A brief ode to journeys

It is 7am and the sun shines like the moon, low in the sky. A pale yellow disk behind thin clouds. Our bus pulls out of Uiseong and the mountains, farm lands and quiet villages roll by my steamy window. …

Capture the Colour Photo Contest- Oli’s edition

Hi Guys this is Oli, and as is is typical of the way I go about pretty much everything, I’m rushing to decide which photos I want to enter into this fantastic competition… These are just a few that I’ve …

Capture the Colour Photo Contest with Travel Supermarket

I am very happy to announce that the lovely Hedgers Abroad have nominated me to take part in the Travel Supermarket Capture the Colour Photo Contest. This is the second year Travel Supermarket have run this awesome contest and I’m super …

Memory Lane Monday: Delving deeper into Southern Ethiopia

Exploring Southern Ethiopia had proved to be an incredible adventure so far and it definitely wasn’t going to get boring anytime soon. We left Key Afar, it’s Thursday market, it’s invitations for tea and it’s cheeky kids, and we drove …

Memory Lane Monday: Southern Ethiopia photo round-up

As I was searching for the best photos to add to my final story from our final stop in Southern Ethiopia, I realised there were so many great images I hadn’t yet shared. I also realised that I had some …

A little Monday update…

I interrupt my regular Memory Lane Monday scheduling to bring you some news about what’s going on behind the scenes at Journey Count.

As you may know from my About Me page, Oli and I had decided that after we graduated we wanted our first adventure into the world of work to be a teaching position in South Korea and over the past 4 months we have been trying hard to make that happen. It has been a pretty wild ride through the application process, a post about which I will be writing soon- I have many valuable lessons to preach to anyone thinking of teaching abroad, specifically in Korea.

Memory Lane Monday: A Tuk Tuk adventure in Ethiopia

To get down South quickly, we flew from Lalibela to Arba Minch, the biggest city in the area. We hadn’t expected too much from this place but ended up having an incredible time, mostly thanks to meeting a very special Tuk Tuk driver called Tom.

We met Tom when he offered to Tuk Tuk us into town from the airport for a very decent price and he ended up being our personal driver for the two days we stayed in the town. He took us on an incredible day trip up into the hills to visit the traditional Dorze village of Chincha and to drink some Tej (local honey wine drunk from old medicine bottles!) and he even took us dancing! He wasn’t a tour guide by trade but was so knowledgeable about the area and seemed so pleased to be able to share it with us. He is someone we will never forget, just as we won’t forget the days we spent together in this very worthwhile stop on the way into the lower valleys..

Memory Lane Monday: Not quite trekking the Simien Mountains, Ethiopia

One of the things we were most excited about doing in Ethiopia was going on a multi-day trek in Simien Mountains National Park. We had heard about week long treks, camping in the wilderness and sharing it all with Galada baboons.

We had even bipassed seeing the castles of Gondar so that we would have enough time for a good long hike… that and the fact it was raining like hell when we arrived in Gondar…

The Great Wall continued…

So I hope you enjoyed last weeks rather narrative account of my sunrise excursion onto the Great Wall. And, I hope it got you excited to hear about this most dream-like of Great Wall destinations! Because today I am going to, hopefully, persuade you, with some wise advice and some beautiful photos, that this is THE best place to go trekking on the outrageously majestic Great Wall of China.

So, if you are headed to China, and want to see the Great Wall (which, of course, you will!), then I urge you, with every fiber of my being, to go to Gubeikou and to stay in the Great Wall Box House Hotel. It will probably be the most rewarding experience of your whole trip to China. Seriously.

Memory Lane Monday: Blown away by Lalibela, Ethiopia

Last week I mentioned how I had never been so awed by religion as I was in Ethiopia and part of the reason for that was visiting Lalibela. This astounding place situated in a mountainous region north of Addis Ababa consists of 11 churches hewn entirely from living rock. Churches carved by hand straight into a mountain? Now that’s what I call devotion! And the fact that they are still fully working places of worship is further testament to that devotion. I can’t think of any other way to explain it but to say that, to me, this seemed like faith in its rawest form.