http://henzell.com The ponderings of a peripatetic journalist. Fri, 11 Jun 2010 19:49:29 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en It was thanks to the vagaries of Iranian immigration policy that I got to be threatened by a sword-wielding (if somewhat camp-looking) gladiator. And that the official two-person expedition by the Abu Dhabi Alpine Club to scale the highest peak in the Middle East ended with us in two different countries, ... http://henzell.com/?p=672 "No visa." The Iranian immigration officer was as gruff as he was direct. "Can you tell me why?" I implored. "Am I not eligible for a visa? Or have decided I am a bad person? Do you know that Australians and New Zealanders, unlike Americans and Brits, can get visas on arrival?" I ... http://henzell.com/?p=668 For a day and a half, I was nowhere: stranded in no-man's-land between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. And in a blizzard. I'd already gone through the Kyrgyz border controls and, with a single-entry visa, couldn't return. The Kyrgyz post had been located sensibly in the shelter of the valley at the foot ... http://henzell.com/?p=648 The crucial moment in the spring uprising that overturned Kyrgyzstan's government was when the police and the army realised that they liked shooting their own citizens a lot less than they liked the breathtakingly kleptocratic regime they were supposed to be defending. Or so it was explained to me on a ... http://henzell.com/?p=640 When I first arrived quietly at the semi-abandoned Soviet-era cosmological research station high in the Tien Shan mountains above Almaty, it was to the tune of a middle aged Kazakh woman berating her downcast Russian partner. She halted her tirade when she realised my presence and he came over, introducing himself ... http://henzell.com/?p=635 Step one: go from this... to this... In pretty much everywhere else I've worked – the US, Britain, Australia and New Zealand, so most definitely not an ideal world – leaving a job has been a relatively simple process. Of course nothing is that simple in Abu Dhabi. In truth, the bureaucracy here ... http://henzell.com/?p=624 Despite our best efforts at denial, we had to accept that the aircon season had finally arrived in Abu Dhabi. But that just meant it was the right time to head to the mountains, so a group that eventually numbered 17 people headed to Oman for a canyoning and via ferrata ... http://henzell.com/?p=614 The Axis Of Evil Ski Tour. Part four: the rest of Iran. From the first floor terrace of an Imam Square chaikarne in Esfahan, I could see half the world. Or so goes the story about Esfahan, which was created by Shah Abbas the Great in the 16th Century to be the ... http://henzell.com/?p=598 The Axis of Evil Ski Tour. Part Three: Iran "And why do you want to go to Iran?" I figured it was best not to mention the Axis of Evil Ski Tour to the soldier guarding the border between Iran and Iraq so instead I said that after all the media reports ... http://henzell.com/?p=566 The Axis of Evil Ski Tour: Part Two The difference between southern Iraq and the Kurdish-administered region of the country along a crescent of the northeast can be summed up in one word: Peshmerga. This was the Kurdish separatist militia which ruled the mountainous region of the country, although the full extent ... http://henzell.com/?p=555