Postcards

The coastal ferry took us from Qaqortoq in Greenland to Aassiat in four days. Every day we stopped at small settlements of multu-coloured houses where the ferry's arrival once a week means children coming home from school, husbands returning from work, wives returning with new born babies. The ship has a canteen where, three times a day, most of us meet to eat, drink and chat. We meet a small group of tourists from Italy, a pair of German tourists complaining that their guidebook is ten years out-of-date and two Austrians who are worried about flight cancellations. Most of the people on board were Greenlanders, often just making short hops between one town and the next. There were groups of school children on their way home, all sleeping in dormitories low down in the ship. Children ... read more

We are the only car passing through the border. It's ten-thirty and the log says we're the third vehicle through since they opened at eight. The Caledonspoort border crossing into Lesotho is very quiet and very laid back. For about an hour we'd been approaching Lesotho's mountains along a potholed South African road. Once across the border, the road quality doesn't really change but the scenery does. Gone are the endless vista of the African velt; we're into misty mountains, lush green valleys and roaring mountain rivers. There are small farms everywhere; a few huts, a few animals and some maize. We are staying at Maliba Lodge, deep in the Ts'ehlanyane National Park. The road to the lodge climbs and climbs, eventually turning to gravel and getting us to over 2000 metres high. At the lodge ... read more

What to do about the nyala? We don't want to frighten them, they are easily frightened, but we would like to get into our little rondavel hut. In Hlane Game Reserve animals take precedence over people; are we allowed to walk through a group of antelope with our luggage? While we ponder, they wander - luckily in the right direction opening a clear path to our front door. Hlane is a game reserve best known for rhino but there is plenty of other wildlife in this corner of Eswatini, a small country completely surrounded by South Africa; we used to call it Swaziland but the country recently reverted to its original, pre-colonial, name. We are in Hlane for two days and soon get used to sharing the lawns around the hut with nyala and colourful birds. ... read more

Travelling in to Dhaka from the airport at 1 am, the traffic is horrendous. Three or four lanes of vehicles interwoven; hooting, flashing lights, sirens, belching fumes, dust; road works and half-built structures in the gloom beyond the headlights; dense housing, shops, advertising with the distinctive sanskrit letters of the Bangla language. Welcome to Bangladesh. The lane to the hotel is blocked by a truck that is unloading bricks … at one in the morning. We discover the next day why: trucks are banned from Dhaka during the day so have to unload at night. The next day we meet the labourers who carry the bricks into the site; each man has 20 bricks balanced on his head on a board; they use one free hand to help them climb the ladder to the second story. ... read more

In 1963, a magnitude 6.1 earthquake shook Skopje, then a provincial town in Yugoslavia. Over 1,000 people were killed and 80% of the buildings were completely destroyed. Rebuilding took place throughout the '60s and '70s with the help of 78 donor countries and the result was a rather grey, utilitarian city. Our loft apartment is about 15 minutes walk from the main square, though we could catch the number 12 red double decker bus. We're in a building that survived the 1963 disaster and our loft is a rather wonderful space, full of eclectic furniture, pictures and fabrics. We have the choice of sleeping in a little corner room that has windows on every side or on a mezzanine 'shelf' in the roof. In 1991, Skopje became the capital of the country now named North Macedonia. ... read more