Jonathan Larson

Trapped in the talons of trouble, our impulse may be to search the horizon in hope of deliverance, a stroke of fate that would banish threat and summon back the bluebirds.  Such a pity!  Since the strength to prise open the grip of suffering might well lie unrecognized just over the back fence. It was […]

I sat listening in the courtyard of an elderly friend in the ramshackle outskirts of a Kalahari town.  He was giving his account of the origins of the HIV pandemic.  It went something like this: HIV has come to our country by design of ill-willed foreigners*.  We know that diseases native to this part of […]

As contagion stalks our planet, cities shuttered behind cordons militaires, cruise ships denied port or anchored in a sea of troubles, and hospitals ominous with taut, costumed creatures, a back story has been mass flight in search of safety.  An early report estimated that nearly half of Wuhan’s 11-million population fled as the handwriting went […]

          Pebble On The Tongue* “The longest journey is the journey inwards …         quest for the source of (one’s) being.”             Dag Hammarskjold, fr. Markings Almost 59 years ago, Dag Hammarskjold, Secretary General of the United Nations, his plane on fire, plummeted […]

I met John in a garret office just off Maryland Ave. in the Capitol Hill district of Washington, DC.  His tired, disheveled attire might have suggested life on the street, but spritely expression and chatter hinted at something beyond that.  We whiled away the time, and this is the story he told. Like many in […]

The treeless hills of South Africa’s Eastern Cape roll down to the Indian Ocean where they form the Wild Coast: the sea, the wind and spray pounding a rocky shore.  Here and there lie pocket beaches where rivers tumble down to meet the surf. That beauty has attracted seaside resorts and casinos for the well-heeled, […]

National Highway 1 from Kabul to Kandahar, will bring you under the walls of the storied, but now humbled, city of Ghazni.  Its ramparts once sheltered brilliant Persian poets the likes of Hakim Sanai, the ‘eyes of Sufi poetry’ and inspiration to Rumi.  The memory of that elegance now in tatters, the city suffers one […]

There is a traveler’s proverb in southern Africa, “Tsela e kgopo, ga e latse nageng.’  (The crooked road will not leave you sleeping in the wild.) It applies on the road to Kabul just as readily as elsewhere. True to the proverb’s implied wisdom, the tarmac – but, gated – highway at Surobi (see previous […]

High in the Maluti mountains of southern Africa, there is a pass for ponies and trekkers called ‘Molimo O Nthuse’ (God help me!), the prayer of mountain travelers everywhere.  Thin air, vagaries of sleet and snow, rude slopes, snake-like footpaths, solitude; all can conspire with lethal effect. Prayer is sometimes the traveler’s only recourse. Such […]

If you should think the city of Peshawar is just another edge-of-the-mountain town, dust-blown, tattered and gusty with bluster and intrigue, consider this: the very heart of the old quarter is called ‘Qissa Khwani’, the Storytellers’ Bazaar.  Not the bazaar of carpets or of silks, not of walnuts, spices or dried fruit, not of camels, […]

On the cusp of summer monsoon, but still swirled in dust and heat, our caravan assembled in the town of Raiwind outside Lahore.  Behold! a three-passenger, improvised roof-rack atop the little red VW station wagon, a small trailer with hitch, an assortment of personal and camping gear, four school-leavers, two adults, their young daughter and […]

Northeast of the power-stepping guards at the Wagah crossing (see previous post, MOAR IV) there is a telling scene about what borders born of duress can inflict on a populace.  Punjab is the cradle of Sikh faith, home to the great majority of its faithful who now live in India. On a clear day, from […]

It’s ticklish business navigating a cemetery.  There’s that saying, “Someone’s walking on my grave,” prompted by some chill running up the spine.  Travel thoughtfully, not least the great river valleys of the world, and you find stories of near cosmic scale lying at your feet, stories that send a shiver through the soul. A traverse […]

The Woodstock School campus, midst wooded foothills, has commanding views of some of India’s most sacred geography.  (When Pearl Buck visited she referred breathlessly to the school setting as ‘vertical real estate.’) To the south and east winds the course of the Ganga (Ganges) whose sprawling valley is the axis of Indian civilization.  To the […]

In the city of Helsingborg, a ferry ride across from Helsingor (or, ‘Elsinore’, if you’re drafting a tragedy called ‘Hamlet, Prince of Denmark’), there was once a youth hostel on the northern edge of town midst wooded grounds.  It sat on a rise looking down on the city, on the straits to the Baltic Sea, […]

If, having been whisked to a secret southern metropolis and you were there set free on the streets, you’d be forgiven for believing you’d found yourself in Brussels, Vienna or Berlin.  In truth you would be in the Paris of Latin America, Buenos Aires, whose name translates as ‘Fair Winds’.  Famous for bumpy politics, for […]

They’re up there still.  Hundreds of tents pitched in the rubble field at base camp on Everest.  Climbers – some, at best bricoleurs – and their Sherpa guides wait for that window of clear days before the monsoon that offers some chance of summiting the mother of all mountains, Chomolungma, 29,035’ of rock, icefall, crevasses, […]

The city of Brussels takes itself pretty seriously.  It devotes itself to the tricky business of holding together a quarrelsome bilingual country, to projects like the 28-member European Union and to the colossus known as NATO.  The city bristles with all-work, no-play diplomats, soldiers, journalists and lobbyists. Whatever sunshine might be left under such dour […]

Delia Owens, wildlife conservationist and briefly a neighbor in the Kalahari, has now written a crime novel set in coastal Carolina.  ‘Where the Crawdads Sing’, the title taken from her mother’s term for the back-of-the-back-of-beyond where the wilds harbor impossible beauty and secrets, is a nod towards the music – the exquisite music – inherent […]

Our family traipse – not unlike Viking forbears who once sailed the Volga and traded wares on the Silk Road –  began long ago in a Minnesota winter, with ports of call like Shanghai, Hong Kong, Penang, Rangoon and Chittagong, mostly aboard plucky freighters.  In time, we came to live on the verge of the […]

Scattered across southern Africa, at highway intersections, as at village crossroads, an unnoticed dynamic is in play.  In the dead of night, a traditional healer has crept on to the scene and buried there, in secret, the tools of a diviner’s trade: small bits of bone, shells, sundry coins, buttons and stones.  In a region […]

From earliest times, water sources and wells have been the scene of rare encounter, of betrothal and alliance, of secrets, struggles and dreams, yes, and of slaking thirst for mortal and beast, nowhere more earnestly than in the arid interiors of the planet’s landmasses.  When desert winds drive storms of dust and sand, when the […]

Plant yourself in the sand of the Kerala seashore, the Arabian Sea creaming at your feet, a warm westerly caressing your face.  This is the Malabar coast. Spice garden of the East, fantasy of mariners drawn by the fragrance – and fortunes – of cardamom, cinnamon, ginger and clove. They came by turn from ancient […]

The story board of sacred writ recounts that in their beginnings, humankind and the animals were created on the same day, the sixth day (Genesis 1:24-31).  This arrangement surely suggests some commonality, perhaps even fellowship, while serving also as a check on our hubris. That whatever the glories of angel-flight inspiration and achievement, we can […]

Consider the French word, dépaysé.  It aptly describes travelers who after long east-west travels clamber off holiday jets in the likes of Hawaii, the Costa del Sol, Capetown or Baku.  The French term means literally ‘un-countried’. Otherwise, in English, it can mean ‘dazed’ or ‘bewildered’. For moderns accustomed to the reach of transcontinental jets, it […]

Faithful rule-of-thumb in travels: the richest stories lie in the side streets, the smoky recesses of courtyards and tea stalls.  My Sunday meander down an alley in Phnom Penh ran true to form. Having heard the account of a young Khmer musician’s love of a grandfather (see previous post), I waited in a church anteroom […]

On a side street in downtown Phnom Penh, Cambodia, you’ll find a homely little Anglican church.  If you saunter by of a Sunday, as I did not long ago, you might notice that several people linger on the premises after morning services.  It was enough, at my visit, to draw me in, on the chance […]

There is hardly any place name, with the possible exception of ‘Shangri-La’, that is quite so evocative as ‘Mandalay’. Nearly all of its associations for the West are Kipling-esque ‘images of oriental kingdoms and tropical splendor’*. Dozens of book titles, songs and hotel names have ridden the crest of those images to fame and riches. […]

Come November 22nd this year, discriminating families at Thanksgiving tables will sit up – unawares – to turkey stuffed with the makings of an epic and delectable tale.  It is the tale of ‘manoomin’, the sacred wild rice that grows across northern Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the prairie provinces of Canada. Stand on the cat-tail fringes […]

Beyond a sea of springtime desert flowers on a bluff overlooking South Africa’s Saldanha Bay, there stands an inn.  Its entryway is a colossal wooden door whose carving and rough iron bolts whisper tales of Tuareg caravans plodding the Sahara. You cannot help but wonder what travelers once found shelter from marauder or harmattan (West […]

            Intrigued by Daniels’ narrative, and by what if any after-story might await discovery, I set out to learn more.  On a winter afternoon, 38 years after the events in the story, I boarded the afternoon train in Kandy bound for Gampola and Nawalapitiya.  As I sat awaiting departure on a jewel-like day, I could imagine the figures […]

It must surely be one of the oddest bits of historical flotsam cast up by India’s exotic, but restive northeast. The artifact in question – seldom seen by outsiders – now holds pride of place on a wall in the Shillong* headquarters of India’s paramilitary unit, the Assam Rifles. There in a regimental ballroom, surrounded […]

            If you should have the good fortune in winter to visit the northeast Indian town of Bishwanath Ghat on the banks of the Brahmaputra River, you would find it much as it has been for generations: groves of bamboo, a hilltop dak bungalow (government rest house) where my best chum, Lokhi, lived, a Hindu temple, […]

  The coffee table picture book of the upper White Nile is all drama.  Across this confluence of Uganda, South Sudan, Rwanda and Congo stretches the savannah and its stupefying wild creatures, bejeweled lakes, the summits of cranky volcanoes, a gash of the Rift Valley, the course of the Nile, longest river on earth, and […]