▲ The most exciting development, however, was when with our Chinese language partner we started to produce regional guidebooks to China researched and written by Chinese travel writers. It was a pioneering project for our writer-researchers and we were immensely pleased with the 8 books they produced. Here they are, guides to Yunnan, Sichuan & Chongqing, Guizhou, Shaanxi, Guangxi, Qinghai, Gansu & Ningxia and Hunnan.

▲ Our China authors got together to celebrate the series at the 1984 Bookshop in Shanghai. Is that a great name for a Chinese bookshop? It’s at 11 Hunan Lu in the French Concession. From left: Hu Zhen (wrote Yunnan), Tan Chuanyao (Guangxi), Cookie (Shaanxi), Jenny Huang (Qinghai), Yap Xiaozhong (Guangxi), Cui Xiaoli (Gansu & Ningxia) – all holding our new “Guangxi” book.

Now Arabica coffee is making inroads into France and – quite apart from the 50 or so Starbucks in Paris – other coffee bars are popping up. The Melbourne newspaper The Age ran an article on where to get a good cup of coffee. Try Le Bal Café (6 Impasse de la Defense, 18eme), La Cafeotheque (52 Rue de l'Hotel de Ville, 4eme), Coutume Café (47 Rue de Babylone, 7eme), Kooka Boora (62 Rue des Martyrs, 9eme), Cafe Lomi (9 Rue de Saussure, 17eme) or Merce & the Muse (1 Rue Dupuis, 3eme).


▲ Coffee’s an international drink, I’ll find it in Papua New Guinea, where I’m going soon, and just before Christmas I had a coffee in that one off coffee shop Stars & Bucks in Palestine. 

Every now and then I pick up a ‘got to go there’ book, you read it or look at the pictures and that’s what you immediately think. Judith Schalansky’s Atlas of Remote Islands was a fine example, she claimed she hadn’t been to any of the 50 weird and wonderful islands in her book. I could put ticks beside just five of them – Rapa Iti (in the Austral group of French Polynesia), Robinson Crusoe Island (off Chile), Easter Island (even further off Chile), Pitcairn Island (keep travelling west) and Deception Island (Antarctica), but I’d like to add some more.

◄  The Stan Gaz photo- graphs in Sites of Impact – Meteorite Craters Around the World is certainly in the same category with its eerily beautiful black & white photo- graphs of 10 meteorite craters. I’ve been to three of them – all in Australia – which leaves another Australian crater, three in the US, one in Canada, one in Namibia and one in South Africa to think about.

Back in 1994 I was only 43 miles from Meteor Crater in Arizona, USA when I stopped in Flagstaff on Day 8 of our family coast-to-coast in a 1959 Cadillac trip. Why didn’t I make the detour to that crater back then?

The crater in the book which I’d really like to see is, unfortunately, one of the most difficult to reach – the New Quebec (aka the Pingualuit or Chubb Crater). Check it out on Google Earth at 61° 17’N, 73° 40’W – that’s way north in Canada, Hudson Bay to the west, Greenland to the east.

Equally remote is a crater Stan Gaz regrets he didn’t reach, the Tenoumer Crater out in the Sahara desert in Mauritania - 22° 55’N, 10° 24’W on Google Earth and it looks fabulous. And a long way from anywhere. How close have I been to that crater? Well in 2005 Maureen and I flew up the west coast of Africa in an old Convair 580 aircraft. The day we flew from Timbuktu, Mali to Marrakech, Morocco we would have started out about 700km south-east and got a little closer (but not much) as we flew north.

Two years later we drove from London to Banjul in Gambia on the Plymouth-Banjul Challenge – Africa or Bust we dubbed that trip. As we drove down the coast of Morocco through the Western Sahara region and into Mauritania we were about 500km from the crater.

▲   I’ve been to the Wolfe Creek crater in Western Australia twice. Flying over it on a plane on one occasion and then driving to it along the Tanami Track from Alice Springs.

Australia Day on 26 January is Australia’s equivalent of the USA's 4th of July or France’s Bastille Day (there isn’t a UK equivalent). I go some- where in the state of Victoria every year as part of the ‘Australia Day Ambassador’ program and this year I went to Mildura, on the Murray River up in the north-west corner of the state.

It’s a standard pattern, the Lions Club puts on a barbecue, the flag gets raised, the national anthem is sung, the local mayor and I make speeches, the brass band (and a local rock band) play, a dozen people (in Mildura) are awarded Australian citizenship, hard working local volunteers are commended. It’s all good!

◄  Plus there are peripheral activities before and after the ceremonies and Mildura had one that I loved. Many refugees have settled in Mildura in recent years and a group of young guys from the Mildura Afghan community set up a table to show the kids how to make and fly kites.

It was perfect, anybody who has been to Afghanistan – and I’ve been lucky enough to go there back in the 1970s and again in 2006 – will know how important kite flying is in Afghanistan. In the kite flying season the Afghan skies are alive with kites.

 

The Kite Runner was a best-sell- ing book on Afghanistan. I mentioned it in a blog I put up on two interesting Afghan-related books a year ago.

As the Australia day event in Mildura wound down happy kids departed toting their Afghan-designed kites. ►

I went on to have a look around Mildura, including a visit to Rio Vista, the 1889 home of W B Chaffey, the Canadian born irrigation engineer who can claim to be the founding figure of the modern town. ▼

The Otway Fly is a fine example of the treetop walks and ziplines which seem to have popped up all over the place in recent years. I’ve also encountered them at:

• Walpole in Western Australia with its Valley of the Giants Tree Top Walk – The 400metres Tree Top Walk sways through a stand of mighty tingle trees in the Walpole-Nornalup National Park.
• Tahune Air Walk – just south of Hobart in Tasmania this one is 600metres long, just like the Otway Fly.
• Kakum, Ghana – Maureen and I were on a Cape Town to Casablanca air safari in 2005 and staying at Elmina on the Gold Coast when I strolled this swinging 330metre ‘Canopy Walkway’ through the top of the jungle.
• Selvatura, Monteverde, Costa Rica – there’s a canopy walkway through the trees at treetop height, but I skipped that to try their zip line ride instead. It’s a really long zip line as well.


▲ Another view of the Otway Fly

◄ Starting with koalas – lots of wildlife you have to sneak up on to catch a glimpse and seeing them in motion (lions stalking, im- pala fleeing) is what it’s all about. Koalas aren’t going anywhere and you’re disap- pointed if they move, lounging around looking stoned is what being a koala is all about. Like this one, close to the road down to Cape Otway off the Great Ocean Rd in Victoria.

Kangaroos on the other hand are often on the bound as soon as they spot you. With some friends we spent a week just off the Great Ocean Rd near Apollo Bay. Every night a mob of kangaroos would appear in the paddock above our house just on sunset, ears alert, ready to leap away if they spotted you. ►

Flying foxes, also known as fruit bats, are the world’s largest bats and every night in Melbourne  a cloud of them fly over our house at sunset, heading out for the night time hunt. In daytime you can find them hanging in the trees beside the Yarra River, just a few km upstream from where I life. ▼

◄  Appropriately my ceramic artist friend Alexandra Copeland gave me this delightful bat-plate as a Christmas present, although I don't think this ugly beast is a fruit bat.

◄ The Tour d’Afrique celebrates its 10th birthday with a coffee table book on the great ride.

In 2009 I entered not one, but two Lonely Planet teams to ride the TdA relay style.




We entered 16 riders from the LP offices, from our authors and from our foreign language partners. Including me, I rode the Iringa. Tanzania to Lilongwe, Malawi stage – click here for my blog on the first half of my ride and here for the second half. Or try the report from Mara Vorhees, one of our author-riders My only regret from my ride? That I couldn’t just keep going.

▲ Mosaics in the Archaeological Park in the Jordanian town of Madaba.

I spent two weeks in Israel and Palestine just before Christmas 2011. You can check my reports on my travels in Palestine, the problems of Hebron, the Wall, an encouraging visit to Nazareth, the three walks I sampled in Israel & Palestine, a review of the‘walking the wall’ book Extreme Rambling and even a report on a coffee at Stars & Bucks in Ramallah.


▲ The Dead Sea on my starboard side

On my way there I flew with Etihad from Melbourne in Australia via Abu Dhabi in the UAE to Amman in Jordan. I took a taxi from the airport to the Allenby Bridge and less than an hour after arriving in Jordan I’d left the country, en route to Palestine. Coming back, however, I flew straight from Tel Aviv to Amman – the flight is only 120km, you’re no sooner up in the air than you’re descending past the Dead Sea to the Jordanian capital. Then I had four hours to kill before checking in for my connection to Abu Dhabi. What to do?

▲ Have a look at Madaba was the wise advice the woman at the tourist office desk in the baggage claim area offered. I soon had a taxi driver for the half hour drive from the airport. I’ve always been a sucker for mosaics and Madaba is noted for its wonderful collection. The prime attraction is a mosaic map which spreads across the floor of St George’s Church, stretching from Jordan across the Holy Land to Egypt. Less than a third of it survives, but what does is fascinating. Equally curious is that I venture into the church, where a congregation is noisily performing, and can’t find the mosaic. Where is it? Answer, under the congregation’s feet, once they’re gone the carpets are rolled back to reveal the map. It dates from 560 AD, they can date it from Jerusalem buildings which are/aren’t present on the map.

As my taxi driver dropped me off outside the church he handed me a mobile phone! ‘It’s my spare phone,’ he explained, ‘parking here is impossible, just press call and I’ll come and collect you.’ A typical example of the polite and trusting approach which makes travel in the Arab world such a pleasure.

◄ The nearby Archaeological Park has an assortment of wonderful mosaics. Like this one of a topless Aphrodite giving a misbehaving winged Eros a spank. From Madaba we continued a few more km to Mt Nebo, the place where Moses died (although God alone knows where he was buried, according to Deuteronomy), the views over the Dead Sea might be fabulous if it wasn’t so hazy and the mosaics here are, unfortunately, not on view because a new building to enclose them has been under construction for years and looks like taking quite a few more years to complete. From there we drove back through Madaba, stopped for a coffee and I got back in plenty of time for my flight.

▲ Rachel’s Tomb – perhaps 100 years ago?

It had to be one of the weirdest forays on my recent Israel and Palestine travels, a little visit to Rachel’s Tomb while I was in Bethlehem. It’s on the north side of the town, so between central Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Once upon a time you could stroll past the Intercontinental Hotel, walk a couple of hundred metres up the road and there it was on your left.

Today a loop of The Wall, the barrier between Israel and Palestine, wriggles its way south from Jerusalem and loops around the tomb to cut it off from Bethlehem and anchor it to Israel.

To visit the tomb I would have to leave Palestine and enter Israel. So I walked north alongside the wall and after a few turns found myself at the Bethlehem checkpoint. Like other checkpoints I saw it looked like something for managing cattle rather than human beings, but it was a quiet day and I was through the X-ray machines and metal detectors, my passport was given a cursory glance and I emerged in Israel. I then turned south and walked back the direction I had come for about a hundred metres to a military checkpoint.

To proceed further I would have to wait for a bus – a bulletproof bus according to some reports – but I managed to hitch a ride within a few minutes. I was soon outside Rachel’s Tomb – I’d better not say ‘a stone’s throw’ so ‘a tennis ball hit’ from where I’d started. I had a look at the tomb, hitched another ride back to the checkpoint, crossed back into Palestine, no passport checks or X-ray machines in this direction. And I was soon back in Bethlehem’s Manger Square.

▲ prayers at the tomb.

• I was allowed to visit, for most Palestinians the tomb is totally inaccessible. At times non-Jewish tourists have also been banned.
• I didn’t have to wear a kippa (skullcap) although I was offered one by a visitor.
• After I’d visited the tomb I tried to study my route to and from the tomb on Google Earth and discovered that the images are degraded, I can look at central Pyongyang in North Korea at much higher resolution than I can study Rachel’s Tomb! Credit that to the Kyl-Bingaman amendment which prohibits high resolution images of Israel. That may end when the Turks launch their Göktürk satellite in 2013.

I’ve put up quite a few recent blogs on my pre-Christmas travel around Israel and Palestine. You can check my reports on my travels in Palestine, the problems of Hebron, the Wall, an encouraging visit to Nazareth, the three walks I sampled in Israel & Palestine, a review of the ‘walking the wall’ book Extreme Rambling and even a report on a coffee at Stars & Bucks in Ramallah.

If Hebron (posted yesterday) was the most depressing stop on my Palestine and Israel  travels, then Nazareth was the most hopeful.

It’s the most Arab town in Israel and the starting point for the Jesus Trail down to the Sea of Galilee, I walked a day on the Jesus Trail with its creator Maoz Inon.

◄  Maoz is also the guiding light behind the Fauzi Azar Inn in the heart of the old city. A beautifully restored old Arab mansion it’s become the focus of the renovation of the old city. As I walked around the winding streets of the old city with Maoz it was clear that he’s widely respected and admired for the breath of international fresh air he’s brought to the town. Suraida, the grand-daughter of Fauzi Azar, can be found behind the front desk at the inn and she’ll recount the building's history and the story of its rebirth after 20 derelict years.

▲ The inn is particularly noted for its beautiful painted ceilings, dating from 1860 to 1870 and the work of a Lebanese artist. The grain-toting cherub indicates the family were Christian Arabs. If you’re staying at the inn check the copy of the coffee table book Wall & Ceiling Paintings in Notable Palestinian Mansions in the Late Ottoman Period 1856-1917 in the lobby.

▲  The wire mesh over this old city street in the centre of Hebron is to protect Palestinians from rocks, bricks and rubbish hurled at them by Israeli settlers overlooking the street.

Hebron, population 160,000 is about 30km south of Jerusalem. It’s the largest city in Palestine and noted for the Cave of the Patriarchs, the tomb of the Old Testament prophet Abraham. This makes it an important religious location to Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Hebron’s problems centre around 500 Jewish settlers who have taken up residence in the old city area. To protect them from Palestinian militants requires several thousand Israeli military.

▲ Are the Israelis instituting apartheid in Palestine? Well don’t plan to drive down Shuhada St, through the centre of Hebron, if you’re a Palestinian. You can walk on the right side of the barrier. The Israeli army was supervising movement of barriers when I took this photograph.

The military have closed down 500 Palestinian shops and businesses in the old city area and the decline in business due to multiple checkpoints, restrictions on the movement of Palestinians and settler aggression has led to another 1000 Palestinians shops closing down. The Jewish settlements in Hebron are like some poisonous weed, once they have taken root in the garden everything around them dies. So do people, Palestinian militants have killed settlers and soldiers and an even greater number of Palestinians have died, the biggest death toll from Brooklyn-born Israeli madman Baruch Goldstein who massacred 29 Muslims praying in the Ibrahimi Mosque and wounded a further 125. Palestinians look upon ‘Brooklyn’ settlers as the worst possible variety!

If Hebron was the most depressing stop on my Palestine and Israel travels, then Nazareth was the most hopeful.  I’ll add my thoughts on Nazareth tomorrow. 

My travels in Israel and Palestine featured spells on three walking tracks. I’ve always felt that walking puts you in touch with the land at the right speed, you can’t rush a walk. And you see more when you approach the world at walking pace.

This year’s walking has featured spells on the trek to the hidden kingdom of Mustang (Lo Manthang) in Nepal, on the island circling Jeju Olle trail in South Korea, an ascent of the Nyiragongo Volcano  in Congo DRC and even a short stroll on England's South West Coastal Path.


▲ Olive trees on the Nativity Trail in Palestine.

My holy land travels touched on three walks. In Palestine I joined the Nativity Trail between Zababdeh and the Al Far’a refugee camp near Nablus. The trail follows the route Joseph and Mary might have followed between Nazareth and Bethlehem. Combined with the Abraham Path, a multi-country initiative following the footsteps of the prophet Abraham, you could walk for a couple of weeks through Palestine ending at the troubled city of Hebron. I’ll get around to Hebron in a future blog. The Nativity Trail, unlike the trails I walked in Israel, is not waymarked so you’re dependant on a local guide. Nedal Sawalmeh not only led me through the olive tree groves of Palestine he also too me to a village home in Sir and we stopped for lunch at his home in the Al Far’a refugee camp. It’s a great way to get an understanding of the Palestinian situation, you can organise Nativity Trail walks with the Siraj Centre in Bethlehem.

▲ With Maoz Inon, Dror Tishler and Nitzan Kimchi on top of the Hill of Arbel overlooking the Sea of Galilee. Dror and Nitzan founded the specialist backpack manufacturer Kata.

From Nazareth (and I’ll also cover that in a future blog) I joined Maoz Inon for a day on the Jesus Trail. Maoz created the Jesus Trail which in three to five days will lead you along a route Jesus might have followed from his Nazareth home down to the Sea of Galilee.

▲  The day we spent on the trail started at Kibbutz Lavi and soon climbed up to the Horns of Hattin where the Second Crusade came to its disastrous conclusion – from the point of view of the Crusaders at least. This was where Saladin defeated the Christian forces in 1187.

From the hilltop battle site of nearly a thousand years ago we descended to the Nebi Shu’eib, a centre for the Druzes and the site of Jethro’s tomb. Jethro was the father-in-law of Moses and, the Druzes believe, was the source of Moses’s useful opinions.

◄ From there we descend the hill some more to the site of Hattin village, a 1948 site. Which means the villagers (1300 of them) fled or were pushed out in 1948 and never got to come back. The only things that survive are parts of the village mosque and we clambered through the makeshift steel bars installed to keep minaret climbers out and climb to the top of the small minaret. A sad little site. Later that afternoon, after our visit to the Hill of Arbel, the walk concluded at Moshav Arbel.

Looking out over the Big Crater, Makhtesh Gadol. ▼

My final walk was four days along the Israel National Trail. The whole walk runs 960km from close to the border with Lebanon in the north all the way to Eilat on the Red Sea in the south. Walking the whole way takes 40+ days. I joined Ohad Sharav to spend four days walking the trail in the Negev Desert in the south of the country. Ohad, who lives in Tel Aviv, publishes Hebrew translations of the Lonely Planet guides under his Steinhart-Katzir imprint. We were joined for a couple of days by Ohad’s son Toam and for a day by the Haaretz writer Moshe Gilad.

▲ Darya and Yuval, two Israeli women we met as we crossed the Small Crater (which is surprisingly big!). They were 32 days into walking the whole trail and were much faster and fitter (and younger) than Ohad and me.

▲  Two days later we walked along the sawback edge of the Karbolet, ‘cockscomb’ in Hebrew. It’s the sharp edged crater rim of the Makhtesh Gadol or Big Crater. Every day we spent on the INT was spectacular but this was certainly the best – and the hardest – particularly the spectacular descent down the Nahal Afran at the end of the day. In the Arab Middle East it would be a wadi, a dry riverbed.

▲ There were frequent glimpses of the Dimona nuclear plant during our INT walk. This is where it is widely assumed the Israelis manufacture nuclear weapons.