GREAT MOMENTS STAND OUT IN TRAVEL …

WHEN I WOULD THINK, WELL THIS IS WHAT I’VE COME TO SEE AND THE PHYSICAL AND AT TIMES THE PSYCHOLOGICAL DEMANDS OF TRAVEL TO GET HERE HAVE BEEN MORE THAN WORTH IT.

Pass in the Grand Recife off Noumea New Caledonia
The sight of the Grande Recife as our flight from Sydney approached Noumea, capital of the Pacific island of New Caledonia. The year was 1960 and it was my first experience of travel outside Australia so you can imagine my excitement! I spent days snorkelling in the great lagoon.
Source of the White Nile near Jinja, Uganda
While still at school, I was captivated by a National Geographic Travel photo featuring the source of the Nile at Jinja, in Uganda. I vowed that one day I would see it for myself. Here is the picture I took some fifteen years later.
night-ferry-to-macau
The foggy evening as I waited in the Star Ferry pier in Hong Kong for the night ferry to Macau is another memorable moment. It was 1969 and the night was heavy with a sense of adventure. I stayed in the old Hotel Bella Vista and played roulette in the floating casino, the only casino at the time.

 

Tour guides ride camels past Cheops pyramid Giza Egypt
The awesome sight of Cheops, the great pyramid, when I drew back the curtains of my room at the Mena House hotel in Giza was one of the great moments of my travels. Egypt itself is special. I have been there more than half a dozen times.
vallee-de-mai
I can still hear the mysterious scratching sound made by the giant leaves of the coco-de-mer rubbing together in the Vallee de Mai on Praslin. On a visit to the Seychelles in the late 19th century, General Charles Gordon declared if there be a Garden of Eden on earth, it be here. I thought so too.

 

Khyber Mail in the pass Pakistan
On my 39th birthday in Peshawar, in the North West Frontier of Pakistan, I boarded the legendary Khyber Mail for a fascinating journey up the Khyber Pass. I was the only woman passenger with hundreds of tribesmen travelling home to their remote villages for the Muslim festival of eid ul fitr.
HUge sand dunes in the Sharqiya Province of Oman with a Bedouin woman searching for a stray goat
The sight of the soaring dunes, originally known as the Wahiba Sands, took my breath away when I visited them from Muscat in the Sultanate of Oman. The Bedouin woman had left her tent to bring in a stray goat for the night.
Queen meets the sheikhs in Qatar
I cannot leave out the moment I was introduced to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II when I covered the British royal tour of the Arab states in 1979. Here she is meeting the sheikhs in Abu Dhabi. I was the only woman photographer on the tiring seventeen day trip.
The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, London - "Westminster Abbey" at night.
Even though I used to pass it several times a week when I lived in London, the sight of Westminster Abbey, constructed more than two centuries before Captain Cook discovered Australia, always sent a frisson of excitement down my spine.
The terrible Cafe Lemsid, in the Western Sahara of Morocco
This was the end of the road in Morocco when I had driven from Tangiers on the Mediterranean coast as far south in the Sahara as I could go. I mention this remote café in my memoir Travels with My Hat. That’s my little car parked outside. I drove it more than 3500 km.

 

 

About Travels with My Hat

Australian photojournalist and author. Used London as a base for nearly forty years while freelancing in the Middle East, Arabian peninsular, Africa and South Asia. Have written and illustrated more than a dozen books and travel guides. Operates a well regarded religious images stock photo library: www.worldreligions.co.uk. Live in Leura in the Blue Mountains outside Sydney.
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2 Responses to GREAT MOMENTS STAND OUT IN TRAVEL …

  1. Jules says:

    Great post, you sure have been everywhere

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