South -East -Asia

In 2012 near the start of my journey along the Silk route between Istanbul in Turkey and China, I spent a month in Iran. A beautiful country and actually very hospitable people.

Following the journey of Alexandra the Great to Persepolis, or next stop was the Lut desert to see the amazing sand formations known as “Kaluts”.

The Kalut is said to a sand mountain created by the effect of the dominant erosional agent in desert, i.e., wind making fascinating forms and shapes.

There are no threats, like scorpions or snakes, as the desert of Lut is an abiotic zone, which means that no single plant or creature can survive in such a harsh environment. Rising from the sand dunes, these natural and astonishing sculptures are a real shock to your eyeballs and, while walking among them, you are likely to feel you are wandering around Mars or even better, a Star wars film set.

Music free under creative commons licence from Youtube music library Title: Dakar Flow by Carmen Maria

A recent trip for my first ever visit to Indonesia, took me to Prambanan near Yogyakarta, Java.
One of the best things I saw there was the Prambanan Ballet, not a conventional ballet, but Indonesian style.

For the first time in my life I paid for VIP seats and trust me there was no regrets!

The Ramayana Ballet is a beautiful art performance, amazing and hard to match. This show is able to unify the Javanese arts of dance, drama and music in one stage and one momentum to present the Ramayana story, the legendary epic of Walmiki written in Sanskrit.

The music is not the accompanying music from the actual play as there is much narrative and singing and the quality quite poor from recordings. Instead I have used a piece of Javanese music called Gamelan, which consist largely of several varieties of gongs and various sets of tuned metal instruments that are struck with mallets.