Recollections...

Memorable landscapes and impressions over the years

Por Plateau Perspectives

26 de May de 2020

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad"

Travel opens the eyes and the mind.

Recognising the uniqueness of the opportunities I have been most fortunate to enjoy, each memory is greatly cherished. Many friends have been made along with way, and every relationship makes us the richer.

New ways of seeing and understanding have presented themselves, too, and the extraordinary diversity of people and cultures and the beauty of all creation are special beyond reckoning. The vitality of the world's ecosystems and the richness of all its bio-cultural diversity are tangible.

It is now up to us to make the right decisions, to protect and maintain the world's human and natural landscapes, to live with equity and justice.

Given that travel always has some environmental costs... and social impacts... "How we travel" – and ultimately, our very purposes in traveling – are of paramount importance for our collective well-being. Hopefully, the contributions I have brought through my travels have outweighed unintended costs...

Below are recollections from several of my most memorable travels over the past decade, through which I have learned to truly appreciate the world around us.

I hope that you, too, may enjoy these landscapes!

One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.

Henry Miller

Grand Canyon, USA

Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.

Benjamin Disraeli

Kenyan Livelihoods

A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.

Tim Cahill

Hunza Valley, Pakistan

Wherever you go, go with all your heart!

Confucius

Explorations in Nepal

Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by.

Robert Frost

Altai Mountains, China

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mongolia's grand vistas

A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.

Lao Tzu

Life in Kyrgyzstan

Marc Foggin is a conservation biologist with special interests in the peoples and landscapes of Western China and Central Asia. He is founding director of the international NGO Plateau Perspectives and research associate in the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia. He currently lives with his family in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.