It’s a new country for Peter’s Big Adventure! Welcome to Poland 🇵🇱
Our journey in Poland starts in Krakow. This is a city that I knew first from the WWII history books, and later as a desirable and beautiful European destination that I’d be well-advised to bump up to the top of my priority list of future trips. Indeed, Krakow is many different things to many different groups of people, and today we’re going to do our best to understand as many of these layers as we can. So let’s get started, eh?
In this article, we’re going to be agnostic with the location within London. Indeed, this article has been sitting around as a ‘draft’ since 2023, and I have just been adding to the gallery every time I walk by a mural in my day-to-day life. So, I stumbled onto all of these randomly, and accordingly, they are really from a random collection of places. I think the London neighborhoods covered here include Camberwell, Stoke Newington, Little Portugal, Bow, Bethnal Green, Walthamstow, Peckham, Hackney, Finsbury Park, Waterloo, Nunhead, Stockwell, Fitzrovia, Clapham, Earl’s Court, Soho, Notting Hill, Streatham… and probably more!
It turns out that Glasgow has a reputation for murals! The one at the top of the gallery below is, perhaps, the most famous of them all. It was done by an Australian-born street artist named Sam Bates, better known under the moniker Smug. He’s offered little information on the intended symbolism of the mural, but because the subject is holding a robin and appears to have some sort of halo—both imagery that were/are commonly associated with St Mungo—the mural has been widely interpreted as a modern St Mungo. The mural’s close proximity to Glasgow Cathedral, which is the resting place of St Mungo, serves to reinforce this.
When you think of Scotland, I’m betting you don’t immediately think of Glasgow. You probably think beautiful scenes in the Scottish Highlands, or the charming cobblestone streets of Edinburgh. Indeed, this is the image that Scotland likes to show to the outside world, but the largest city in Scotland is actually not Edinburgh; it’s Glasgow! With a metro area population of ~1.8 million, the joke goes that this is where Scots actually live. It could be said that Edinburgh and Glasgow are two sides of the same coin. They are the largest two cities in Scotland, and they are literally right next to each other at only 70-80km (45-50 miles). Edinburgh is smaller, but it is the administrative, governmental, diplomatic, academic, and financial hub of Scotland. It’s well-connected, it’s expensive, and it’s posh. Glasgow, on the other hand, is none of these things.
You’re gonna love it. 😉
From Saudi to the UAE, to Yemen, to Oman, there are all lots of sub-regions of the Arabian Desert, which have emerged over time based on a combination of local tradition, geographical features, and scientific classification. The geography of this particular corner of the desert is largely dominated by long, parallel dunes (also called longitudinal dunes). A single dune can stretch from 5–20+ km (3–12+ miles) in length. And, in terms of height, they can reach 100 meters high (330 feet). To put that into perspective, that could be roughly equivalent to a 30-storey building!
The theme of today is old Arabian fortresses scattered throughout Oman’s Al Hajar mountains. Oman has a lot of these old relics, and we’re going to be visiting 3 of them. We’ll start with Nakhal Fortress, move on to Bahla Fortress, and finish with Nizwa Fortress, which is actually part of a very cool little town bearing the same name. In the past two articles, there was a LOT of information about Oman and the geopolitical neighborhood it calls home. Admittedly, during these articles I was still getting my feet under me in this new country. But this is where we’re going shift gears from educational exploration to something a bit more fun.
So, go use the bathroom now because it’s about 1 hour from Muscat to Nakhal, and we’re not going to stop until we get there. 👀
The first time I learned about Dhofar was actually in a BBC nature documentary! Although they are pretty obscure in the wider world, within Arabia the Dhofar mountains are quite famous for the incredible transformation they undergo each year during the monsoon season. During the “Khareef” (the local name for the monsoon season), this whole place transforms from a desert into a massive, green oasis! It happens from June to early September, peaking in July and August and, in addition to being misty and wet (already very unusual within the region), Dhofar also becomes much colder than the rest of the Gulf. There even seasonal waterfalls that pop up all over the mountainous landscape! During this time, there is a huge influx of tourist (mostly from Saudi Arabia and the UAE) that come in to enjoy the greenery and cool temperatures. There is even a Khareef Festival that happens during this time. UNFORTUNATELY, we’re not visiting during the Khareef. This visit happened in mid-December, so Dhofar will be in peak-desert mode.
Bourdain said it best: “The Sultanate of Oman defies expectations”. It occupies a very tricky slice of the map indeed, a smaller nation holding its own against all odds in some extremely treacherous geopolitical waters. Its neighbors are the war-torn, perpetually-collapsing Yemen, the conservative and ruthless Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the opulent, high-flying United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Iran, which needs no introduction. It also shares responsibility with Iran for the Strait of Hormuz; maybe you’ve heard of it? Literally the entire world has had their eyes glued to this strategic global choke point on the world’s oil supply for the past few months… things are TENSE. And right in the middle of this pressure cooker sits Oman: safe, moderate, reserved, modest, welcoming, and beautiful.
My fascination with Pondicherry began many years ago when I saw it in the movie Life of Pi. It’s an incredible film, and while most of it takes place at sea, the beginning of the film, as well as the narration throughout, is all set in this idyllic French colonial town in India. Of course I was curious about this place, so I looked it up, and there it was: Pondicherry! It had been sitting on a quiet part of South Indian coast this whole time, but there weren’t many major cities around it so my eyes had never lingered on this particular part of the map. I remember thinking that this far-flung place seemed a bit surreal… it looked like France… but it was in India? I knew very little about South India at the time, and I’d probably never go there… but the way it was represented in the film was absolutely intoxicating!
With a metro area population of roughly ~14.5 million people, Chennai is currently the 4th largest city in India, behind only Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata. It’s also the capital of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, which is the formal administrative division corresponding to the Tamil cultural identity. Tamil culture is unique because it is one of the most ancient surviving cultures not only in India, but in the whole world. Its roots can be traced back to ~300 BCE and the Tamil language—one of the world’s oldest living languages—has more than 2,000 years of recorded literature. The Tamil-verse includes multiple different religions (such as Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity), so religion’s typical role as a cultural unifier does not apply here. In its place, the language itself has taken on a unique level of significance.
