Category: Experiences

Hungry like the wolf?

KILLING TIME AT THE SERENGETI

Sun sets down on the vast plains of Northern Tanzania, coloring the Serengeti in Scarlet and Orange. Photographers call this time the “magic hour”. They say it’s because the warm and angular lightning makes the pictures more dramatic. But there’s another drama playing here. Dusk also happens to be the best hunting hour for the big cats, and one of them just happens readying itself for dinner on top of one of the Acacia trees ahead of us. We stop our breath in anticipation…

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Petra 2.0

WE COME IN PEACE, TAKE US TO YOUR INSTAGRAM

I’ve been to this place before, back in 1999. Looking at the temple carved inside that enormous red rock, it seems as if nothing has changed. That is until you lower your eyes and look at the picture you’ve just taken with your iPhone. Once you prayed to the lord-all-mighty. Now you pray for the 4G network not to fail as you upload your photo to your Instagram account for the whole world to marvel. It was 20 years, give or take, since I last visited Petra. It might as well have been in a different millennium. Actually, it was.

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Eyes open shut

COLORFUL PROCESSION DOWN IN SATAN’S BOTTOM

Pashupatinath Temple during dry season. It’s filthy; it’s rancid, it’s gut-wrenching, it’s Kathmandu. To say the place is merely special is to say Stalin was simply a dictator. If you are on the lookout for life-changing experiences, Pashupatinath is for you. But then, so is walking into a Ku Klux Klan congregation wearing a Star of David.

Yet, amidst the desolation, stench, and decay, something rather beautiful managed to captivate me. No, it’s not the Gaudian-colored Sadhus priests. It’s something much smaller and more intimate. This is the story about it.

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28 hours later

LIFE & DEATH ON THE SERENGETI

Orcs! Brutish, aggressive, ugly, malevolent orcs! I’m perplexed at the site of the kill as if seeing a scene taken straight out of Tolkien’s Lord of the Ring. Just look at it. Its ears have been chewed off – probably during an argument with the other Orcs in the clan on who gets to eat Frodo first. I would have said it has a face only a mother could love, but he probably ate her already.

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The 3 laws of Violence Preservation

BECAUSE BEAUTY & BRUTALITY ARE NEVER FAR APART

Three young Balinese girls doing the traditional Balih-balihan dance. How beautiful, how exotic, how peaceful. Their proud parents sit in front, all dressed up to the occasion. The tourists (me included) are at the back busy taking tons of photos. This is what many have in mind when thinking about the tiny Indonesian island of Bali. Indeed, this is what the local tourism authorities would like you to picture. Yet, while all of this is happening, less than 50 meters away – in the very same temple – a fight to the death, complete with knives, blood, and gore, is in full swing.
Wanna guess who draws in a bigger crowd?

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Cambodian Delight

BAT IN BAGUETTE, AND OTHER LOCAL DELICACIES

If you thought your office cafeteria sucks, think again. The snacks on display at the afternoon markets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia would – in comparison – make an overcooked Broccoli seem like a juicy Porterhouse. Caramelized Grasshoppers? That’s for the feeble-hearted! Are you brave enough to try a boiled Chicken embryo – beak and feathers included? Or perhaps a deep-fried Tarantula?

Yes, we’ve tried them all, and somehow lived to tell the tale.
(Perhaps because we skipped the raw bats…)

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How high is too high?

Your car might handle it, but can you?

WE DROVE THE WORLD’S TALLEST PAVED ROAD TO FIND OUT

It’s cold, and bright, and dusty, and Beige – so Beige. It’s also flat. Apart from two hills in the distance – one of them smoking, there’s almost nothing to break the endless monotony. I read the plaque with the little Spanish I can still master from my days in Cuba. It says the small smoking hill is actually a 5,976 meter-high mountain called Sabancaya. As it turns out, the modest hill also happens to be the most active volcano in Peru. The one near it is 6,300m, but dormant.

Welcome to the world’s highest highway, where the term “perspective” gets a whole new meaning. Its the tallest place on Earth accessible by a standard road car – that is, if your road car engine can breathe at a height of 4,910 meters above sea level, and of course, if you can as well.

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You only die twice

THE WEIRD STORY ABOUT THE BIKER THE GOT KILLED ONLY TO BE REBORN

Riding a bike on India’s backcountry highways is a dangerous form of art. Actually, forget it! Riding a motorcycle in India is sheer lunacy, the most dangerous, irresponsible thing I’ve ever done in my life! And I’ve done some crazy s*** on four wheels, on two, with an air tank strap to my back, and on foot – you name it. Nothing, I mean NOTHING matches the stuff you have to cope with while piloting a beat-up 1950s Royale Enfield Bullitt 350cc motorcycle. Just ask Om Singh Rathore. That died as a nobody on this very piece of tarmac between Udaipur and Jodhpur, Rajasthan, in 1991. Now he is a local celebrity complete with a personal shrine, a cult of believers, and is more alive than ever. We stopped by to say hello.

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The road to Zion

WENT TO MEET THREE PATRIARCHS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DESERT

I’m leaving Las Vegas. Driving on an endless, empty stretch of the Interstate 15 highway.  It’s 7am on a bright Sunday morning and I’m pretty much the only car around. My temples are pounding. A few cans of beer from yesterday’s Supercross races are still lodged in my head as I drive north away from Sin City, towards Zion.

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