Tag: Hiking
The Tongariro Crossing
In the center of the North Island there is a landscape that could well be from a different planet: Rugged volcanic mountains reach high in the sky and are surrounded by a flat desert. The dominant colors are red, brown and black. And in the middle of it all lie […]
5-day hike on the Travers-Sabine Circuit
I simply could not get enough of New Zealand’s pristine nature so I decided to go on a five-day hiking trip in the Nelson-Lakes National Park. With a minimum of planning I set out on the Travers-Sabine Circuit, a loop that took me up one valley, across a high mountain […]
Brewster Hut
I asked a fellow traveler about his favorite place on the South Island, and he sent me to the Brewster Hut. So I hitched a ride down the curvy road from Wanaka to the west coast, and the young American couple in their camping bus dropped me off at the […]
Around the South Island
I decided to head south from Christchurch, and ended up in a tiny place called Moeraki. Another traveler had told me about the light house there, and about a penguin colony. As it turned out I got there at the wrong time of day and they had all headed off. […]
Majestic Mount Rinjani in a day
By 4AM I had already left the “basecamp village” Senaru and was walking through the rainforest. Strong smells and strange noises surrounded me as I made my way up a seemingly never ending mountain in the dark. It gradually got lighter, the sun rose, and I was still in the […]
Blue Flames at Lake Ijen
From Cemero Lawang one can make it to Sempol (the “base camp” for trekking to the Ijen Crater) in one day, if one figures out public transport correctly. But since the bus driver of the public bus down to Probolinggo refused to leave before the bus was full it got […]
Indonesia’s Volcano Panorama at Mount Bromo
One night on a crowded train brought me from Yogyakarta to Malang. From there I took a minibus and later an ojek (motorbike taxi) up a steep mountain road and told the driver to drop me off at a certain intersection. From there I would have continued to Ranupani, the […]
Hong Kong – So much more than expected
My first flight after three months of traveling brought me to the autonomous region of Hong Kong. Technically it belongs to China, but visa-wise I had left China. Hong Kong has its own currency, its own government, people are using a different set of characters (traditional, as opposed to simplified […]
Waiting in Ulan Bator
I would not have chosen to stay in the Mongolian capital for almost a week, but that was how long it took the Chinese embassy to process my visa application. Applying there had felt difficult and uncertain at the time, but I had done my homework and in hindsight it […]
Recent Comments