Chasing The Blue Beyond

Cyprus · Mediterranean · Civilization Ten Thousand Years in One Small Island Cyprus is a small island with a long history—a culture spanning ten thousand years and one of the oldest civilizations in the Mediterranean. See Full Image Enter the Archive Show Text The Call The Island The Layers The Elixir The Call A Small Island Carrying a Very Long Memory “Cyprus, that small island with a long history and a rich culture spanning ten thousand years, is one of the oldest civilizations in the Mediterranean.” Foreign Land The Island in Two Frames The Long View A landscape shaped by trade, migration, conquest, faith, and the sea. The Human Scale History becomes real when you stand inside the evidence rather than beside the ...

2018 World Cruise · Suez Canal Passage Between Continents Transiting the Suez Canal aboard Queen Mary 2—connecting the Red Sea with the Mediterranean, setting a course for Cyprus, and watching Africa officially separate from Asia. See Full Image “English? Why do I have to learn that? I’m never going to live in England.” I am glad I did not follow that advice. Operational Thread Language opens the mission. Travel tests the threshold. Nature restores the operator. Ordinary World The Call Threshold Foreign Land Trials Revelation Return Elixir The Passage Suez Canal: Africa Severed from Asia Transiting the Suez Canal today aboard Queen Mary 2, connecting the Red Sea with the Mediterranean. Then setting a course for our n...

The Dead Sea – bordering Israel, the West Bank and Jordan – is a salt lake whose banks are more than 400m below sea level, the lowest point on dry land. Its famously hypersaline water makes floating easy, and its mineral-rich black mud is used for therapeutic and mud  treatments.

Hero's Journey Redux · Dubai 2017 + QM2 World Cruise 2018 The Future Has a Past Dubai is a city built from apparent contradictions: camel and SUV, dhow and superyacht, desert silence and choreographed water, the old Gulf and the new skyline. In 2017 we met the paradox. In 2018 we returned aboard Queen Mary 2 to see whether it still held. Dubai 2017 World Cruise 2018 Desert / Vertical Persian Gulf Sailing Then and Now See Full Image Show Story Dubai does not hide the argument. It builds the argument at full scale. The desert says scarcity. The skyline says ambition. The camel keeps the old rhythm. The SUV crosses it in the opposite direction. Both are real. Neither cancels the other. In 2017, Dubai appeared as a personal journey through aquarium glass, artificial snow, marina towers, desert roads and sailing on the Gulf. In 2018, Queen Mary 2 returned us to the city during the World Cruise. The second visit was not repet...

Cochin, India Land of spices and tea. I took a tuk tuk taxi lesson and got a crash course. Roll video...

Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, has a long history as a port on ancient east-west trade routes, ruled  by the Portuguese, Dutch and British. That heritage is reflected in its its  colonial architecture. Here are a few photos of our day there.

See Full Image Show Dossier Fictional intelligence dossier · declassified travel file Operation Golden Gun · Phang Nga Bay · April 2018 James Bond Island A Hero’s Journey through limestone towers, cinematic mythology and the dangerous intelligence of believing that seeing the location is the same as completing the mission. Status: Shaken · Not Stirred Executive briefing The assignment looked simple: find the island. But every serious journey begins with a false objective. The map names the place. The traveler has to discover the mission. Khao Phing Kan sits in Thailand’s Phang Nga Bay, reached from our ship in Phuket after a journey inland. The island belongs to a landscape of limestone tower karsts inside Ao Phang Nga National Park. Since its appearance in the 1974 film The Man with the Golden Gun , the location has carried another name: James Bond Island. That was the public cover story. The real op...