It was a beautiful day and a beautiful drive through some of the most spectacular scenery in the world. Back home, some months earlier, I had read an article in a newspaper about “the monastery at the top of the cliff.” I knew then I wanted to come to Ethiopia. From the junction with the main road, there is an 11 km rough track to the base of the mountain, suitable only for a 4x4; the vehicle struggled hard but gave up after a few kilometres and I had to walk.
Debre Damo is unique and unforgettable. There is a daunting obstacle to the monastery: the only means of access is a climb of twenty-four meters up a sheer cliff. Polished smooth by fourteen centuries of scrambling monks, the vertical rock face looked more daunting the closer I got.
A monk lowered a safety rope which I tied around my waist. He then lowered a second, thicker frayed leather rope that is the monks' lifeline to the outside world. My hands grasped the rope and bare footed I made the ascent. It was almost a spiritual climb, a great feeling was flowing throughout the climb and a power I have not ever felt before gave me the strength to pull myself up. I made the climb, got to the top and as I looked back down I could not believe what I had done.

The monastery is a collection of stone-built houses and several small churches spread over a parched escarpment. About 120 monks live there, along with their protégés and livestock. Local people give food and supplies but the monastic community is virtually self- sufficient. It has its own water reservoirs - spectacular caverns dug deep beneath the surface of the cliff-top centuries ago. Little suggests this is the country's oldest place of worship: a community with roots in the 6th century.

"A Special Smile"
All the photographs mean something to me. If I was to choose a very special one it would be this shot of a young Indian girl I met at her father's funeral. She believed there was life after death and that he was going on to a better place. I found the experience very humbling. At my own father's funeral there was typical western grief, here it was different. She was delighted when I asked if I could take her photograph, but it was only afterwards I noticed her left leg had been amputated at her hip. She saw my surprise and gave me a smile that will be with me forever.

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.

"Rook Rook" Guatemala
I took a boat to a small village at the foot of a volcano on the edge of a lake. When I was making my way to the village from the jetty, this chap asked me for money. I had a lolly pop in my back pocket and gave it to him. I asked if I could take his picture, he looked at the lolly pop & gave me this laugh. I promised to send him a copy of the picture, but lost his address. I returned to Guatemala a year later & took a copy of the photo with me, with the help of a local boy in the village I found his house but to my disappointment he wasn't in, I left the photo with his wife who was delighted. Later I found Rook Rook sitting at the pier, watching the boats come & go. I could now speak Spanish and tried to let him know I'd left a picture at his house. I couldn't understand why he couldn't understand me until a woman listening to our conversation told me that he was deaf and dumb. He could lip read but only his native Indian tongue, not Spanish. With help of the woman I managed to get the message across that I'd left a photo with his wife. I returned again in 2004 to learn that Rook Rook had been killed in an accident at the dock a few months earlier.

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

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

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.

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.

I was having a coffee, on the other side of the road there must have been 100 people, sitting or sleeping rough against a wall that stretched the length of the road, they were beggars, some deformed, some naked, some diseased, many with aids, some with limbs broken or missing, some you would be afraid to touch, all living out their lives in the same place every day, all were begging, and the first reaction when you get over the shock is perhaps to think that somehow it was all their fault. That’s the easy way out, it enables you to walk past them and do nothing, give an occasional coin to the ones that tug a conscience yet when they ask for money, if instead you offer them part of a loaf of bread it is torn out of your hands and gorged like I have never seen before. Poverty is not the “not having” it is, as the man in the cafe said....”being someone whose potential in this life will never be realised”. No hope whatsoever, and I don’t know what a life without hope must be, none of us do, but having seen it day after day, as the hands reach out no longer for hope but for food, it has drained my heart.

For a very sad but true insight to world poverty Click here.

My Beach

I have a favouriteplace in Scotland that until recently was not well known. It is the place I escaped to after my old man died. The place where I did some thinking on life, if that doesn't sound too crass. It is quite simply a beach, on the North west of Scotland. For me it is the most magnificent beach in Scotland. The remoteness is powerful. It is 6 miles from the nearest road across moorland.

I have been twice, the first time was as I said after my father's death, and the second was when I took a young French girl "Estelle" who loved Scotland, to see "my beach". This was two days before I left for Rio de Janeiro in 1994. We had an emotional visit, it is an emotional place. Cameron MacNeish wrote of the place "The cliffs to the North appeared to evaporate in various shades of grey towards Cape Wrath and there was a stillness over the place that I'd never experienced before. I sat on the rocky strand and soaked it in, feeling the loneliness penetrate my very being, not an unpleasant loneliness, but rather a great peace." So it's my place along with a few more folk, but not too many. When I have been there, there have been no other visitors, you walk the mile long beach alone.

There is a small island known as Am Balg, about a mile off shore and strangely, the best dive I have had in Scotland was at that island. I had gone by boat with twelve others from Kinlochbervie, and though the beach was in sight we did not visit. It would not have been the same with twelve.

Two days after my visit to the beach I flew to Rio and on arrival at the airport in Brazil I met a guy from Wales. We shared a taxi into the city and went looking for accommodation. Pete was a banker who had opted out of the rat race, just as I had. When I unpacked my rucksack in the other side of the world the first thing to come out was a photograph of the beach that Estelle had secretly placed in my rucksack. There were nice words on the back to remember the day by.

The following day, grey and overcast, my first to be spent in South America, I walked along the famous Copacobanna Beach, said to be the most beautiful in the world. Today there were no scantily clad beauties, no sunshine. The bulldozers were on the sand clearing away all the rubbish, there were only a few walkers, like Pete and myself who were doing the "tourist thing". As we were walking and talking about how we were each going to spend the next few months, Pete said to me that he had a favourite beach in the world but it was in a place so remote that it was unlikely that I had ever heard of it!