Globalwanderings is the personal photoblog of Richard Cain showcasing some of the amazing places I have experienced while living and working throughout Asia and more recently, Europe. In 2009, me and my wife Jackie left Asia to renovate a farmhouse and live a new life in deepest Portugal. We are now renovating our second house and that story is told on a blog called The House on a Hill. We also run the podcasting site podcastsinenglish.com for learners and teachers of English as a foreign language.
Latest posts:
Mumbai
26 Feb 202522 Feb 2025 Got the bus from Murud up the coast to Alibag. Quite a pleasant trip, coastal scenery and a nice breeze coming in th ewindow. At Alibag bus station I needed a few directions to the ferry company offices from where I got their bus to the ferry terminal at Mandwa and we were soon away on the open sea. The ferry trip was quite pleasant, followed most of the way by loads of gulls coming quite close,…
Island fortress
22 Feb 2025From Pune I was headed due west over the Western Ghats to the coastal fortress of Janjira and the ancient Princely State of the same name. However, there was no transport. Everything went via Mumbai, so I took a taxi. The reason there were no buses was probably because the land was fairly sparsely populated and we had to descend through one of the few valleys of the Western Ghats, the long chain of mountains running parallel to the west…
Pune
19 Feb 2025Sat 15th Feb 2025. Another first. I thought I was just getting a regular bus for the six hour trip to Pune. It certainly looked very ordinary inside – rather worn and mildly decrepit but it turned out to be electric! Pune is certainly a very large city of seven million people and like many large cities in India is currently building a Metro system. I didn’t go on it but here’s a photo taken near the hotel and the…
Exploring Aurangabad
14 Feb 2025Yes, another early start but today I was going to take it a bit easier and hire a scooter to see the sights around Aurangabad. I did a bit of research and there was a scooter rental round the corner from the hotel, so all good. As it happened, despite a polished website, Bluebird Rentals was basically a young lad with his parents operating from their house. However, top quality service and I got a nifty little Honda for 500Rs…
Ellora
13 Feb 2025Yes, another early start! The caves were supposed to open at 6am when it was pitch black but when I arrived at the gate at 7, there were only a few people around, so I immediately headed for the showstopper of the site: Cave 16, Kailasa. So Kailasa really is the centrepiece of the site, in stature and position as it really dominates the place. It’s not actually a cave as they have removed a huge chunk of the rock face:…
Random posts:
Weekend to Ninh Binh
27 Nov 2001One of the joys of living in Hanoi was the ease of getting out. I often used to hop on my Minsk for weekend trips into the countryside and this was one such trip. My ultimate destination were the caves and rivers of Tam Coc but much more important was the journey. Although in winter, northern Vietnam can often be miserable but this weekend the sky was clear and the air fresh as I headed South West from Hanoi on…
Kolkata
2 Mar 2016After a few days at the seaside it was time for another flight and a complete change of pace. Like Chennai, Hyderabad and Vizag, Bhubaneswar had a modern airport with cheap flights everywhere, so I booked on another Indigo flight, this time to Kolkata. 1500Rs for an hour flight was pretty good I thought. I wasn’t sure about Kolkata. I had visions of poverty, pollution, traffic congestion and all that goes with a huge Indian city of 14 million people….
Land of the Uighurs
27 Apr 1993After my mini lie-in I got the 10am bus for the relatively short 4 hour hop to Urumqi (20Y). The bus dropped us off in the middle of nowhere but I was able to get a 3-wheeler to the Hongsham Hotel where I got a room for 45Y with the world’s smallest bath. I needed to get some laundry done and the hotel staff weren’t interested but fortunately there was a laundry across the road. I went for a wander…