On an October morning in the Scottish highlands, I joined a group of birdwatching enthusiasts for a day out in the forests of Speyside, on the western edge of the Cairngorms Mountains. The group was on a week-long tour with Speyside Wildlife, one of Scotland’s leading wildlife travel companies, and on this particular day they Read More …
The coastline of Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula is dotted with lighthouses; in fact, it seems as though almost every town has one. On my recent trip to the region, we drove along the shore road that hugs the St. Lawrence River and stopped at one of the most distinctive lighthouses, a fire-engine-red beacon that stands on Read More …
Here’s one from my film archives: A group shot of children in the village of Sauraha, in the lowland region of Nepal known as the Terai. Sauraha is the gateway to Chitwan National Park, which is home to the rare – and elusive – Bengal tiger (which I didn’t see), as well as rhinos (which Read More …
I think it was the zebras that showed up first. But it may have been a giraffe, or possibly a kudu. In any case, it didn’t take long after we arrived at Andersson’s Camp in Namibia’s Ongava Game Reserve before various species made an appearance at the waterhole just beyond the lounge area. As we Read More …
In honor of Valentine’s Day, I’ve been thinking back over the romantic scenes I’ve encountered during my travels. One that comes to mind is from a tour I led to Cuba a couple of years ago. I was walking near the main plaza of Trinidad with some members of my group when we saw a Read More …
I was wandering along Havana’s famous seaside boulevard, the Malecón, when I spotted a group of young men enjoying themselves jumping from the seawall into Havana Harbor. They would start on the opposite side of the street, wait for a moment without traffic, and then run across the road, leap onto the wall, and launch Read More …
Lake Hovsgol (also spelled Khuvsgul, Hövsgöl, Khövsgol, and a variety of other ways) is the largest freshwater lake in Mongolia by volume and second largest by area. Located in northern Mongolia near the Russian border, it is very deep and very cold. I took the plunge and can say without question that Lake Hovsgol is Read More …
Last summer, I had the opportunity to visit Quebec’s beautiful Gaspé Peninsula, a lobster-claw-shaped piece of land that juts into the Gulf of St. Lawrence north of New Brunswick. The Gaspésie, as it is known in French, had long been on my travel wish list, although I didn’t really know a whole lot about it Read More …
When I was growing up, my family spent much of every summer visiting my grandfather in Sweden, and every other year, we would take a two-week trip to Norway, where he was born and raised. Although he had grown up in Drammen, a port city near Oslo, it was the nature of his homeland that Read More …