Out of Norm Travels

As I wrote this, I had already finished my last bits of  Skyr, Iceland's famous low fat yogurt  and with that last bit, all my lovely memories from a land I had visited in early February 2016 started flooding back.  This land is located some 12,680 km/7,878 miles away from home and took me some 16+ hours over 2 airlines before I finally landed on  Keflavik   International Airport ,  Iceland's international airport located in   Reykjavik, which is also Iceland’s capital. Reaching Iceland has been nothing short of a dream with my travel into extreme cold where "normal" means 0 degrees or less. For me, Iceland is a country of contrasts where Fire meets Ice, Water claps hands with the Earth, Skies says hello to the Earth and the Land where Giants, Trolls and Elves used to roam.  Our travels across this vast land first brought us towards  Kirkjufell  (West Iceland) on the nor...

I had just made an unforgettable trip which took some 8 hours and 1,109 miles (1,784km) for me to reach Palu in Indonesia from Singapore to witness my first Solar Eclipse. Palu is to be the most optimal place to see the total Solar eclipse in 2016 which is only visible along a narrow strip on Earth. This natural phenomenon is rare as totality only happens when the Moon is close enough to Earth to completely cover the Sun when there is a New Moon. The word 'eclipse' comes from a Greek word meaning abandonment which literally is seen as the sun abandoning the earth. In Chinese, this is called 天狗食日 which speaks of a dragon or demon who is devouring the sun. Ancient Chinese would produce great noise and commotion by banging on drums and pots to frighten away the dragon during an eclipse. When I did the set up and test shots, I got slightly worried when I saw a patch of clouds across the Sun (as you can see in the photo below) - this is because cloud cover can easily ruin th...