Karl’s Chronicles Article 58 Following Old Tracks
With annual visitor numbers exceeding a quarter of a million, you could easily believe the Cuckoo Line, a former train route that links the East Sussex towns of...
Karl’s Chronicles. Great Zimbabwe – Empire Circular
Viewed today as the largest stone structure south of the Sahara, the Shona built kingdom of Great Zimbabwe lasted for four centuries. Built with the wealth acquired from...
Karl’s Chronicles. Article 57 My 2020 Favourite – Forty Ninety-Five High
Pushing against the sharp winds hurrying in from the west, felt like a skirmish with the gods. As the steep path up, hammering on the knees, demanded one final...
Karl’s chronicles Article 55 The Lake That Fished Too Much
The van rolled forward a few more metres, hit a stone then shuddered itself still. A despondent sigh gradually drew a dozen passengers from their day-dreams, staring through the...
Karl’s Chronicles. Victoria Falls – High & Dry
Mist, clouds, rain and thunder on a bright blue day! Such a contradiction would puzzle a meteorologist as two opposites couldn’t compete without one losing ground, but the performance...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 52 Benchmark
Two steps up through an open painted door lead one into a garage that has long been overtaken, like the ivy spreading across the outer walls, by the...
Karl’s Chronicles. Article 52 Le Jardin Majorelle – A Painters Triumph.
The fashionable came to see and be seen, almost as worthy as the official pieces of art that lay bold but simultaneously unassuming around them. Chic supercilious women strolling...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 51 The Wicked Burning
‘Remember, Remember, the fifth of November, Gunpowder, Treason and Plot!’ Well, there is still plot in the nights terrifying logistics, plenty of gunpowder rammed into those exploding rockets, and...
Karl’s Chronicles. Article 50 Marrakesh – The Maze of Shadows
Pummelled and bruised like a failed fighter, the glum wasp-yellow taxi coughed its way down Rue Mohamed V. The broad artery named after the first King at Independence from...
Karl’s Chronicles. Article 49 Morocco – High & Grounded
Need to see the layout of the world then grab an Atlas, but wish to be on top of the world then head for the Atlas range, one of...
Karl’s Chronicles; Hailsham – A Town Less Ordinary
Take a walk through any small town with its row of retail, a cluster of banks, net-curtained tea rooms, an austere parish church, and perhaps like a disorganised uncle,...
Karl’s Chronicles. Cairo Curiosities – Ten To Explore
Touchdown in Cairo and the immediate effect can be overwhelming at best. The city never seems to end, an ancient forest of concrete apartment blocks whose heat-weary occupants, watch...
Karl’s Chronicles. The Fight & The Dance
The two threads of the Nile may have come together, intricately bound like maritime rope, twisting far across the sand-blown hell of the Sahara. Until with predatory grace, it...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 45 The Jewel of Bewl
A crunch of rubber on small stones, the happy whiz of a child on a passing bike as mum and dad pant along at the rear. Her excited cry...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 45 Titian: Love, Desire, Death.
Centring around Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid, Titian, under commission from Prince Philip of Spain, created a set of paintings based on classical myths, developed between 1551...
Karl’s Chronicles; Ethiopia – 10 Defining Experiences
All manner of changes came into effect at the border. Not just a change in bureaucratic procedures or a shift from Arabic to Amharic, or even the usual follies...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 42 (12/08/2020) The Pyramids of Meroë
The heat felt as oppressive as the barren landscape beyond -dense, dry, and infuriating. Conspiring as nature, to concoct a union made for suffering. A reverse state of play...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 40 Parted By A Deep Rift
‘No brick and mortar, no gabled roof, no polished bench and leathered book. No spirited leader to shepherd in the quiet flock, for nothing fashioned by human hands could...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 40 Add To Cart
A sunken garden leads off sharply from a steep road, winding its way past a series of houses pushed into the hillside. Double sets of white spectacle windows all...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 39 Cut to Service
“Very well-hewn churches excavated from the rock, the likes of which cannot be found anywhere else in the world… I weary of writing more about these buildings because it...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 38 Temples In Ten – Part II
A temple twisting like a helter-skelter while another takes you from debauchery to nirvana in five levels. The concept of religion, with its duties and rituals, has manifested some...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 37 Temples in Ten – Part 1
Religion has always played a monumental part in shaping humanity, civilizations, politics, culture, dress and behaviour. In fact, it filters down through all levels of functioning society regardless...
Karl’s Chronicals. Article 36 Down and Out.
“The Downs .. too much for one pair of eyes, enough to float a whole population in happiness, if only they would look.” -Virginia Woolf diaries. Rich in history...
Karl’s Chronicles; Article 34 Variations In Seven
It could be easy to dismiss Egypt as a land known only for its red sea resorts, pyramids, and tombs of the New Kingdom pharaohs that line the...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 33 The Pyramid Game
The last of the great seven wonders, an exclusive club of architectural might and splendour on a pre-biblical scale. Time and natural calamities have brought the others to their...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 33 Out To Sea
Wide and open, under the vast canvas of a shifting sky, the Cuckmere Haven in England’s South East epitomises the striking blend between man, nature and the subtle chiselling...
Karl’s Chronicles. Article 32 The Roman Five
Tunisia’s history is as rich as it is varied. A heavy necklace of Muslim dynasties that shaped the land, under the command of outside forces, or like the Fatimids...
Karl’s Chronicles 31; Tunisia, Small Land, Big On Diversity
Tunisia seemed to epitomise the bargain holiday destination for all-inclusive deals, those guaranteeing, sun, sand and long lazy days working up a King Midas tan, slipping casually back and...
Karl’s Chronicles. Article 30 Tunisia – Defiance
With life continuing to unfold indoors, the idea of travelling feels as foreign and distant as the places we have in mind. Bail-outs and hand-outs will increase in scope...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 28 Cameroon – Antiquated Modernism
The trace perceptions of an idea hang on the tree like the last defiant leaves in the thrashings of a bleak winter. Out of reach and separate until by...
Karl’s Chronicles; Back to the Beginning. Article 28.
From supermarkets to stock-markets, from festivals to football, the CORVID19 pandemic has infiltrated and affected the mechanisms and fabric of our world. An invisible enemy, alien to the human...
Karl’s Chronicles no 27 Cameroon: The Sultans First Stand
Heralding back to 1334 and founded by Prince Nchare Yen, who came from the Tikar tribe. The Bamun Empire established its first and brief capital at Njimom, twenty kilometres...
Karl’s Chronicles. Article 26 Cameroon: Forty Ninety-Five High
Known as Mongomo Ndem – The Mountain of Thunder in Baweri, and Fako – Mountain in the Mokpe language. Mount Cameroon, rising to 4095m, is West Africa’s highest peak....
Karl’s Chronicles Article 25 Cameroon: Open Enclosure
The vast, secretive Equatorial forests are home to an eclectic family of animals. Antelope, elephants, buffalo, pangolin, bongo, drill, numerous species of monkeys and abundant birdlife. An aged eco-system...
Karl’s Chronicles. Cameroon: Natural Density
Contention in the pick-up mounts, as three of the ladies, heavily obese, force the insufferable driver into a human Tetris game. Rearranging between front and back seats to accommodate...
Karl’s Chronicles. Article 23 Sao Tome: If These Walls Could Talk
Sao Tome, though a capital falls drastically short of being credited a city as we would know it. A third the size of Eastbourne and where the entire island...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 22 Sao Tome & Principe: After Chocolate
In the first of this two-part article, we explored the Portuguese arrival to Sao Tome & Principe and the import of both coffee and cacao from South America, chiefly...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 21 Sao Tome & Principe: Chocolate Before
Tumbling down over cobbled stones in the humid murkiness of dense hillside forest, one could be rightly forgiven for not seeing the wood for the trees. Mesmerized by torpedo...
Karl’s Chronicles. Article 20 Ghana: House of Three Colours
A plump lizard lay just behind a python, all coiled up like rope down at the harbour. In front walked a contented crocodile, tail in the air with a...
Karl’s Chronicles Article 19 Benin: Four of a Kind Part II
…cont 3) Scorched yellows, rust reds, tobacco browns with splodges of green. The parched landscape looked like a Turner painting left out in the rain. Swathes of savannah embedded...