tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1721857145224919952024-03-13T06:00:00.918-04:00CamelDabble TravelBabbleCAMELS now present and accounted for ...BDMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13798944688122545676noreply@blogger.comBlogger157125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-172185714522491995.post-4651768883156861272020-08-10T20:44:00.001-04:002024-02-21T21:28:12.797-05:00Travel No More
My dirge, a pathetic coronach, for the current state of being,
especially for us of a certain age. Covid.
There’s a
Proclaimers’ song* that goes:
“Lochaber no
more, Sutherland no more, Lewis no more, Skye no more ...” and
it gets stuck in my brain some days.
My head is dolefully
singing: “Travel no more,
travel no more, travel no more ... .”
In my best
impersonation of an Edinburgh BDMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13798944688122545676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-172185714522491995.post-75086593870465558272020-05-02T10:35:00.002-04:002020-05-02T10:35:27.765-04:00Havana, Cuba 2019
Cuba is a beautiful country in spite
of the fallout from revolutionary idealism. The Atlantic Ocean and
the Caribbean Sea still roll onto its shores; around Havana the waves
still pummel its colonial defence structures. Castro’s exciting
revolution of the 1950s seems a long time ago now. Granted, we only
had a week to explore this legendary Latin American city; it was not
a beach holiday .BDMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13798944688122545676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-172185714522491995.post-26959871230833594862020-04-05T21:54:00.002-04:002020-04-05T21:54:26.196-04:00Cemeteries - Tunisia
Some cribbing and commingling from a much earlier
posts.
Tunisia
is a secular country, estimated at 97% Muslim. In 2012 I noted it was
the most liberal Arab country I had visited at the time. There I had opportunity
to view a Muslim cemetery up close. Burials are generally made within
a day of death, avoiding the embalming process that interferes with
the body. While all mourners attend BDMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13798944688122545676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-172185714522491995.post-67729623638729370932020-02-15T18:55:00.000-05:002020-02-15T18:55:01.420-05:00Oman's Great Treasure
With
some sadness I noted the passing of Oman’s Sultan Qaboos bin Said
on January 10th this year. For fifty years he was the
figurehead of one of the Middle East’s most stable countries.
As
the omnipotent ruler of several million people, the Oxford-educated
Qaboos inspired widespread personal loyalty for his progressiveness.
In 1970 when he took power from his reactionary father withBDMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13798944688122545676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-172185714522491995.post-29923056452946288782020-01-22T23:11:00.000-05:002020-01-22T23:11:12.859-05:00Riga Redux 2019
A bit of everything in the weather
for my third, and briefest, visit to the city of half my ancestors. I
say "city" whereas most family members had lived mainly in
rural areas, but Riga was always beckoning and well within reach in
this tiny country. Some did and do live there; they all knew Riga.
With great eagerness my companion
and I disembarked, our ship having docked itself so BDMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13798944688122545676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-172185714522491995.post-4030424774727814752019-12-09T21:53:00.002-05:002019-12-09T21:53:30.558-05:00CDMX: Diego Rivera
The artistic works of Diego Rivera (1886-1957) are on view in many
Mexico City buildings and attract hordes of tourists ‒
locals and international alike. The Palacio Nacional (with
Rivera's "The History of Mexico") and Palacio de Bellas
Artes are but two instances of many; the home he shared with Frida
Kahlo is another. Rivera is an artistic icon, one of the world's
greatest muralists; his BDMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13798944688122545676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-172185714522491995.post-28736278198565454972019-11-17T19:27:00.000-05:002020-01-07T14:22:24.970-05:00St Petersburg, Russia, 2006 and 2019
Combining the two different visits
to St Petersburg became
necessary in my mind because the second was quite disappointing.
My affinity for this storied Russian city comes from my grandmother's
time working there in the 1890s, probably up until about 1908. Both
visits had the added (but sadly limited) personal agenda to
photograph the mansion where she lived with the Baron Kusov family. A
BDMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13798944688122545676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-172185714522491995.post-90736002290686194842019-10-31T22:02:00.000-04:002020-05-01T23:09:50.622-04:00Stockholm 2019
Stop reading right now if you don't know who ABBA is. Or never liked
them.
Sure—pop music,
relentless beat, sentimental lyrics.
But so full of HEART and the most danceable music ever. I
never quite realized what a fan I was ‒
how much that music pervaded my life in the mothering years ("shining
like the sun"), the happiness it gave at social
events, the comfort it provided when I hadBDMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13798944688122545676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-172185714522491995.post-50858281863557609662019-10-10T21:10:00.000-04:002019-10-10T21:10:22.440-04:00S'Hertogenbosch, Netherlands 2019
The
Netherlands ‒ land of infinite possibilities for day trips to
interesting villages, towns, and cities. The city of
'S-Hertogenbosch, better known as Den Bosch, was on my agenda. Mild
curiosity about painter-artist Hieronymous Bosch (ca.1450-1516)
motivated me, and where better to learn about him than the Jheronimus
Bosch Art Centre in his native city.
The
Netherlands has BDMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13798944688122545676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-172185714522491995.post-48763916080555255452019-09-24T20:46:00.000-04:002019-09-24T20:46:48.423-04:00Wadi Rum, Jordan 2018
They say you can't go back again.
Because it's never quite the same. Sometimes you can, and it works.
Wadi Rum desert in the south of Jordan has been a beacon to me since
first visiting in 2007 and then having the perfect camel ride in
2008.
The expanded visitor centre was to
be expected because of the intervening years, but it's almost
featureless, and deserted. It's still early BDMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13798944688122545676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-172185714522491995.post-72477309211340598862019-07-19T09:50:00.000-04:002019-07-19T09:50:03.425-04:00CDMX Sor Juana
Illegitimate child Juana Inés
de Abaje became Sor Juana de la Cruz, a celebrated
seventeenth-century writer. Falling in love with Sor Juana
de la Cruz is easy when you view the Netflix series called
Juana Inés. In her lifetime, her intellectual gifts
were recognized in both the Old World and the New. Not without a
price to pay.
Unattributed portrait
at https://www.biography.com/writer/BDMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13798944688122545676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-172185714522491995.post-10623407559192693522019-06-26T09:50:00.000-04:002019-06-26T09:50:00.869-04:00Nizwa, Oman 2013
Our route from Muscat is
climbing the Hajar mountains ‒
not on foot, but on a smooth highway ‒
as we head south to Nizwa. The mountains are higher here than in the
north; giant slabs of rock. Villages we pass have many houses of a
common size, as if regulated. Nizwa itself is on an ancient trading
route, an oasis of extensive date plantations.
Almost everything
here in the town looks new BDMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13798944688122545676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-172185714522491995.post-41493656261170013742019-05-28T10:55:00.000-04:002019-05-31T21:06:38.420-04:00CDMX SCENES
A
visit to Mexico City ‒ CDMX for Ciudad de Mexico ‒ imprints
images in the mind and heart. The sounds
and colours of a city in perpetual motion. Yellow uniforms of
the street sweepers who start at dawn; bold designs of street art
everywhere; the smooth hissing of the Metro; a ceaseless flow of
passersby day and evening; sidewalk sales of shoes, hats, handbags,
vibrant merchandise; the BDMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13798944688122545676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-172185714522491995.post-69334528191080868082019-04-30T21:21:00.000-04:002019-05-18T10:45:11.709-04:00FIVE YEARS
Five
years. Five years since I began chasing camels. Chasing them here
on a blog, mind you. It was 23 April 2014 when I began writing.
The
real camel adventures began much longer ago and continue
sporadically. After all, it's not every day you can find camels to
ride, pet, admire, or kiss.
... And
Camelogue
is still available at https://www.blurb.ca/b/8605379-camelogue.
BDMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13798944688122545676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-172185714522491995.post-64014035107439717812019-04-08T09:39:00.003-04:002019-04-08T09:39:57.120-04:00MOVIES Part Three
Highly
opinionated comments on movies that have some aspect of camels or
desert. Continued from MOVIES Part One and MOVIES Part Two. You know
you can click on those links, right?
The
Sheltering Sky
Debra
Winger and John Malkovich seek isolated places in the Sahara to find?
avoid? remedy? their hollow relationship. I never liked Malkovich but
he's bearable here, till he gets typhoid and BDMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13798944688122545676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-172185714522491995.post-2068802693160693322019-03-17T21:48:00.000-04:002019-05-09T11:34:49.398-04:00Muscat, Oman 2013-2018
The gleaming city of
Muscat sits in folds of the western el-Hajar mountains, sloping to a
natural harbour. Facing north and east into the Gulf of Oman, this is largely a twentieth-century developed city. Refreshingly, it avoids the
ostentatious sky-high architecture of many oil-rich cities. Oman's
iconic frankincense burner dominates one hill, symbolizing a long
history of tribal/nomadic BDMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13798944688122545676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-172185714522491995.post-31085479619622359832019-02-25T21:50:00.000-05:002019-05-09T23:02:24.112-04:00Ships of the Desert (for real)
There ARE some. Real
ships. Found in natural desert areas or in humanity-devastated
deserts.
In 1954 in the
ancient Giza plateau of Egypt, archaeologists discovered the solar
boat of Pharaoh Khufu. Almost 5,000 years old, the ship had been
buried in a pit covered by enormous stone slabs. In a dismantled
state, it took years of painstaking reconstruction. Although this
solar boat was not BDMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13798944688122545676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-172185714522491995.post-17738315561693704892019-01-31T22:49:00.000-05:002019-05-09T11:36:20.096-04:00Friends Send Me ... camel things (9)
It's getting harder to keep track. They just keep a-coming.
I know not where on earth this one came from. Politically incorrect, you say?
Here's
a classic, sure to offend everyone: a camel with a camel.
Coralie
is full of jokes:
Cathy's
favourite, but a little marzipan goes a long way ...
To
follow up from cousin Brian's teaching moment:
Did
anyone say BDMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13798944688122545676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-172185714522491995.post-77267660890640520972019-01-16T19:54:00.001-05:002019-01-16T19:54:03.834-05:00Chichester, England 2000
A
trip to Sussex in England and the publication of a decade-long
historical collaboration, what's not to like? And a perfect small B&B
in the Sussex town of Chichester iced the cake for the book
launching. I've written about The Petworth Project on my genealogy
blog, more than once I think ...
blogspot.com/2017/1/the-petworth-emigration-story.html
blogspot.com/2018/05/BDMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13798944688122545676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-172185714522491995.post-34842323764394144022018-12-30T13:00:00.002-05:002019-05-09T11:37:33.552-04:00End of the Year
Time to make like a shill again. The book is still available. For
sale on Blurb.com, $15.00 Canadian; the USD equivalent is less.
http://www.blurb.com/b/8605379-camelogue
"Chasing camels in Arabic countries
encumbered only by gender, age, opportunity, and gentle
self-delusion. Impersonating a world traveller requires permanent
smiles and sign language on high alert. Strange, the writer'sBDMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13798944688122545676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-172185714522491995.post-45984718974063501592018-12-15T21:59:00.001-05:002019-05-09T23:21:24.475-04:00Our Man of the Camels
It
makes me happy to bring to light some women who work with camels (Our
Lady of the Camels, three posts). I haven't even touched on those who
labour to grow the camel dairy industry, what with the health
benefits of camel milk slowly being recognized.
But
I can no longer avoid sharing a man of the ilk. Avoiding is
not an apt word; I've put it off because describing one of the most
BDMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13798944688122545676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-172185714522491995.post-72836271210741190272018-11-27T10:57:00.000-05:002018-11-27T10:57:40.278-05:00A Ship Called Camel
In
1783 with the Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War, a ship
called Camel was one of a host of British vessels busy
ferrying Loyalists to places of refuge in Nova Scotia and Quebec.
Many sailed from New York, the last Loyalist stronghold.
References
to the ship come from quite a variety of sources and they provided a
continuing discussion in several issues of Loyalist Trails.[1]BDMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13798944688122545676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-172185714522491995.post-64598062543980164052018-11-04T11:31:00.001-05:002018-11-04T11:31:46.760-05:00Salalah, Oman 2018
The fates were
against us on this trip. After five days of serene cruising south on the Red
Sea and then through "Pirates' Alley" (halloo, Djibouti, in
the distance) in the Gulf of Yemen, we arrived at Oman's agricultural
city, Salalah. The air temperature had been slyly climbing to
unseasonal heights; nothing is normal anymore in world
climates. Combined with excessive humidity, spendingBDMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13798944688122545676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-172185714522491995.post-27436730397199802582018-10-14T09:47:00.001-04:002018-10-14T09:48:08.076-04:00Al Ain, United Arab Emirates 2018
This
post is pure fantasy. Because I missed my only chance to get to Al
Ain, "garden city of the Emirates." Let's say, it's what I
would have done, had I gone.
[We
spent ten days sailing and touring in the hottest weather I've ever
experienced, unseasonal even for the Middle East. The itinerary was
made for me — new places like Khasab (Oman), Doha (Qatar),
and Abu Dhabi (U.A.E.) ... more BDMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13798944688122545676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-172185714522491995.post-22943303499737471432018-09-16T21:43:00.000-04:002018-09-16T21:43:03.193-04:00Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, 2018
The
iconic rocks welcome us to Cabo San Lucas. Once a small, low-key town
known for deep sea fishing, the place has mushroomed into laidback
tourist party town from what I could see. It makes me wonder how its
sister town, San Juan del Cabo, fared in the meantime; an even
quieter, more high-end residential town that did not encourage
tourism. Now ... the rocks are the only familiar sight to me BDMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13798944688122545676noreply@blogger.com0