A BUS TO NOWHERE

Well, that all happened very quickly, didn’t it?
A virus jumped species, infected a human, and 5 months later, millions are infected, hundreds of thousands are dead, and billions live under lock down.
Right now, I can’t go down the street for lunch, go camping or visit another city. It is actually illegal for me to leave my own country, and there are almost no countries that would let me in anyway.
It’s pretty obvious I won’t be doing any international travel this year. When will borders open, and how? When will planes fly again, and how much will tickets cost? Will anyone ever set foot on a cruise again?
So, for the rest of the year, it will be a journey down Memory Lane. With all my pre-digital pics scanned, there is much work to do. With about 25 countries to work through, 3 a month and I might be close by Christmas. Or not.
In the last week or so, I have added my first Central Asian page, Kazakhstan, and my first South Asian page, Pakistan. Bangladesh, which I’d forgotten how photogenic it was, should be next up. And there a some new shots from a few places in the nature, people, culture and man-made sections, too.
So the plan for the next half a year is a mix of smaller jobs (Morocco, Russia, 1999 for example) and The Big Projects, like Thailand, Taiwan, Burma, Namibia and India.
While it is of course frustrating to be unable to travel (or do anything) it does make me glad that I did the traveling I did when I had the chances.

In the two months since I lasted posted here, I have scanned around 5,000 photos, from slide film, black and white, and colour negs. They covered at least 15 countries, 4 continents, taken on at least four different cameras.
Most of them were from 1992 to 1995 in South East Asia, but I even managed to rescue some stuff from Papua New Guinea from 1987.
Some of it is already up:
Timor Leste (1992), Brunei (1993), Singapore (1992-3).
These three went up first simply because the are smallest. I have over 1000 pics from both Cambodia and Vietnam, for example. As for Thailand, that file has grown by about 900 shots, from 9,000 to almost 10,0000! It’s a big job.
There are also many new pictures through my themed galleries: people, culture, nature, and man made.
And from my digital stuff, my Turkey galleries are up, along with UAE.

I bought myself a scanner, and have dug the Big Box out of the cupboard. Scanning a few thousand slides will keep me busy enough, and then there are the b&w and colour negs to get through. And THEN pick bits of dust off them and touch them up and and and….

There might not be much new stuff getting up here for a while. I have added quite a bit in the first weeks of 2020.
Three galleries under “PEOPLE”.
Photos from my exhaustive tour of Italy.
Those whacky Japanese are out in force in the “ODDITIES” as well as under Japan.
Some great wildlife encounters from Kenya.
“MARKETS” has moved into Culture. Food was looking a bit lonely there.
A few other bits here and there. Take a wander. Follow me on Instagram for the odd update, too.

I HAVE been a busy little web-mistress these last two weeks. There’s now 44 galleries up. From Africa, we have done Zambia, Malawi, Egypt, Somaliland, South Africa and Tanzania. Lebanon, Syria and Iran are up.

Also new, I have four galleries up under the heading “Man Made” from all kinds of vehicles, to homes and places of worship. I’d like to counter that with the “Nature” group, but I’m not quite ready for that.

“Oddities” is one I am keen to get up. You see some weird stuff on the road, especially in Japan. Maybe if I get into my J-files, they’ll both appear soon.

I’ve put together a list of some of the great books that I have written read about the places I have been or dream about going. If you look under “Words” you’ll find it, with an A-Z of travel thoughts.

Lastly, if you worry endlessly about missing a new gallery, then follow me on instagram. Still learning to crawl through that digital maze, but I’ll post irregular pics and updates on abus2nowhere.

I really only made this website for something to do, a way to channel my energy, pretend that my travels are in some way productive.

This certainly is not a money making venture. Although many have told me I should become a travel blogger, this is not intended to be a blog. There’ll be no day to day updates, or weely reviews of hotels and sunsets. I won’t be telling you how to get a Tajik visa, or whether to take the train or bus to Chiang Mai. I’ll let the pictures tell the stories.

There will be lots of photographs. I have a few to choose from. Over 9,000 from Thailand for example. Two weeks in India yielded over 1,500, and I didn’t even go to Jaipur. Photos of temples. Photos of ruins, of castles, of cooks. Photos of birds and big cats and mosques and markets. There’ll be some weird and some wonderful, as well as the mundane things we ignore back home. Like carrots.

Bus To Nowhere is not finished. It probably never will be. Initially, I need to work through a catalogue of digital work from 2005. Then, I hope to digitize my slides and prints from 1992 to 2005. Those ancient manuscripts will have tonnes from Cambodia and Vietnam from 1992-1995, as well as Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Russia, Mongolia and more.

Namibia, Thailand, Taiwan and Central Asia will take a long time, simply because of the volume. Right now, I have a few countries from Africa up. Some old pre-digital stuff from South East Asia snuck its way up, too, but a couple of dozen only for now. Other categories like People, Culture, Nature, will take time to build up.

Middle East should follow soon, because there isn’t so much to go through. My lack of understanding back then about photo editing resulted in a large chunk being in black and white.

By the time I get all that done, hopefully I’ll have thousands more photographs from new and old places. I’ll keep you posted.