Central Asia

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Details: Written by Richard_McKie; Parent Category: Travel; Category: Central Asia; Published: 28 August 2021; Hits: 5721

Note: Although this article is filed under: Travel, neither Wendy nor I have travelled in Afghanistan. The nearest we have both been is to Tajikistan on the northern border and Wendy has travelled in Iran to the west.

The harrowing scenes (27th August 2021) of people blown to pieces while struggling to get to Kabul Airport in a futile to catch a flight out of mortal danger recalled scenes from the withdrawal from Vietnam but also brought into focus the terrible suffering of that benighted land, going back to the massacres of the Saur Revolution that prompted the Russian invasion in 1979.

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Travels in Central Asia

In June 2018 we travelled to China before joining an organised tour in Central Asia that, except for a sojourn in the mountains of Tajikistan, followed in the footsteps of Marco Polo along the Great Silk Road.

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Travel

Balkans

In September 2019 we left Turkey by air, to continue our trip north along the Adriatic, in the Balkans, to Austria, with a brief side trip to Bratislava in Slovakia.

'The Balkans' is a geo-political construct named after the Balkan Peninsula between the Adriatic and the Black Sea.

According to most geographers the 'Balkans' encompasses the modern countries of Albania; Bosnia and Herzegovina; Bulgaria; Croatia; Greece; Kosovo; Montenegro; North Macedonia; Serbia; and Slovenia. Some also include Romania.

Fiction, Recollections & News

April Fools’ Day

This story is available as a download for e-book readers

He was someone I once knew, or so I thought. One of those familiar faces I thought I should be able to place.

What was he to me? An ex-colleague, the friend of a friend, someone from school? In appearance he's a more handsome version of me, around the same height and colouring. Possibly slimmer, it’s hard to tell sitting. Maybe younger? But not young enough to be one of my children’s friends. I just couldn’t remember.

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Opinions and Philosophy

The Prospect of Eternal Life

To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream:
ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause:
… But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

[1]

When I first began to write about this subject, the idea that Hamlet’s fear was still current in today’s day and age seemed to me as bizarre as the fear of falling off the earth if you sail too far to the west. And yet several people have identified the prospect of an 'undiscovered country from whose realm no traveller returns' as an important consideration when contemplating death. This is, apparently, neither the rational existential desire to avoid annihilation; nor the animal imperative to keep living under any circumstances; but a fear of what lies beyond.