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Turkey | Mardin | Deyrulzafaran Monastery

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Deyrulzafaran Monastery is located about three and half miles from downtown Mardin. Every travel agent in town offers a stop at the monastery on one their tours of the local sites, but there does not seem to be any public transportation. A taxi costs 25 lira ($11.77), which seemed rather exorbitant. I tried to bargain the price down to 20 lira with several different taxi drivers but to no avail. The last one got a bit huffy and unleashed a barrage of Turkish at me that didn’t seem all that friendly. So I decided to walk. If I can’t walk three and a half miles in an hour it is time to hang up my walking cane. At ten on the morning it was still fairly cool and the walk out of town went quickly. I soon arrived at the turnoff to the monastery at the village of Eskikale. From here it about a mile to the monastery through sparsely vegetated hills inhabited by flocks of sheep and the occasional horse and frolicking colt.   Outside of the monastery were half a dozen big tour buses, dozen o...
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Egypt | Giza | Khufu Pyramid

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From The Spinx I wandered up the road to the Pyramid of Khufu, also known as Pyramid of Cheops. This is the largest of the three big Giza Pyramids. Although the grounds were nearly deserted when I entered at 8:00 a.m.—opening time—a considerable crowd has accumulated while I was admiring the Spinx. Most of them appear to be Egyptians. Many have hired horse buggies to haul them around the pyramids. The road leading up to the Khufu Pyramid does not look that steep, but the horses are having a hard time negotiating it. They are shod, and their steel horseshoes keep slipping on the asphalt surface of the road. As I watch two horses slip and fall to their knees. Obviously they are used to this, since they very quickly jump up and resume pulling. One horse, pulling a buggy with a family of Egyptians—father, mother, and three small children—refuses to go up the hill. It tries to turn and head back down, but the driver, who is walking along side, starts whacking it with a cane and it very rel...
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Mongolia | Zavkhan Aimag | Otgon Tenger Uul

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Wandered out 534 miles to Uliastai, capital of Zavkhan Aimag, and then took a van 20 miles east ATCF to the well-known children’s camp located to the west of the Otgon Tenger Massif. Here we hired horses and two horsemen for a circumnavigation of 13,192-foot Otgon Tenger Mountain, one of the sacred mountains of Mongolia officially recognised by the Mongolian government. I had already done an eighty mile circumnavigation, or khora, of Burkhan Khaldun and climbed to the summit of Bogd Khan Uul, just south of Ulaanbaatar, two other officially recognised sacred mountains. From the Children's Camp we crossed the Bodgyn Gol, which begins on the western flanks of Otgon Tenger, and headed northeast up the Rashaan Gol. Locals say they had been experiencing a drought and that there had been no significant rains for several weeks, but only a few hours into our trip we experienced a torrential downpour. We popped into a ger for tea and waited for this to pass and then continued on to the hot ...
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