Hamer society consists of a range of age groups and to pass from one age group to another usualy involves a complicated ritual. A significant ceremony for young men is "bull jumping" the test before passing into adulthood to become eligible for marriage.
The Hamer girls, were dancing in unison, creating a myriad of metallic sounds as their bracelets and ankle decorations clinked together. They had been drinking heavily. They would jump up to a man, marked by feathers behind either ear, hand him a green stick and while continuing to jump, he would whip them, drawing blood. The girls, without flinching, would bow their heads and jump away only to return in a matter of moments with another stick, for another beating. The girls were friends or relations of the boy who was going to jump over the bulls. The whipping ceremony came to a close and I followed the gathering to higher ground where about forty bulls were rounded up in a circle. The village elders stood in the centre of the beasts, surrounding the naked teenage boy. A large group of women surrounded the cattle, jumping and dancing in unison.
Ten bulls were lined up side by side. The naked boy rushed towards the first bull, vaulted onto its back and ran across the line trying to take as few steps as possible. At the end of the line he turned back to repeat the performance in the opposite direction. He did this without falling until on the last run he stumbled and fell onto the backs of the bulls but did not fall to the ground, he got up, finished, and became a man.

Lalibela

There is a small town in the middle of the Ethiopian highlands. It's surrounded by a rocky arid area. Yet here they say and I include myself among them, you will find the 8th wonder of the world. The town is known as Lalibela, after a legendary ruler, who according to legend was, while in Jerusalem, taken to heaven by an angel, where God gave him a vision of churches such as no one had ever seen before and ordered him to build them. It is said that angels came at night and helped with the construction.
Looking from the entrance on top of the mount, the first impression of the church is its giant cross-shaped roof. A few steps further, the twelve-meter-high, cross-shaped church can be seen standing tall and upright in the square hole below.

Try, if you can, to imagine a cathedral carved into a pit of solid rock? How would you make it? Shape the exterior of the building. Make some doors and windows. Then carve into the rock to form the inside the building to making, rooms, an alter, passage ways. Using only hand tools. An awesome feat, yet here in Lalibela there are eleven of them

The Mursi
The Mursi are survivors as if from a forgotten age whose isolated location in the South Omo valley, combined with the challenges of famine, war, migration, and diseases has shaped their identity. Their home is two days drive from the nearest asphalt road. The nearest main town is 2 days walk from their villlage. While the Mursi are isolated from the rest of the world, many of them carry AK-47s.Cattle raiding and warring between bordering ethnic groups is seen simply as a means of survival.

When a young Mursi girl reaches the age of 15 or 16, her lower lip is slit, she places a leaf on the wound to ease the pain and her front teeth are broken, . The lip is progressively stretched, the larger the lip plate she can tolerate, the more cattle will bring for her father at her marriage. Why do they deface these beautiful women so? There are many theories.

Some say it is to make their women unattractive to warring tribes. Whatever the reason, it is less defacing than the lengths some of our western women go to in the search for beauty.

Local townspeople people warned us that the Mursi tribe were aggressive. They were wrong. Treat them with respect and smiles break out quickly. They were curious, invasive of our space, because they did not understand the protocols of our world. But we did not understand theirs. Without language we reached out, made friends enjoyed the common language of shared time and laughter.

My Special Place
I have been fortunate in my life to have had the opportunity to travel far and to travel long. I have been privileged to have seen many special places. For a time it was difficult to say where was my most special place but as the years went on so the place began to stand out.
I reached my half century today and i spent it in this very special place. I first came here in june 1990 when it offered me a peace i so badly needed. Since that time it has always been a place of special calm for me.
And so aged 50 I walked the beach with the person I have always most wanted to be with. We bathed, collected shells and soaked in the tranquility that only this place and a few other places can offer. For the last 49 years i dont recall the sun ever shining on my birthday yet today it shone upon us for the most part of our time here.They say this is the last true wilderness in europe, and i am happy to go into the wild here anytime and hope i can for many years to come. 24/7/2007

With 5 others I had taken a jeep from the Nepalese border, across the Tibetan plateau to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. For many many years, Lhasa was the "forbidden city" closed to foreigners. The journey took 5 days and involved rising to an altitude of 17,000 ft, where the air was so thin it was hard to breath. Everest still rose 12,000 ft above us and was covered in cloud. Altitude sickness had affected each of us in one form or another. Walking at this altitude was, when you were unaccustomed to it, very hard work, and pushing a 4 wheel drive truck when it got stuck in the snow seemed impossible, and usually resulted in sickness and a splitting headache. We had been the last vehicle to get over the pass before it was closed by a snow storm. Finally we reached a house where we stopped for rest. It was warm inside and our hosts made us Yak butter tea, which even in these circumstances, still tasted horrible.This chap was our host.

In Ethiopia , teff is the most common cereal crop used to make injera. Teff is a tiny, round, khaki-colored grain closely resembling millet. "Teffa", the Amharic word for "lost", is so named because of teff's small size. It is the smallest grain in the world and often is lost in the harvesting because of its size. Teff has multiple other uses including acting as reinforcement for thatched roofs and mud bricks. It is sometimes used as an alcoholic beverage base although most alcoholic beverages in Ethiopia are primarily made from corn and millet. Although teff is found in almost all cereal growing areas of Ethiopia, the major areas of production are the central and highland areas.
Teff is well adapted to the heavy, well-drained, clay-like soil areas of the Ethiopian highlands where most other cereal crops cannot be grown easily. The preferred altitude conditions for teff is 2000 meters, matching closely with altitudes in the highland areas of Ethiopia.

Calcutta, a city of poverty, squalor & deprivation, it is also an extraordinarily vibrant & lively city. Delivery carts, mainly human pulled,with bales of hay, bags of flour, rice, sugar cane, jute, tea, coal, & other stuff, are almost impossible to move. The pollution is so thick that my eyes sting. The streets are so full of people whose disfigurements are horrifically unfair. This is the only city in the world to have hand pulled rickshaws. I was invited to join two "pullers" at a street stall for a cup of "chai". Among the poorest workers in the world earning as little as 15 pence per day, they insisted they would pay for my tea. It was the most humbling experience of my life. I found the India I had long imagined. Here I found the human spirit that I thought couldn't exist. If people here can find it in their heart to buy me a cup of tea, what can I do, yet what do I do?

"The Railway Children"
Indian trains are an "experience". Most of the journeys are long and involve many stops. On the overnight trains there is a constant flow of people selling a large variety of foods. Sleep is not easy to come by. At each station young children would climb aboard and search the floors looking for anything that could be used. The area beneath a foreign tourist would reveal true treasures in the form of plastic cups or bottles and would be collected by the child who left at the next station to catch the next train back to where he came from. Never did they ask for money, but if you were eating they might ask for some food.This picture was taken on the northbound train out of Calcutta.

Before I left for India, my sister gave me a book, "The Insight Guide to India". It was too big a book to take with me so it was left at home. I travelled round India in an anti clockwise direction and near the end of the journey when I arrived in Rajasthan I met this fellow. I thought his beard was amazing and he was happy for me to take his photograph. A while after I returned home I looked out the book given to me, and found the same fellow, (or his double) on the front cover. There are almost one billion (1,000,000,000) people in India.
Did I meet the same fellow shown on the front of my sisters book ?

I passed a Hanuman shrine with a holy man reciting mantras. He asked me to sit beside him and we watched a wedding procession go past then he blessed a young child. This man was called Baba Ram and though we could not speak a common language we managed to "talk" for a while. If I understood him correctly he had not washed or cut his hair for 5 years.