I go where the light leads and where the land is most extreme
Kalambaka, Greece
I go where the light leads and where the land is most extreme I am lead by people I don’t know. To photograph and capture those moments in time.
Finally, after five weeks on shared vans, trains and buses, clocking up more than 1500km on my GPS I have made it to Greece from Bosnia. It has been one hell of an adventure, reaching Meteora a mysterious and a surreal place on earth. Again my vocabulary fails to describe how beautiful this place actually is its the perfect end to an ideal adventure.
I sit in the shade of an olive tree on a bolder that’s is still warm by the mid-day sun. A three-hour hike has bought me here to a place like no other I have dreamed of these places ever since my boyhood days now proudly crossing it off my list, been there, done that!!!
A cool breeze blows across my face the sun is setting over the vast Meteora range, the village of Kalambaka lies in the valley. The Risanu monastery rings its bells until sunsets as it has done for centuries.
I think of home, day after tomorrow I would land at Heathrow where it might be 2 or 3 degrees below freezing. There will be things to do meetings to attend servers and switches to configure, back to the world that I left behind.
I was not sad but happy and content for I had the past five weeks of the unpredictability of the road…. each morning I rose to a day of mystery….. saw new landscapes, took off the beaten path to magical mountain tops, kept off the tourist trails …..got lost in little known villages and ate fresh food. I have transformed the way I think and feel. I met with only strangers, formed friendships. Cherished the hospitality of the people I’ve only just met.
I learnt not to fear the unknown. But to laugh out loud at the surprises and be humbled by the moment. A month at home and this adventure will inevitably fade. Days will pass where I would speak to four or five familiar people and have mundane conversations with others !!! Soon I will become a part of their lives and theirs in mine. I will only go to the same predictable takeaway joints day after day Gradually these memories will fade routine will follow routine until it brakes.
I close my eyes hypnotised by the echoes of the bells ringing in the distance. The Images comes as a gift; the lens is my third eye, a camera is a tool that I take for granted.
I have travelled far and wide. I have remembered all those faces in strange places every smile that greeted me along my journey.
Friends I present you these images and share this moment. Hoping that you too will tread the un-travelled path. now I leave you in the words of St. Augustine “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page.”
Happy Adventures hope you have many.
As the sunset in
Meteora Kalambaka
2nd November 2013