Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: Armchair adventuring


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Born Free

Born_Free1When I was a kid, I used to watch a TV show called Born Free.
It featured Gary Collins and Diana Muldaur and it was based – I learned much later – on the books by Joy Adamson, an Austrian-born naturalist and writer who in Africa, together with her husband George Adamson, took in three orphaned lion cubs and kept on of them, a lioness called Elsa.
The series lasted only 13 episodes – and that sounds weird to me, because I seem to recall it lasted forever.

The show was everything a kid of about ten could want – it featured African landscapes, wild beasts and a mix of adventure and positive messages. It was environment-friendly, and green before there was a Green party. Now I’ve been told they don’t broadcast it anymore, here in Italy, because it is not politically correct enough, whatever that means. The sort of thing that makes me feel old1.

Continue reading →


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English, Spanish, French & Arabic

Today I’m posting an infographic from the South China Morning Post, graphically representing the diffusion of languages in the world or – if you prefer – the potential readership for each language.
Or, the languages that are likelier to give you a lot of mileage as you travel the world.
Or what languages a world-weary pulp adventurer could have mastered depending on the places he visited.
(be warned, it’s big) Continue reading →


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The Week of Unreliability

This is the week in which all of Italy shuts down as people eagerly pursue their dream of a vacation in style.
Shops are shut for business, public offices are closed, mail delivery becomes even more erratic. Even the internet becomes unreliable, and Facbook fills up with weirdos rambling about nothing.

Here in the Astigianistan hills, the torrid heat has given way to furious thunderstorms and five pm showers.
Feels like the monsoon season in Asia, without any of the perks.

So, for this week I’ll be sitting back and relaxing – sipping cold brewed tea, dining on Indian food (it suits the atmosphere, so to speak), and reading books.

In case you are interested, here’s what’s on my reading list. Continue reading →


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Soundscapes

Back in the days before Facebook…
Boy does that sound old!
But it’s true – there was a time when there were no social networks as such, and we roamed freely through the web, looking for new treasures, for people to meet, for information to trade.
Most of us ad websites, some were beginning to dabble with blogs.

beforesocialmedia

It was in that heroic time that I discovered The Quiet American.
No, not the Graham Green novel1

The Quiet American is a website – and the alias of the gentleman that maintains2 it.
The website hosts a huge collection of sounds. Continue reading →


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The Silk Road from the wrong end

41PXW22MFDLThe joys of the internet era.
back in the days before Youtube it took me forever to get my hands on the NHK/CCTV documentary series, The Silk Road.
Now, I find the first series, twelve episodes, on Youtube, and I’m pretty sure the second series should be somewhere at hand.

According to the legend, it took 7 years to the Japanese NHK to plan and film the series – a travel along the Silk Road starting from Chang’an and ending in the Pamirs.
The project was developed further during the following decade, finally taking a staggering 17 years to reach completion. Continue reading →