Year: 2013

I never thought I had the capacity to perspire much, but I’m in the process of learning otherwise. India, however tenuous its claims to democracy may be in many respects, is equally generous to everyone when it comes to the opportunity to perspire and expire. Perched on my seat in a war- and weather beaten […]

“I don’t understand Turkey”, I said, when I finally came up for air. The hotel attendant’s apperently simple question: “What do you think about our country?” had hit me in the gut and left me dumbfounded. He threw back his head and laughed: “No one understands Turkey, not even us Turks!” Which is not hard […]

I’d simply had a smashing day: I’d been peed, pooped, and to top it all off, vomited on. And not only had I instantly forgiven the monster that did this to me, I’d even held it, petted it and fallen head-over-heals in love with it. The I-wanna-be-your-mum-provokingly adorable Rollie, together with his sister Rosali, was […]

«Consider the heat,» warned my newly befriended local, Dominique. Somewhat skeptical about my intention to walk from La Calera at the bottom of Valle Gran Rey, up La Merica to Arure, at about 800 m above sea level, “…it’s really blistering today”. I had studied the map and made up my mind; I had some excess energy to […]

Despite the fact that I had been travelling since three in the morning, sleep was not an option in my current position: My knees draped somewhere in the neighborhood of my ears, my bulging backpack in close proximity to my kidneys. From the look and feel of it, the bus taking us from Tenerife airport to […]