Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
Spantik (aka “Golden Mountain”) soars 7027 metres above sea level.
It is rather more than three times higher than the Australian continent’s highest peak.
In the Karakoram, however, many mountains are mightier than Spantik.
Pakistan has 108 peaks that exceed 7000 metres!
We are just-returned from an unforgettable trip which began in Delhi and concluded in Beijing.
Primarily, however, it was focused on Kashmir, the Karakoram and Kashgar.
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We had limited time, so my longer zoom lens did all the “walking”.
My vantage point was almost the same as per “16A”, but the focal length was nearly 18 times greater.
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Chances are excellent that you have never heard of Civita – a southern Italian mountain village which sits within Calabria’s spectacular Raganello Gorge.
It is a very rewarding destination, both scenically and culturally…and there is adventure tourism” too, for climbers, kayakers and “white water” enthusiasts.
Civita is sometimes referred to as “the village of the Devil’s Bridge”.
The higher rim of the Raganello River’s gorge towers above Civita, but from village’s edge to Devil’s Bridge – which spans the river – it is still a long way down.
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You are looking at an alpine chough, flying overhead, just as we emerged from a “suprisingly” delicious lunch.
Not all “tourist venues with a view” serve bad food, and not all Bavarian restaurant fare is decidedly “meaty” and/or “stodgy”; our local trout, served very nearly atop the Jenner, was both lovely and light.
Comments closedThe featured image is a wide angle (24 mm) shot, taken from the summit of the Jenner (1874 metres ASL) in Berchtesgaden National Park.
Germany’s only alpine national park is a destination I would heartily recommend to almost anyone; even if you are neither “trekker” nor “mountain climber”.
It is a place where you can experience bona fide “alpine splendour” easily, safely, comfortably, with no risk of altitude sickness.
In order to reach the Jenner’s summit we only had to walk steeply for circa ten minutes; the Jennerbahn (cable car) had already whisked us most of the way up.
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You may be surprised to know that this post’s featured image involved a considerably shorter lens than did the “5A” photo, taken 38 minutes earlier, when we were still offshore.
When I took the above photo, we had for some minutes been strolling along the rather young beach which had formed/emerged as the glacier retreated – and lost its former status as a “tidewater” glacier.
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First, please have a close look at this post’s image.
It offers a much closer view than that presented in “4A” of this series.
When I took the “5A” & “5B” images we really were much closer to the same glacier’s snout, but for the “5A” image I also deployed a telephoto rather than a wide angle lens.
Now, have another look at the “4A”image, which shows all of this glacier’s snout, rather than a small portion thereof.
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This series’ “4A” image was dominated by several square kilometres of a glacier, but also included what appeared to be a very small boat.
The very same boat is the obviously-substantial star of “4B”.
For eight nights and almost nine days my beloved and I were among the 16 people (12 passengers) who were comfortably accommodated and very well fed on MV Catalyst.
The boat also carried kayaks for us all, and towed the tender that speedily transported us to and from many of Glacier Bay’s glorious shores.
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In some places and circumstances a human’s eyes and brain find it nigh-impossible to gauge just how close – or how far away – is whatever you are looking at, intensely.
The absolute (and relative) sizes of things – things-natural and things-manufactured by humans – can likewise remain an almost total mystery, until one is actually in or on the man-made thing, and/or within not very many metres of a landscape feature’s “face”.
One such place and circumstance: Alaska’s Glacier Bay, when “exploring” it by boat.
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The taking of this chapter’s “A” and “B” images saw my feet move hardly at all, between shots.
(in this series, each numbered chapter has an “A”/ “landscape” post and a “B”/“much closer” post)
For this post’s “much closer” image a much longer (more than 8X longer) focal length did the walking, metaphorically – my telephoto lens greatly narrowed the field of view, and brought the waterfall’s “centre” very much “closer”.
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