Osettai is the act of giving gifts to pilgrims “ohenros” on the Japan 88 Temple Pilgrimage. These gifts or offerings could be anything; food, drink, trinkets and crafts, money, or even a meal and a room for the night. A few temple monks even gave Nokyo stamps waiving the ¥300. A couple times I was …
Learning To Cut Turf (Peat) The Old Fashioned Way: A few weeks into a 3,000 kilometer pilgrimage from County Clare, Ireland to Santiago de Compostela, Spain, I was in the middle of a 30K walk in Cork, from Millstreet to Bweeng, on a sunny day with scattered clouds across the deep blue sky. As the …
Learning The Art of Cutting Turf (Peat) In Ireland: Read More »
On my first day back in Nepal I was browsing through a few shelf rows of books at the comfortable and friendly Yala Peak Hotel and was drawn to a single book, ‘Touching My Father’s Soul’ by Lapsing Tenzing Norgay the son of Tenzing Norgay who was the first, along with Edmund Hillary to scale …
Wow. This is a new experience. Saharan Sand Greying up the skies. As we walked on Tuesday of this week the forecast said sunny but disappointingly the sun never broke through. How surprising to learn it was the red sand of the Saharan blocking the warmth and light of the sun. Yesterday, March 17, I …
There are many special places and moments on The Camino. Cruz de Ferro (The Iron Cross) in the west of Castilla y Leon Province is perhaps the most spiritual for me. All three of my experiences there have been noteworthy, though this most recent one was a most powerful emotional experience. Seven years ago, while …
After a hearty breakfast we canoed 2 hours down river to Puente Bolivar to visit the village and experience a bit of jungle life. First a yucca bread making experience. Everything was done by hand, including; We pulled some yucca from the garden. Removed the outer shell with our hands. 2. Grated the yucca. 3. …
The Amazon Jungle; Preparing and cooking yucca bread Read More »
Sat with Curt, our guide, as we drove a large open safari truck into Zimbabwe’s Matobo National Park. He explained that there are only 10,000 white Rhinos remaining in Africa where there were once 14 million. Somewhere in the middle of the jungle, we left the truck and continued into the bush on foot. With …
Enjoying the early morning silence of the bush, our group left the campsite at 6:30 for 6:40 sunrise coming up over the Okavango Delta as we Mokoro’d (dugout canoe) to another island. I was with 2 Germans, and our guide Langos and trainee guide Spear made 5. Soon we were walking in the bush and …
IT’S A SMALL WORLD. The Camino has a magical way of connecting like minded souls: One of the nicest things about global traveling is chance meetings with the same people in two totally different places. Well this time it’s three chance meetings across 3 continents; Uganda, Spain, and Nepal: In October, 2019, walking on the …
It’s A Small World-Uganda to the Camino to Nepal Read More »
Canterbury to Rome to Assisi Day 99: Spello to Assisi: Left Spello early and kind Leonardo, my older host at cozy B&B Fratello Sole told me there is an easy way to the left and a hard way to the right up the mountain. I immediately thought, “I’m tired and after coming such a long …
Canterbury to Rome to Assisi Day 93 Faggio di San Francesco/The Tree of Saint Francis: Walking from Poggio San Bustone to Piediluco started out through the quiet red and gold forested countryside. There was a hard to find turn up an unusually steep narrow and winding rocky path two hundred meters where I reached the …
A Merry Christmas friends and fellow Pilgrims. A Christmas (Camino) small miracle from 2019: A few days before Christmas, Mika of Japan and I were walking in the Annapurna region of Nepal from Tadapani to Chomrong, on the Annapurna Sancturary Trek. We made it early and had lunch at a tea house enjoying the spectacular …
A vivid memory of my childhood is reading the colored comic strip Rick O’Shay in the Chicago Tribune every Sunday morning. Rick O’Shay was a straight as an arrow, town marshall. His best friend however, was a gunslinger, Hipshot Percussion, a quiet Clint Eastwood type who did his talking with his guns. Every Sunday Rick …
3 FRIENDS; A HINDU, A CHRISTIAN, AND A BUDDHIST: On the first day of walking on the Manaslu Trek in Central Nepal I somehow found myself helping 3 teenage girls transporting 2 chickens to their hometown of Macha Khola. We took turns and stopped for a rest and drinks and talked a bit though with …
MANASLU AND TSUM VALLEY TREK: Day 1-Three Friends; A Hindu, A Christian, A Buddhist Read More »
A Camino moment. Tomorrow I start a long Camino to Santiago with a 30 day trek across Manaslu and Annapurna. Then to the west of Ireland to start a 3+ month walk from my ancestral home to Santiago, Spain. At the permit office in Kathmandu a smiling woman approached me, Silvia Martellotti from Italy, a …
IT’S A SMALL WORLD: Kathmandu and The Camino de Santiago Read More »
Another ‘It’s a small world’ encounter: Back in Kathmandu for one day after 30 days trekking. Walking along I see Jarrah and Joanna from Australia. We spent 2 days trekking together and one day mountain biking in Dalat, Vietnam in 2014. Enjoyed catching up over lunch on Freak Street which isn’t what it used to …
On a sunny morning in June, I made my way down to a waiting boat at the harbor in Portmagee from Cahersiveen. Our destination on the tour was the Skellig Islands. There are two of them. The boat only stops at Skellig Michael which also happens to be famous as Luke Skywalker’s Retirement Home. Though …
Kerry Way; Side Trip to Skellig Michael (Luke Skywalker’s Retirement Home) Read More »
One of “The Four Agreements” from the book with that title by Don Miguel Ruiz is; DONT MAKE ASSUMPTIONS! The first picture is of my Polish friends, Joanna and Mateus after they just told me they got engaged the prior day. The second is them with three guys that I called “The Russian Thugs” who …
December 2019 I experienced a bit of a Christmas (Camino) small miracle: A few days before Christmas Mika and I were walking in the Annapurna region of Nepal from Tadapani to Chommrong. We made it early and had lunch at a tea house but the vibes were bad. Without much thought, feeling cold we took …