Our plan was to leave Turkmenistan and enter Uzbekistan via the northern border close to Khiva which meant that due to time constraints, we had to fly from Ashgabat to Dashoguz. The only airline that would allow us to do that was with the one and only national carrier, Turkmenistan Airlines.…
View PostWhen I learnt that there was an underground mountain lake in Turkmenistan, I made it my goal to visit it in the short time we were in this strange country. You essentially enter a cave at the foot of a mountain (it seemed more like a small hill), descend 65m…
View PostWithout a doubt, Turkmenistan is the strangest country I have ever been to. We were flying to Ashgabat from Baku via Istanbul. The gates for flights to Ashgabat, Bishkek and Dushanbe in the Istanbul airport were in one corner of the airport no other passengers would ever go to. Not…
View PostIt rained all morning which meant the pictures we took at Heian Shrine which had Kyoto’s biggest tori (gate) and at Nanzen-ji were only from the SLR. We stopped to have some cakes at a cafe in the Kyodai area and later some lunch. From there we decided to take the…
View PostNasu is a special place for me as that is where my Japanese family live. (I spent 7 weeks mostly alone in Japan in 2008 before starting my MSc in Japanese Studies and lived with my “host” family) My siblings, niece and nephew joined us during our second week in Japan. Our…
View PostWe decided to go to Gifu as it was the most famous place in Japan where the tradition of fishing using cormorants was still alive. Gifu is a valley and known to be one of the hottest places in all of Japan. It certainly was. Our first stop was to…
View PostWe wanted to see the countryside and as Wicklow came highly recommended, that was what we did. The drive took us up the mountains that still had some snow on the ground. We finally arrived in Glendalough (Valley of the Two Lakes) and we were blessed with good weather. It…
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