celebrity...

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Amazonian Anomalies

Amazonian Anomalies

To date there have been 25,000 confirmed plant species, 2,500 fish (a third of the world’s fresh water total), 10 per cent of the world’s bird species, as many as six million insect species found and up to 2,000 butterflies cataloged. Is it any wonder that nature challenges the norm here?   The river itself pushes nature’s boundaries. Even after two weeks of exploring the Amazon, it’s...

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Southern Exposure

Southern Exposure

Experience # 901 Travelling to the coldest, driest, windiest and least inhabited place in the world to gape at floating ice cubes is not everyone’s idea of a holiday. In fact, roughly only 10,000 privileged people a year have the passion to venture into this eternal winter wonderland, but for those who do the rewards are great.   There is a timelessness about Antarctica that humbles even the...

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Isolation on Easter Island

Isolation on Easter Island

Experience #924   Walking along the statue strewn slopes of Easter Island’s extinct volcano Rano Raraku is a magical, almost spiritual experience. Essentially the main quarry and workshop for the island’s famed statues, it is here the volcanic rock was carved into life by the Polynesian islanders. What remains today is an empty studio of enigmatic statues in various states of progress,...

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New York State of Mind

New York State of Mind

Experience #530   For those bored by Broadway, tired of traffic, or caught up in the chaos that is New York, a nearby Zen Buddhist monastery offers peace of mind in meditation.   Nestled in the Catskill Mountains, little more than one hundred miles north of the ‘City that Never Sleeps’ those seeking spiritual enlightenment can find it at the Dai Bosatsu Zendo Kongo-ji monastery....

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Polar Bear in Peril

Polar Bear in Peril

Best be quick if you want to see a polar bear in the wild. By some scientific predictions two thirds of the world’s polar bear population could be dead by 2050 and possibly extinct by the end of this century if global warming continues unabated. In May 2008 the majestic polar bear – the world’s largest land predator – was registered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) as...

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An Inspiring Poem

An Inspiring Poem

Confessions of an Experience Junkie by Will Chase (Reader discretion advised) (ode to Molly Bloom) Order the strangest thing on the menu. If you can’t pronounce it, eat it. Never take the same route twice. Street, trail, slope, train of thought, line of reasoning. What time is it? Now. Where are you? Here. Pick at random. Be surprised. Relish. Fail. Talk to strangers. Keep a map in your...

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The Pure Unadulterated Joy of Singing

The Pure Unadulterated Joy of Singing

Experience #1634     I have never been a great singer. Or at least I had been told as much by others. As a child my Mum was quick to point out my notes were flat. Then as a teenager my dear friend, ArtHistorian, didn’t help matters when, during what was supposed to be a confidence-boosting lesson, she  fell off the piano stool from laughing so hard at my heartfelt rendition of...

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