This week marks my second visit to Dubai following an initial visit two years ago. Susan is traveling with me this time. We are being hosted in Dubai by my dear friend, Dubai resident Lajo Gupta, who is originally from India, and is the daughter of the great Indian music master, Ali Akbar Khan. . .
How much of Istanbul can one see in a short two-day visit? Actually, quite a bit, when logging over 20,000 steps/day on my FitBit. When we first planned our Viking River Cruise, I told our friends Bill and Linn, who were traveling with us, that we would be so close to Istanbul while visiting the Balkan countries, that we must add it on to our trip. And so, following our Danube River cruise, we flew from Budapest to Turkey, arriving in Istanbul the evening before Election Day. . .
Our recent Viking River Cruise was a quick visit to five countries in six days, including Bulgaria, Serbia, and Croatia, as well as the embarkation and disembarkation cities, Bucharest, Romania, and Budapest, Hungary. In each port, we would load onto buses and be shown the city or the countryside. Such a compressed trip can turn into a blur when trying to remember the details. This blog will be an attempt to summarize my most vivid memories. . .
In this post, based on what I learned during our Viking River Cruise from Bucharest to Budapest, I will attempt something very difficult: to explain the history of the Balkan countries in a short essay. This journey up the Danube River has been an amazing history lesson. I’ve learned that the Balkan situation is even more complicated than the Middle East, because the Middle East crisis escalated mostly in the last century, whereas the Balkan region has been at war for more than a millennium. . .
Once again as I arrive in Europe, I’m overwhelmed with the long rich awareness of history and the rich culture. This is the first time I’ve visited Portugal. Susan and I are traveling with our friends and regular travel companions, Bill and Linn, from Georgia...
I’ve visited Stockholm, Sweden, over a dozen times during the last forty years, for weeks or months at a time, I’m once again reminded of why it is one of my favorite cities in the world, and indeed, why I love Sweden in general...
We have been very blessed to be hosted on this trip by our dear friend Lajo Gupta, first at her home in Dubai, and afterwards in Mumbai, where she flew to host us in her wonderful apartment there. I met Lajo forty years ago(!)
There has been an interesting progression on this month-long trip. First, we visited purely Buddhist and sparsely populated Bhutan. Next, we visited partially Buddhist and more densely populated Sikkim...
A Brief History of Contemporary Sikkim The history of Sikkim parallels that of Bhutan in many aspects. Like Bhutan, Sikkim was a geographically isolated Buddhist kingdom that was never colonized by the British or any other country. Bhutan has remained an independent country, though it...