I’m having lots of fun reading Tristan Gooley’s **The Walker’s Guide to Outdoor Clues & Signs”, that has a nice Victorian title and is a sturdy, thick, no-nonsense hardback.
And it talks about what it says on the label.The idea is to provide “walkers” – that is, people that take pleasure in walking, hiking and rambling about… to provide them, I was saying, of the tools to help them read the landscape and understand the relationships between its various elements: hills, rivers, trees, buildings, etc. Continue reading
Signs along the road
Strange notions
I know, I know… I keep writing about how fun it is to do research when I write.
You’ll have to bear with me – I trained as a researcher, after all, and therefore it is only logical that I enjoy that part of the work.
Right now, I’m writing the second (OK, it would be actually the third, but let’s not get into that) Corsair story, and first and foremost it feels like learning a new language. Continue reading
Tsamba
Stuck in Sinin while the authorities evaluate the opportunity of letting two Europeans go forth west into the wilderness, Peter Fleming and Ella Maillart try to have some kind of social life, visit Kumbum and have their first meeting with tsamba – a travel companion with which they will become well acquainted.At first mistaken for ash, tsamba (or tsampa) is one of the staples of Tibetan and Nepalese cooking, and it is worth a little space here.
At first mistaken for ash, tsamba (or tsampa) is one of the staples of Tibetan and Nepalese cooking, and it is worth a little space here. Continue reading
The Valley of the Beasts
Yesterday it was Algernon Blackwood’s birthday… his 147th.
Blackwood was one of the great supernatural fiction authors – really one of the founding fathers of the genre.
I read my first Blackwood story, called The Valley of the Beasts, when I was about ten.
It was the last story in a book called Alfred Hitchcock’s Ghost Gallery, and it was like nothing I ever read before.
And so, to celebrate the work of an author I always loved, here’s the audio version of that story I read so many years ago.
Enjoy!
A blog to follow
While I try to recover from a week of extremey bad weather, ill health and computer problems, I suggest you guys point your browsers to our friend Carlos’ new blog Toils and Trouble in Xinjiang Province, which is following our same path together with Ella Maillart and Peter Fleming.
And again – he is seeking travel companions for a real trip in the Taklamakan.
Think about it.
Karavansara 