Chris Pratt Photography

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 […]

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 […]

Despite China’s impressive focus on this principal national treasure, the giant panda’s existence is still precarious in the wild. Finally recognised as a bear in 1985, as the long running taxonomic debate was finally settled, the giant panda is still pretty much impossible to see in the wild – the pandas and the authorities conspiring […]

Pushkar Fair, starting life as Pushkar Camel Fair in the nineteenth century, is now about much more than the trading of camels.  On the ground this year camel folk gave estimates of between 10,000 and two million camels.  I’m guessing towards the lower end, with The Times Of India suggesting 50,000.  Anyway, I’ve never seen […]