After a few days in the Arafura, we detoured slightly to the northwest into Indonesian waters and the Banda Sea, a course change that got us out of head winds and a steep chop. Near the far eastern end of the Indonesian islands we came upon a volcanic cone protruding from the sea. As we drew near […]
From Bali, we cruised for a few days to the south shore of the large island of Borneo, the southern two-thirds of which is the Indonesian state of Kalamantan. There we traveled a short distance up the shallow mocha colored Kumai River and dropped anchor alongside a deserted stretch of beach. […]
As we approached the massive harbor at Singapore (which Aussies call Singers), we could see what appeared to be tall buildings extending across the entire horizon before us. As we drew nearer, what had seemed to be buildings turned out to have been the ramparts of a vast fleet of empty cargo ships lying at anchor […]
Indigo and her owner and crew, now fully rested, departed Singapore on February 11 after arriving there some 52 days earlier. During this period I had flown home for a belated Christmas and New Years, managed to spend wonderful hours with my wife and son and good friends and catch up on much that I had missed. […]
Without a doubt, this wonderful country is among the very best Indigo has ever visited on her long voyage thus far. It attains this distinction mostly through its people, who are among the most gentle, serene and kindly I have come across. When you encounter a Thai, even in the most perfunctory circumstance, […]
Thanks to a delay in the arrival of some needed parts and to a cyclone hovering over our intended path across the Indian Ocean, we were obliged to stay in Thailand several weeks longer than planned. I greeted this turn of events in the manner of an enthusiastic bar patron confronting an unexpected extension of closing time. Black clouds sometimes hold little rays of sunshine. […]
I flew on Royal Thai Air, my first ever alcohol-free flight (their rule, not mine), and can’t really recommend it. Just where this daffy idea of jetting about a country without proper fortification came from I can’t say but it needs to be quashed at once. Most likely it came from those pesky Buddhist monks. […]
In the English language there are single words that can tell us much about a place. When we read that the Sahara is a desert, for example, our mind conjures a reasonably accurate picture. Likewise, if we say Palm Beach is manicured. […]
After an uneventful eight-day crossing of the Bay of Bengal, Indigo arrived at the capital of the Maldives Islands, the colorful city of Male’. Among the most geologically unusual of countries, the Maldives are a constellation of some 1190 islands and islets, more if you count those visible only at low tide, […]
There is first the matter of the city’s name, Mumbai or Bombay. In 1995 a far-right, xenophobic political party, apparently in an irritable mood, changed the city’s name from the classic Bombay, a pusillanimous gesture at ridding it of the last vestiges of the British Raj. Nevertheless English-speaking Indians still call it Bombay and so will I. […]