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:
Picos de Europa
18 Sep 2024Ever since watching a stage of La Vuelta de Espana some years ago we had wanted to go to the Picos de Europa and this was the year. We had booked an AirBnB and were all set when the hairy member of our family had a medical emergency. She had a growth on her leg which burst requiring surgery. It wasn’t all bad as our host was agreeable to postpone our stay for a week, when the weather was also…
A Coruña
30 Sep 2023I can’t believe we’ve been living up north (Ponte de Lima) for over a year already. As we are still in rented accommodation and waiting for our new house to be built, our traditional September getaway is restricted to just a couple of nights away. Of course, the whole point of living up north is the ease of travel to Galicia so it is no surprise that we chose to spend a couple of days in the Rias Altas, near…
Goa
5 Mar 2023So I got the overnight train from Hubli to Goa. My ticket was to the end of the line – Vasco da Gama station arriving at 6am. However, I utilised a top tech tip that had been a real boon on this trip. Maybe not so new to more tech savvy readers, but this India trip was the first one I had made really good use of google maps on my phone. I could have been completely lost but when…
Hampi
27 Feb 2023Unlike most people’s conceptions of India, there are plenty of areas with a thinly spread population. Northern Karnataka is one such place. Subsequently public transport is rather sporadic, something I had already experienced. So for my next leg I decided to splurge 3500Rs (£35) on renting a car (with driver) for the 150km/4hr trip to Hampi. The first part of the trip was along narrow potholed roads across agricultural land – mainly sugarcane but also jowari which I found out…
Badami
24 Feb 2023My previous post starts with the problem of getting a bus from Bidar to Bijapur and the fickleness of non existent timetables. this post will be no different. the previous day I’d been told there was a bus from Bijapur to Badami at 6.45am. Arriving at the station at the appointed time I was then told there was no direct bus but I had to get the 6.45 bus to Kerur and change there. That would arrive at platform 4….
Random posts:
Agra
1 Mar 2017From Khajuraho to Agra was the first daytime trip by train. Thankfully, I suppose, it was very uneventful and arrived in Agra pretty much to time. My first impressions of Agra were not good. I arrived at dusk and all I could see were clouds of dust and pollution and smoke. My throat was already burning by the time the tuk-tuk driver dropped me off at my hotel, the Coral Court Homestay. One positive thing was the fact that he was…
Varanasi
13 Feb 2017Varanasi is said to be one of the oldest cities in the world, one of the most sacred to Hindus and one of the most colourful and fascinating cities on Earth. That’s some intro. But it is also one of the noisiest places on Earth. Once out of the train station I was assailed by an army of autorickshaw drivers and soon one of them was weaving me and the rickshaw in and out of some of the most crazy…
Talasnal: A Schist village
5 Jun 2010It was a glorious sunny day, not too hot, so we took time off from Casa Azul to stretch our legs, and hunt for a few geocaches near the schist village of Talasnal. There are a number of Schist villages in the region, ‘schist’ being a reference to the slate of which all the houses are made. The villages themselves are all fairly inaccessible in the hills to the East of us but all in stunning mountain and forested scenery….