Harar is a walled city the location gives wonderful views of the surrounding country - the vast Danakil desert to the north, the fertile Harar mountains to the west, & the cattle rich plains to the south. With its 999 mosques, it is considered to be the fourth most holy city in Islam after Mecca, Medina and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. The vibrant market place is regarded as one of the most colourful in Ethiopia. The city suffers from frequent power cuts, (every night I was there) It was in the market where after dark when there was no electricity anywhere in the city, that I was able to find delicious hot food from the many stalls using charcoal fires. The “Hyena Man” collects offal and bones from the cities butchers to feed to the wild hyenas outside the Gate of the old city walls. Hyenas appear just after sunset to take food from his hands.

"A Pavement chat"
I arrived in Mongolia from China on the Trans-Siberian express. The Mongolians in their capital seemed wary of foreigners. I arrived in their country with no warm clothing and as winter had arrived I purchased a "deal", which was a local coat resembling a heavy woollen dressing gown. On seeing me wearing his national coat this chap warmly welcomed me to join him on the pavement for a chat. When you have all day, it doesn't matter that it takes 2 hours to explain that you come from far away and are happy to be with them in their land. He took me back to his tent for tea. The hand in the picture? Well it could have been cut out but it was part of that moment.

Spanish Dancer

I travelled to Eritrea, a small country adjacent to Ethiopia, on the Red Sea. Here I joined a ship known as the Lady Jenny. It was a dive boat. The year was 1993 and the 30 year war had stopped 6 months before. The area was virtually undived due to the war and the Lady Jenny was the first boat to visit the area.

On board I met among others, a gentleman called Wolfgang from Sweden. We dived together for the whole three weeks and he introduced me to the world of tropical diving. He was my mentor, he knew every species and yet still had the thrill of seeing them all again.

Before I left home I had read about a nudibranch (an underwater snail with no shell) called a "Spanish Dancer" this beauty was said to be about a foot long and not too easy to find. She was the thing I wanted to see most of all on this fascinating trip. We dived for two and a half weeks and saw everything, we even saw the creatures you can only dream about seeing, and we saw those that were not even meant to be there. We saw, sharks, giant manta ray, and even two whale sharks, the biggest fish in the sea and ours was about 18 metres long. There were two professional photographers on board and between them they had dived over 10,000 dives, yet they had never seen a whale shark. I was lucky I guess, but I had not seen my "Spanish Dancer".

Close to the end of the trip that had held so much, it was time for a night dive. I jumped into the water with Wolfgang and it was pitch black. We chatted before going down I told Wolfgang I was going to find my "Spanish Dancer" this time. As we began our descent below the waves, Wolfgang had a problem and had to ascend to the surface. I being his buddy went up with him. On the surface Wolfgang told me his jacket inflation valve was not working and he would have to abort the dive. The diving golden rule is "never dive alone", but on this occasion I gave it a go. On hindsight I could have picked a better place. I was off the coast of Yemen where we were not allowed to be let alone to dive. There had been sharks seen in the water, it was pitch black and it was my first solo dive.

When I descended I saw two sharks caught in the beam of my torch, I had seen plenty of sharks earlier in the week and realised they were just as afraid of me as I was of them, however at night it is another story. The beam of the torch seemed to scare them away and when my heart beat resembled something normal I began to relax. After about half an hour under water my torch beam picked up on something red under a rock. Immediately I knew what it was, it had to be my "Spanish Dancer", and it was. Fortunately, I had my camera with me and as she danced I took my photographs. She was more beautiful than I had heard or read about and after about ten minutes of her company she went back under her rock.

I surfaced in the pitch black about 300 metres from the ship and as I was so elated at what I had experienced I let out a huge yell of joy. One of the others on board the "Lady Jenny" later told me that Wolfgang had at that point said to those aboard "I think Jim has found his "Spanish Dancer". He was so right. Sorry you were not there to see her Wolfgang. (He later confided in me that he had never seen one)

"Win Lwin Too"
Burma is a country of breathtaking beauty, and retains the fascination of an unchanged culture, its gentle people always friendly and welcoming. In 1988 thousands of unarmed protesters including students, women and children, were gunned down in the streets by the army during peaceful demonstrations for democracy. Power has still not been transferred to those democratically elected in 1990, including Nobel Peace winner Aung San Suu Kyi (who remains under house arrest to this day). Burma is a country that is committing human rights abuses on a massive scale.
I met Win Lwin Too one evening, he is the most gentle human being I have ever met. Win took part in the demonstrations in 1988, he was in his fourth year at medical school. As a consequence of taking part he was forced to give up his medical studies and was now a worker in the rice fields.

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?

I want to share a wee story with you, it took place in New Zealand in early February.
My friend Ali from Nairn / Aviemore was working in Australia, he had to leave at end of his visa so decided to come to New Zealand.
When he arrived I met him at Auckland airport and he said he had received a letter from his mother letting him know that she had heard from a distant relation from 35 years ago, Ali last saw him when he was 10. Anyway his mother suggested that Ali go stay with this person, not my scene at all, as you know I hate staying with people . But he got in touch I said I would go somewhere else. Turns out the relation had gone to England for a month but his new wife, a lady of 65 originally from England but living out here since 87, invited us to go stay in her "second" house which she kept for guests. So I gave it a go. The house was a beaut, right down on the beach and next door to where the kiwi Maori celebrate the biggest day of their year which was day after we arrived, the Prime Minister was coming up as well. Whadango. Following day we took the old dear out for a meal, as we talked I told her I was diving "tomorrow" and she asked if I had ever dived in Scotland. I told her I had and the conversation went like this. "Have you ever dived in Loch Long?"
"Yes I have in fact my father used to live there" "Where abouts?"
"In a place called Arrochar"" I know Arrochar, where did he live in Arrochar?"
at this point I thought oh oh! so I took over "How do you know Arrochar?
"Before I came to New Zealand, I worked in Glasgow and lived in Arrochar"
"Where did you stay?" "I lived in Craigard House, do you know it"
"My father lived in Chestnut cottage, right next door"
"Good God. Dont tell me your Jacks son, dont tell me you're jacks son the lawyer from Inverness." Jaws dropped all round the table, I was hit by a thunderbolt, I had come all the way to the other side of the globe, to meet someone who knew and loved my old man. I spent that evening and the next couple of days listening to her tell stories of how she and my father used to spend the hours sitting in his lounge, looking out over the loch and talking about life and how strange it all was."
She was an interesting lady (poor ali, he came to visit a relation and ended up listening to stories about my old man) When I arrived in New Zealand I met Ali the next day, I said to him, and it was he who remembered this not me, " I get the
feeling I am going to meet someone I know here, its got that kind of feel to it" "Dont be daft he said, we are on the other side of the world" And so we were!
Its a strange world indeed, I felt so much energy for the next couple of days it was wonderful, its going now, but its that sort of place that anything can happen and I was ready to see what it was.

"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.

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.