As Close As One Can Get 100km away from Torino, along highway 50, there was a chain of lakes nestled deep in the mountains – the target. From the village of Locana, it’s only 40km but almost a 2000m ascent. As we turned the corner of yet another […]
Memory & Reality Disconnect – Europe 15 Years On I remember Italy with fondness. The tragic history of Pompeii; that to-die-for Margherita at a roadside pizzeria in Napoli, the grand and imposing St Petersburg in Roma, the cool wind-surfing dudes at Lake Garda. These left an indelible imprint […]
Yogyakarta is quite a mouthful. So call it ‘Jog-ja’ if you will, as the locals do. Yogyakarta? Where? Jogja lies in the centre-south of Java island; Java in turn is located in the centre of the arc of islands that collectively forms Indonesia (around 17,000+ islands, still validating). […]
One day out of the blue, my mate asked: why are we going to Ginzan? (ok, she meant, why, out of so many onsens, did I choose this one?) I gave her the only answer that came to my mind then: because there’s a ryokan there that looked like the […]
Always expect the unexpected? It looked like we hit the jackpot when the sakura forcasts started rolling in: full bloom expected on 30 Mar to 1 Apr. Wasn’t that perfect timing? We’d be in town 26 Mar to 1 Apr. So I was expecting something like this. And […]