Stories

Walking along Kabanbai Batyr Street in Almaty, I’m dumbfounded in that low-level way smashing into and through your expectations while travelling can dumbfound a person.

The streets around here are lined with what could be oaks, could be elms. It’s the sort of thing I usually pay attention to and make note of, because it’s good to be able to tell people later, “I was walking down this elm-lined street,” but I’ve been paying too much attention to the things I usually wouldn’t be noticing.

Lots of exciting things happening very soon…join us at one of our upcoming Wheel & Anchor events in May:

The first is May 8 in Mississauga – the inaugural Wheel & Anchor Member’s Evening! It’s going to be a lovely evening of mingling with other travellers, presentations of some spectacular destinations, and culinary treats from around the world. You can find all of the info here.

Like the Berlin Wall of fond memory, the Great Wall of China has spent the better part of its existence as something like a rumour.

China was so inaccessible for so long, the wall took on the patina of myth. Among Westerners, it had only been seen by the lucky few and as a result, like Stephen King’s monster in the closet, it became an almost supernatural thing, so when China started opening up, which is still not so very long ago, the Great Wall of China shot to the top of everyone’s list of things that must be seen.

Shiraz is a city in Iran, once a centre of wine-making, an industry that shut down once Iran became an Islamic republic in 1979.

There’s something regal about train travel, about sitting comfortably in a seat beside a huge window as the world passes by just below eye level.

It may be blustery or fine, arid or swampy just on the other side of the glass, but you are enveloped in a perfectly temperate pod, food and drink never more than a few steps away, a book, Kindle or other screen of choice within easy reach whenever you want a momentary distraction from the scroll of life outside.

You may think you know Iceland, but Iceland doesn’t give up its secrets easily.

Sure, the Blue Lagoon is lovely. But that’s not Iceland.

Iceland is a place unlike any other, a sort of time capsule of a nation that’s preserved many aspects of Viking-age life.

On May 24, 1976, nine French wine experts sat at a long table in a small side room off the lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel on rue de Castiglione in Paris to drink.

A couple of hours later, the world of wine had been, as the French say, bouleversé.

In the blind tasting, the best red wine and the best white wine were both from California.

Checklists are for chores. But bucket lists are more than that, more, even, than life goals. Your bucket list isn’t a to-do list, it’s nothing less than a guide to the world and your place in it.

There is no way to “do” India, any more than you can decide you want to see the world. All you can do is make a start.