The jeepney route
Routes are painted on the side and fares are passed forward hand to hand from the back. Nobody loses a coin. Nobody keeps the change.
Author not specified in the imported source
Manila, Philippines · Asia
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Island hopping fuel stop
The boat stopped at a beach with a hut and a barrel of diesel. The refuelling took twenty minutes and the swimming took the rest of the afternoon.
Author not specified in the imported source
Palawan, Philippines · Asia
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Typhoon week
The ferries stopped for four days. We ended up in a fishing village with four other stranded travellers, learned to play a local card game badly, and were sad to leave.
Author not specified in the imported source
Philippines · Asia
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Bagan by e-bike
There are two thousand temples and no rule about which one to climb. We picked one at random, sat on warm brick, and watched the light change for an hour.
Author not specified in the imported source
Bagan, Myanmar · Asia
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The teahouse ledger
Every teahouse on the trek kept a paper ledger, and the prices went up predictably with altitude because everything had been carried on someone's back.
Author not specified in the imported source
Kathmandu, Nepal · Asia
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Ten days to base camp
The mountain is not the hard part. The hard part is the fourteenth consecutive dinner of dal bhat and the discovery that you would happily eat a fifteenth.
Author not specified in the imported source
Everest region, Nepal · Asia
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A porter's load
He carried thirty-two kilos with a strap across his forehead and overtook us on every climb. At lunch he asked, politely, whether our bags were really that heavy.
Author not specified in the imported source
Annapurna, Nepal · Asia
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Prayer flags in the wind
The idea is that the wind carries the prayer, so a faded flag has done more work than a bright one. Nobody takes the old ones down.
Author not specified in the imported source
Ladakh, India · Asia
Imported text; story or fact not individually verified. A reference may provide background only.
Thimphu has no traffic lights
They installed one once and took it out because people preferred the policeman. He directs traffic like a conductor and clearly enjoys it.
Author not specified in the imported source
Thimphu, Bhutan · Asia
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The high pass
We crossed at 4,655 metres in a shared jeep with a cracked windscreen. The driver stopped at the top, got out, tied a ribbon to a pole and got back in without explanation.
Author not specified in the imported source
Pamir Highway, Tajikistan · Asia
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Samarkand blue
The tiles are a blue that photographs badly and looks unreal in person. An old man selling bread at the gate told us to come back at six, and he was right.
Author not specified in the imported source
Samarkand, Uzbekistan · Asia
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Bread you do not put face down
Non is never placed upside down and never cut with a knife. Our host corrected all three of us in the first ten minutes and then fed us for two days.
Author not specified in the imported source
Uzbekistan · Asia
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Yurt camp in the Tien Shan
We arrived to find the family moving camp for summer pasture. They fed us anyway, from a stove already half packed, and then rode away.
Author not specified in the imported source
Kyrgyzstan · Asia
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Fermented mare's milk
Kumis is offered with both hands and refusing is rude. It tastes like sour yoghurt that has had opinions. I drank two cups and got better at hiding my face.
Author not specified in the imported source
Kyrgyzstan · Asia
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Wind towers of Yazd
We stood under a badgir on a 42-degree day and felt actual cold air coming down. It was built in the fifteenth century and has never needed electricity.
Author not specified in the imported source
Yazd, Iran · Asia
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Invited three times
We were invited home for dinner by strangers three separate times in one week. Refusing politely is a whole art form and we never learned it.
Author not specified in the imported source
Iran · Asia
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The Petra shortcut
There is the main path and there is the back trail with eight hundred steps. Take the steps at seven in the morning and the Monastery is empty when you arrive.
Author not specified in the imported source
Petra, Jordan · Asia
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Floating badly
You cannot swim, only float, and you must not get it in your eyes. I got it in my eyes within ninety seconds. A stranger walked me to the shower.
Author not specified in the imported source
Dead Sea, Jordan · Asia
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Desert camp silence
After the generator went off there was no sound at all. Not wind, not insects, nothing. Six people sat in the dark for an hour and nobody spoke.
Author not specified in the imported source
Wadi Rum, Jordan · Asia
Imported text; story or fact not individually verified. A reference may provide background only.
Jerusalem in four quarters
We crossed between quarters six times in an afternoon and the smell, the language and the music changed each time inside two hundred metres.
Author not specified in the imported source
Jerusalem · Asia
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The Beirut corniche
Fishermen, joggers, families, and a man with a coffee cart doing better business than any cafe. At sunset the whole city seemed to be walking in the same direction.
Author not specified in the imported source
Beirut, Lebanon · Asia
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Souk directions
We asked for a shop and were escorted personally for ten minutes through covered alleys by a man who then refused to be thanked and disappeared.
Author not specified in the imported source
Aleppo, Syria · Asia
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Sunrise over Cappadocia
A hundred and fifty balloons launched in twenty minutes. From the ground it was chaos. From above it was completely still and you could hear other baskets' burners.
Author not specified in the imported source
Cappadocia, Turkey · Asia
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The ferry that crosses continents
Twenty minutes, a glass of tea, seagulls following the boat for bread, and you have changed continents on a commuter ticket.
Author not specified in the imported source
Istanbul, Turkey · Asia
Imported text; story or fact not individually verified. A reference may provide background only.