Tana Toraja: Land of Funerals The Torajan Valley is, in a single word, wild. Some of the more remote village are several days’ walk from the nearest road. Traditional funerals can involve the slaughter of hundreds of water buffalo, and similar numbers of pigs. Traces of animism still exist within […]
Recent Posts
Togean Islands
The last time Greg and I parted in Indonesia was in Lombok’s Gili Islands, full of snorkeling and scuba and travelers and beautiful white beaches. It only made sense, then, that we headed back to such a place at some point during this trip. The Togean islands promised all of […]
Tomohon Market
Tomohon Market Before we left town, we did manage to squeeze in a visit or two to the Tomohon market. I’ve put up pictures of markets from a number of places in Southeast and Central Asia, and by comparison the atmosphere of this one was pretty boring. So instead, I’ll […]
Sumatra’s Bunaken Island
Bunaken was just as much an excuse to get out of Manado for the weekend as it was a destination for diving. After settling into a place called (aptly) Panorama and checking out the view from our hillside waterfront bungalow, we lined up two dives with the dive master and […]
Kandy’s Itinerant Elephant Population
The other memorable daytrip I made from Kandy was to an Elephant Orphanage outside of town. Having read and heard about two separate orphanages in the area, I ended up at the one I hadn’t meant to go to originally. As I talked about a few days ago, a big […]
Hiking in Matale
The first of two interesting daytrips I made out of Kandy was to the Aluviharaya Cave Temple complex. While the road-level cave temples were a nice wander, the real attraction of the place was the Sitting Buddha on top of a hillside above the temple, overlooking the surrounding valleys. After […]
Hey there! I'm Stephen, this is my travel blog, and that's me in the poofy hat.
I'm a photographer / writer traveling since 2008, and I've been doing my best to visit amazing places.
My current focus is Central Asia, because for a hiking and camping enthusiast it's as good as it gets.