Welcome to Owl Abroad, a travel blog by Al (Owl), a New Zealander situated somewhere between 30 and death who loves travel.
How do you like your travel blogs?
Perhaps you want to hear about bungy-jumping in New Zealand’s South Island. Trekking across the Andes in shoes of straw. Wind surfing in the Sahara, tramping through forests where poisonous spiders are bigger than humans, riding a penny-farthing cycle through hails of bullets at border posts. Violent stomach troubles in the wildest of places.
Or maybe for you it’s adventure tours in a leaky raft down the Zambezi. Canoeing through crocodile-infested rivers. Paddling along the Amazon in swamps infested with crawlies and biting insects, in search of tribes lost for millennia to everyone except themselves. Climbing in Nepal, short of oxygen and frostbitten. Crossing America in a 1950s Chevrolet or on a motorbike with sidecar. Following the footsteps of Genghis Khan, or Alexander the Great, or Lawrence of Arabia, or Marco Polo.
If you do, sorry you won’t find it here. This is more of a touristy blog, but one I hope has a difference to others. This is not only about travel. It is about how one man’s mind perceives the things he hears, sees, and experiences.
This is a more sedate blog. It’s about perspectives. Travel experiences, stories of my travels (none involving extreme danger or indeed any kind of danger), tips, thoughts to help you, things I have done, and – especially – reflections arising from watching people, observing customs and habits and quirks.
You’ll hear about art, history, scenery, architecture, odd things, funny things. You’ll learn how something I’ve seen somewhere triggers reflections on politics, religion, national character, human beings, and much more besides.
I want to stimulate your mind.
It’s less about wild physical adventure and pumping adrenalin, more about what travel inspires deep inside.
Oh, and: the blog pieces are not necessarily in chronological order, and some will be from years ago as well as from the present.
I hope you enjoy!