The Shifting Sands

The roof tops of the Lusongyuan Hotel When I can, I like to tag some personal travel onto a work trip and I was able to do that when I was in Beijing recently.  Some meetings were planned in Beijing on a Monday and Tuesday so I planned to stay the weekend before to explore Beijing some more.  I found myself a little underwhelmed by Beijing after my last visit so this was my opportunity to readdress the ledger.  After a little research I was able to get in contact with the Beijing Rock Climbing Club who had a Club climbing trip planned for the Saturday to the crags at Miyun Baihe.  It is about 120 km north east of Beijing so I packed my climbing gear so I could tag along. Peace and quiet in the courtyard Katie was able to find me a well reviewed but cheap hotel in a Hutong District for Friday and Saturday before moving to the more sterile environment of the business hotel near our Beijing regional office....

The old OM10 on the left and the new boy on the right When I was 12 years old I was in Manilla with my parents. Now this sounds exotic and it is not a spelling error. Manilla is actually a very small town in northern New South Wales and my Dad's home town.  My Dad's cousin had a subscription to National Geographic and he gave me a pile of old magazines. I was immediately a fan due of the articles from exotic destinations that made country New South Wales seem so bland.  I was also captured by the advertising for the cameras.  Camera's seemed indellibly linked with adventurous travel and the one camera that stuck in my memory was the OM10. Later in life I could afford my own SLR, although not an OM10, but I still loved the classic lines and the sliver and black finish of the OM series.   Note the slim and small camera body on the OMD EM5 on the right.  Can't wait to try the 50mm lens on the digital Later, when film became a distant memory...

Captain Underpants enjoying the run-off at the entry to a Chaitya Mumbai is a crowded city with over 20,000 people per square kilometre which makes it the most densely populated of the worlds large cities. By means of comparison, New York's population density is half Mumbais!  You would think that, given my love of green space, I would have visited Sanjay Gandhi National Park which is on the boundary of the City.  Perhaps I was scared of what I would see but it has taken 2 and half years for me to make the short journey.  What is even funnier I ended up visiting twice in a month. A stupa in the main chaitya.  You can zoom in to see the 19th century graffiti on the stupa They say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  Jules, the 17 year old son of a good French friend was staying with us for a few weeks while working for an NGO.  He is of the X-Box generation and, in an effort to get him out of the apartment, I...