asian invasions and incan impressionists

[rezendi]

Between sessions of beating my head against the new book last week, I roused enough energy to finally take a bunch of surviving negatives of old travel pictures to a photo shop to get developed to CD. I seem to have lost the negatives of Africa '98 - still have the prints, though, so I'll scan them in sometime.

Et voila, a bunch of the ones I (sometimes very idiosyncratically) like most, and links to others if you're bored:



Asian Invasion '97


Some castle between Hiroshima and Kyoto.


Kyoto cemetery.


Ghost bridge, Longsheng, China.


The Great Wall.


Lombok, Indonesia, ridiculously green.

More here.



Asian Invasion '00


The Maw. Actually the top of a tower in south Delhi.


The Taj in silhouette. I think the negative's damaged, as the print I have is bright and full-colour, but I kind of like this version too.


On my very first day on the Annapurna Circuit, I learned a very important lesson: always stand on the mountain side of an oncoming mule train, not, repeat not, the cliff side.




The turquoise pool in the first shot is the tiny elliptical blot in the lower left corner of the second shot, a couple hours of serious trekking later. I believe the figure next to the prayer wall in the second shot is whythawk. The mountain is Annapurna, 8091 metres high, tenth highest on the planet. (The nine higher mountains, and indeed all the top 65, are also in the Himalaya.)




Nepal being its gratuitously gorgeous self.


Yours truly at the Thorung La, the pass which is the highest point of the Annapurna Circuit. Clearly I was feeling a little goofy.


Dawn atop Tiger Hill, near Darjeeling, in India.


Calcutta, or Kolkata, which I actually really liked.


Wee bit smoggy though. See that blue in the upper right hand corner? Compare to the sky right above the city. Now consider the fact that there wasn't a cloud in the sky.


Carp in a pool in, um, some town in northeast India where ultramarathoners congregate.


Sunset in Krabi, Thailand, where I learned to scuba dive.

More here.



Australia/Papua New Guinea '02


Best. Sign. Ever.


Don't fence me in...


The Olgas.


Uluru in style.


The highest point in PNG.


It rained all the way back down.

More here.



South America/Australia '04


Photo of an Inca structure, taken midway along the Inca Trail, just before sunset - the insufficient light makes it look all impressionist.


View from Macchu Picchu.


Tree in Kakadu.

More here.


Don't ask me how the book's going. Please.

Comments

[octal.livejournal.com]

How is non-book Montreal going?

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

Quite well except for the weather that keeps trying to kill me - every time I want/need to rent a car and drive somewhere, we get hit by freezing rain.

[jul3z.livejournal.com]

awesome photos!

[iangurudata.livejournal.com]

Your making me homesick....
and I'm not even from Australia!

[anthologie.livejournal.com]

Cheezus, rezendi, these are amazing.

[expat-in-africa.livejournal.com]

You know that Johnny Cash song, "I've Been Everywhere"? Looks like you could adapt your own version of that song. Nice pics.

[scanner-darkly.livejournal.com]

"Some castle between Hiroshima and Kyoto"

Himeji castle, I think. It's one of the only ones that survived the bombings. I think Osaka castle was rebuilt, but it's not between Hiroshima and Kyoto like Himeji is.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that name rings a bell.

Its has a magnificent interior too.

[wildpaletz.livejournal.com]

Holy mountains, Batman!

SomedaymustgotoNepalEtc.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

Yeah. It's just the most incredible place.

[endermunkee.livejournal.com]

Those were amazing. I felt like I was in many of those pictures--I could just feel the sunshine and the mist and the clouds and the taste of the air. Whoa.

It looks also as though we visitied the same section of the Great Wall. SiMaTai?

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

Yes indeed. Crumbling and majestic. I remember the little paper fliers they gave us, as we waited for the minibus that would take us there, extolled it as "the most dangerous section of the Great Wall!"

[endermunkee.livejournal.com]

You know the hawkers waiting along the bottom of the route? Smelling my extreme fear of heights, two different women attached themselves to my arms and hoisted me up the wall despite my protests. I came out of it with a much needed bottle of water and some rocking postcards, though. And again, despite my fear of heights, I ziplined off the wall and over the river to the other side. Woohoo! Were the zipliners in operation when you went? The thing I liked best about that part of it is the amount of scurrying out of windows and onto dangerous precipices that you can do. I did a rather prodigious amount of such scurrying.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

No ziplines back then. They had just built the cable car, but it wasn't yet in operation; we had to walk up, which iirc took the better part of an hour.

It was definitely all about the scurrying.

[razorsmile.livejournal.com]

How's the book going*?

runs away






*

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

Heh.

"When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." - CS Lewis

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

Oh, lovely. I had no idea the dirt was so red in parts of Australia, although if I'd thought about those big red rocks I probably would have. It looks oddly like the Southwestern US, and now I want to import kangaroos to New Mexico, or coyotes to Australia, at least briefly. (I realize there'd be horrible ecological damage, I just want to see those two critters meet up.)

My parents are off to Macchu Picchu this March; I look forward to their pictures.

May I post a link to, or copy, the octopus sign photo to the [Unknown site tag] community? They'd adore it.

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

doh, typos. molluscious community.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

Go ahead. Just don't tell them it's actually supposed to be a jellyfish.

[rdi.livejournal.com]

My thought was "Cthulhu crossing" :-)

Massively cool pix overall. Hast thou a flickr account? (Possibly bad idea, as can suck up easily as much time as LJ.)

Also, abigor particularly likes the Great Wall pic. Also also, we've been watching Pilot Guides on OLN lately and figure you should be hosting that.

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

I want you to import kangaroos to NM. That would make my life better. :)

*boing boing boing*

We could put them in White Sands with the imported African Oryx.

-Ogre

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

Damn, that's green.

Also, octopus.

-Ogre

[el-christador.livejournal.com]

Have you ever considered getting a flickr.com account to photoalbumize your photos?

Don't ask me how the book's going. Please.

Um...I think Henny Youngman's version was funnier.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

I have one, actually, but haven't yet been motivated to use it.

[matrushkaka.livejournal.com]

Can I forward the octopus pic to Scott Beale of Laughing Squid? I think he'd love it.

Nepal looks absolutely stunning. I can't wait to go to these places.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

Go ahead. feyandstrange posted a chopped and photoshopped (to get rid of the glare) version on molluscious, if that's any easier.

Like I said to her, just don't tell him it's actually supposed to be a Chironex fleckeri (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chironex_fleckeri).

[seismic.livejournal.com]

Hallo! scanner_darkly has pointed me at your photos more than once and I keep meaning to tell you that they're just stunning hadn't managed to do so... until now. (They are, you know. I especially like the one of the Great Wall and the one of Kyoto Cemetery in this set.)

I won't ask you how the books going but I will mention that he also thrust Dark Places into my hands one day a month or two ago when I was listing about looking for something to read and I quite enjoyed it.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

I like your Coffee Highlights a lot. I can't help but notice that you don't seem to have memory-tagged any of 2005's, though, which makes them now hard to find...

[seismic.livejournal.com]

Fixed. There weren't all that many in 2005 so they were easy to find.

[seismic.livejournal.com]

Revised: ...so they were easy for me to find. Especially considering I remembered about when they were all posted.