This is my third trip to Israel. My wife Susan’s sister and brother-in-law live in Rehovot, a city close to Tel Aviv. We’ve always felt safe when visiting Israel. My perspective on Israel is necessarily an American one. Israelis (including my relatives here) disagree with some of my conclusions. In any case, the closer perspective[…]
India and the Middle East
The Ultimate Festival Concert Christian and I returned to India from Nepal and immediately flew to Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) for a Mynta world music festival concert that was booked only a week earlier. It was called the Fusion Fiesta, which was organized by a Kokata tabla player, Tanmoy Bose. The festival even paid to fly[…]
Katmandu is in a valley with such dirty air, that the distant Himalayan range is mostly obscured. Rising in an airplane out of the valley and above the layer of smog, the immense mountain range appears like a distant mountain wall blocking half of the horizon. The flight to Pokhara takes only around half an[…]
Nepal Flying from Mumbai to Katmandu is only two and a half hours by air. But Nepal is a different country with a different culture and history. Historically, Nepal, unlike India, was never conquered and colonized by the British. Thus the Nepalese culture reflects continuity with the original culture of the Indian sub-continent, of which[…]
Mynta’s third concert was a very special one in the Indian state of Rajasthan, at an outdoor stage beside a 15th century fort on top of a mountain. It was my first time to visit this part of India. Rajasthan is located on the western side of northern India, bordering Pakistan. There is a large[…]
Welcome to Mumbai! This tour is the first one in which I’ve bypassed Mumbai (formerly Bombay) as the first stop. I had landed in Mumbai and immediately transferred by domestic flight to Nagpur. Nagpur, in central India, was much smaller and less crowded than Mumbai. Arriving back in Mumbai and taking a taxi to the[…]
Thoughts in transit to India, Jan. 22, 2013 Long distance air travel is magic. What would previously have been so impossible as to be unthinkable is now commonplace. It was amazing easy to board a plane in Reno to travel to India via Seattle and Dubai. Traveling halfway around the world in this case means[…]
Susan speaking at Israel’s first International Nursing Conference was the original reason for Susan and me making what expanded to be a month-long tourist trip to Istanbul, Jordan, and Israel. Having visited Israel once before, I wanted to visit some new places, as long as we were going to travel so far, halfway around the[…]