FLASHBACK FRIDAY – SERA GOMPA, LHASA TIBET

July 12, 2001. I took my son Jackson when he was nine years old on an overland expedition across Tibet this summer. Here he is at the Sera Gompa, a Gelugpa (Yellow Hat) Tibetan Buddhist Monastery just outside Lhasa, Tibet’s capital.

Several hundred monks live here, teaching young acolytes and conducting prayer ceremonies for villagers in the area – albeit under the watchful eye of Chinese Communist government agents. Being here was a very educational experience for Jackson, which he still remembers. Always try to take your kids or grandkids on travel adventures when they are young – they’ll (more…)

THE TIGER’S NEST OF BHUTAN

November 1990. The “Tiger’s Nest” or Taktsang monastery is built in front of caves on a vertical cliff-face high above the Paro Valley in the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan. Originally a meditation site of the founder of Tibetan Buddhism, Padmasambhava in the 700s, the monastery temples were first constructed in the 1600s.

Bhutan is arguably the most fabulously exotic country on earth, still adhering to the ancient traditions of Ningma (Red Hat) Tibetan culture. It is quite a steep hike to the Tiger’s Nest but certainly worth it. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #133 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

ADAM AND EVE AND AMANITA

Glimpse (#98) was the back panel of the Painted Monastery of Voronet. Here you see a side panel fresco of Adam and Eve tempted by the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

Startlingly, however, the couple is not eating an apple at the serpent’s behest but a hallucinogenic Amanita muscaria mushroom – recognizable as the classic Disney cartoon mushroom with the red cap and white spots. Sounds hard to believe but there it is, 532 years old. It’s the center panel of a triptych, the left panel has Adam and Eve each grasping an Amanita stalk, the right panel knowing (more…)

THE POLISH SAVIOR OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION

On September 12, 1683, Ottoman Sultan Mehmet IV as the Caliph of all Islam was on the verge of realizing the great Moslem dream of conquering all of Christian Europe for the glory of Allah. The great obstacle in his way – the city of Vienna – was about to be overwhelmed by the Sultan’s gigantic army of 140,000 Islamic Taliban of their day.

On the Kahlenberg hilltop above Vienna, the commander of the Christian forces, King Jan III Sobieski of Poland, gave the order to attack. Twenty thousand armed horsemen galloped down the slopes of Kahlenberg, the largest (more…)

THE POTALA OF THE AEGEAN

Mount Athos, Greece.  The Monastic Community of Mount Athos has been independent from the rest of the world for over a thousand years.  In all that time, no woman has been allowed to enter.  20 Eastern Orthodox Christian monasteries, home to  some 2,000 monks, are scattered along the Athos peninsula at the apex of the Aegean Sea.  The most dramatic of them is Simonopetra built in the 1200s on a huge granite rock hanging on a cliff 1,000 feet above the sea.

Little wonder it is nicknamed The Potala of the Aegean, after the famed Potala in Lhasa, (more…)

FLASHBACK FRIDAY – DEWAR’S AT THE NORTH POLE

April, 1979 – on the sea ice at 90 North latitude, the North Pole. I was one of the more unusual Profiles for Dewar’s Scotch. It was the 3^rd of my 21 expeditions to the very top of our planet. One thing that stood out for me was the photographer brought false ice cubes of carved polished crystal for the photo you see of a glass of scotch perched on a small pressure ridge. That’s the way the pros do it. One genuine item he brought was a case of Dewar’s. We had one heck of a party on (more…)