Lantern fly in Thailand

I was relaxing one day in a small, wooded grove that forms part of the Chiang May University campus. I had a camera with me since the grove abuts a medium small, perhaps artificial, lake and when the weather’s right, that make for interesting photos. It was more of a dreary overcast that day, so I decided to take a closer look at the trees and vegetation in case something looked interesting.

I’ve heard it said that these critters, though not dangerous to humans, take their toll on the vegetation around them and some recommend killing them. But I decided to leave this one be. It looked too cool for school.

Sado Island, Japan

A gem of a place, Sado Island is located off Japan’s west coast. One day, way back when, I rode my bicycle onto a ferry and spent a few days cycling around the island keeping to the coast for the most part. The picture below shows the view from Senkaku-wan on the northwest coast. After camping a few miles beyond that, I traveled onward to a small town where a gold mine—now a museum—once stood. Someday I’ll put a few more Sado pics on this site.

Nubra Valley, Ladakh

To get here as a foreign visitor, I needed to be in a group of at least five people to secure an inline permit. Then we hitchhiked up from Leh and got a ride inside a truck. The vehicle had to crest the Khardung-la Pass at over 18,000 feet in elevation, making this road the world’s highest motorable one for civilian traffic. Nubra is incredibly beautiful and relaxed. It’s said that one can get both a sunburn and frostbite at the same time if you’re there in winter and sitting half in the sun and half in the shade. Cars that make this journey will sometimes have their engines cough at this altitude, particularly if they’re older models.

Ljubljana, Slovenia

Back in the day when I used slide film, I was somewhat more careful about composition and lighting. But one can’t go wrong in Ljubljana or even in much of Slovenia. This looks to be “the” place in town to get your fresh herbs and spices without having to go to an ordinary supermarket. Much of the city seems like a living, outdoor museum, atmospheric and eminently walkable.

Most students enjoy a break

A short boat ride from Sittwe in Myanmar’s Rakhine State lies Wabo village. The settlement is known as the “weaving village” and here you’ll see women working hard at looms in the sheltered areas located below the ground floors of their stilted homes. Wabo is famous for the design and quality of its longyis, the traditional, wrap-around garment still worn by a majority of Myanmar’s inhabitants. While walking around the village—it was in 2008—I came upon this school, and the kids had just been let out for a short spell. There was something about the school’s wooden structure and the children with their smiles, framed within a break in the surrounding lush foliage, that made this, for me, a memorable shot.

Here We Go!

This will be the first post of a new blog. I do, for now, have a separate photography gallery website but wanted something more focused on easier blogging. Like the photography site, there will be plenty of visuals, but I hope to provide more written context. As one might infer from the tagline under Roaming Wide above, travel will be a major though not the only focus of this blog. I’ll also touch on art, culture, politics, conflict, human rights and anything interesting that I see, or that pops into my head. If you read the About Me page, that will also give you some idea why. I’ve written a few books which I will refer to from time to time, and my separate Author webpage is www.richardwriting.com, easy to remember.