Tag: archaeology

Wreckage of the Southern Cloud

29 January 2020 / author

Sir Charles Kingsford Smith in front of the “Southern Cloud” (photo from Ed Coates collection – used with permission)

Time Magazine, April 20, 1931:

Even as Col. Lindbergh joined the staff of T.A.T. and Pan American Airways… so did Wing-Commander Charles Kingsford-Smith return home from his famed flights to become managing director of Australian National Airways Ltd. One day last month …his company’s … Southern Cloud took off from Sydney for Melbourne, over 450 mi. distant… [and] was not again heard from. As did Lindbergh when the T.A.T. plane City of San Francisco vanished in New Mexico in 1929, Commander Kingsford-Smith flew to the search. Day after day planes criss-crossed the wilderness north of Melbourne. In such territory survivors might live for many days without reaching means of communication. Last week hope for plane and occupants was abandoned.

What happened to the Southern Cloud? Since I first heard about the plane 20 years ago, I’d wanted to find out the whole story. In January 2011, I finally did…

Arequipa and the Colca Canyon

8 April 2019 / author

Arequipa was once a very long drive over a bumpy road from Lima. By 2010, and presumably still today, you could ride a modern road on a comfortable overnight bus with reclining seats, a hot meal served by the cabin crew, movies to watch and breakfast with coffee the next morning. Some might sneer at this level of comfort but we’ve done enough really tough bus rides in our time that we were happy to kick back and enjoy the service.

High up from the dry and sandy desert coast, Arequipa is visually dramatic. Surrounded by conical volcanos and bathed in lovely sunlight streaming from a clear blue sky, it was a welcome change from grey and gritty Lima.

This was good, because we ended up staying a long time…

Choquequirao – Castle in the Sky

4 December 2018 / author

↑ Choquequirao

Unlike Sheeta, Yonnie didn’t fall magically from a dirigible to meet me. And there weren’t evil sky-pirates out to capture us. But in many other ways, our 2010 trek to the high, lonely, lost Incan city of Choquequirao reminded me of Laputa of the Miyazaki film “Castle in the Sky”, with its dignified ruins and green lawns hidden in the soaring peaks of the Andes. It was a very special place.

Gansu Province’s Incredible Great Walls and Silk Road Sites: Part II

26 November 2018 / author

I’m a mountain guy, I decided, after just a few hours in the outskirts of the Gobi desert. It was hot, and blowy, the Great Wall we were following was practically impossible to see, and the ground beneath us was parched and covered in huge salt pans. Give me a goat track, I thought. A ridge ripped by a cold wind from Siberia, and a Ming wall I can actually see. But my friend Chinoook is made of sterner stuff (though I give him a run for his money on my home turf). Out ahead, he led the way through the salt pans towards a brown smudge on the horizon. “There’s the wall”, he promised. I squinted. “Sure it is”, I thought skeptically. But he was right. Just meters off a salt pan they could have used as a set for Mordor in the Lord of the Rings, stood an enormous, multi-tiered wall – a giant layer cake two thousand years old.

Old Roadhouse on the Silk Road

23 July 2018 / author

Local boy running his horses up the alpine meadow

High up in the mountains of southern Kyrgyzstan, not far from the mountain pass that leads into China, lies Tash Rabat. Precisely the kind of place I really love, it is an old stone fortified “caravanserai“, standing cold in the high, remote mountains, full of ghosts. Not all ghosts are bad, as I would discover. On a cold night, this place takes you back to the Silk Road five or ten centuries ago.

The Fort and Wall at Beihua Ridge and White Horse Pass

27 May 2017 / author

Far to Beijing’s north, the Great Wall runs roughly along the border with Hebei Province. Just west of the well-known “wild wall” at Gubeikou is a little-visited but wonderful section of Ming Dynasty Great Wall called Beihualing – Beihua Ridge. It has everything: dramatic towers, ridgeline wall, remoteness, beautiful Ming stonework lying just where it fell centuries ago, and a really big fort. Just up the road is the equally impressive White Horse Pass, or Baimaguan.

Click through for photos of this incredible area.

Tag: archaeology

Wreckage of the Southern Cloud

Arequipa and the Colca Canyon

Choquequirao – Castle in the Sky

Gansu Province’s Incredible Great Walls and Silk Road Sites: Part II

Old Roadhouse on the Silk Road

The Fort and Wall at Beihua Ridge and White Horse Pass

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