Chris Pratt Photography
It’s another festival and I appear to be in the middle of it (better timing at last). It’s something to do with Lord Rama’s victory over the demon king Ravana – good triumphs over evil, so it’s an easy excuse for a party. The music is very loud, trucks and tuk-tuks overladen with speakers, plus […]
All this way to see the Taj Mahal and the main dome has grown a nasty dose of scaffolding. So rather than generative AI, I looked for ways to hide it. There’s a leak apparently and it’ll take six months to fix (my timing hasn’t been good at all this trip). At least the scaffolding […]
That’s the name that became widely used in colonial times; and is still used by the locals and on the railways for this ancient city – Varanasi – continually inhabited, they say, for at least 5,000 years. Then it would have been known as Kashi, from the Sanskrit word to shine. And at dawn, shine […]
“Let’s walk to the pub”, he said. “Fine, I’ll bring my dog”, I replied. Well it’s 16 miles’ walk from the nearest road, add another four if they’re digging up the last stretch to re-tarmac it (and add another 52 miles if you get a taxi from Fort William). And bring a tent just in […]
It’s at the seaside, on the North Kent coast and the furthest reaches of the Thames Estuary, which makes it easy from London – one of the things it’s famous for. The pebble beaches are never going to be the best for making sandcastles but there’s a great bar & restaurant scene and a thriving […]
There are worse things to do than drive around Europe for a month; and it was nice that it didn’t rain at all during that month. The only downside (and we British like to complain about the weather) was the heat – here near Carcassonne it was 41.5 degrees C. late into the afternoon, certainly […]
It’s not every day you find a Porsche Carrera 3.2 from 1989 (that’s the one with the more user-friendly G50 gearbox) in a barn, not seen since 2011. Well, I found this one in an on-line auction catalogue whilst idly browsing, with the auction due in five days time. It’s old and it’s dirty and […]
They say that most travellers pass straight through Kathmandu, to concentrate on the drama of Nepal’s high altitude challenge – the lure of prayer flags in the snow. But the city itself is well worth your time, cleaner but no less frenetic than most south Asian cities, it has a food scene (every cuisine, in […]
37 years ago I sailed into Shanghai at dawn, it sounds dramatic, maybe even romantic and it certainly was. Today, I have to be content with an early morning stroll along the Bund, the river facing walkway that later in the day and certainly at weekends is crammed, wall-to-wall, with strollers and selfie-takers. Early, it […]
Anshun Bridge sits astride the Fuhe River in Chengdu, China’s fourth city. There’s been a bridge here since Marco Polo had his gap year in China in the thirteenth century. Variously destroyed by fire and flood, the current bridge was built in 2003. As well as being a handy way to cross the river, the […]
