July, 1984. The KPNLF – Khmer People’s National Liberation Front – was the Anti-Communist guerrilla movement fighting the Soviet-backed Vietnamese Communists in Cambodia. When I was first there in 1961, Cambodia was then a land of serenity, with a gentle and tranquil people who were at peace with themselves and the world. Now it was a land of indescribable Communist horror.

It was such a privilege to be with these brave men willing to wage war against that horror and bring freedom to their country. I told their tale in Turning Back the Terror, the February 1985 cover story for Reason magazine. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #20 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The “Springs of Intensity” in Persian are a series travertine terraces in remote northern Iran of such impressionist beauty they look like a masterpiece of Claude Monet. For thousands of years, water flowing down a mountainside from two hot mineral springs depositing carbonates have built these natural multi-colored staircases.

Iran is an enormous country – almost the size of Alaska, four times the size of California – filled with wonders, natural and cultural.  We were welcomed in every part of the country in our exploration of it in 2014.  While the current political climate does not allow that today, the day will come before long when we will return. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #130 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

We all know the story of Noah and the Ark told in Genesis (chapters 6-9). But do you know where Noah’s grave is? You’re looking at it. There is a tradition thousands of years old that he died and is buried here in the Land of Noah – Nakhchivan.

Known to the ancient Greeks and Romans as “Nakhsuana,” today Nakhchivan is an isolated enclave of Azerbaijan, cut off from the rest of the country by a strip of Armenia reaching Iran. You never heard of it because it’s unknown with a strange name – but the name literally means the Land of Noah. “Noah” is the Anglicization of Hebrew Noakh, or “Nakh” (“van” means “land,” “chi” means “of”).

Noah’s tomb has been built, destroyed, rebuilt, and destroyed again repeatedly over the millennia. It’s now been built yet again on the original site. Looming near is Haça Dag, the Notched Mountain – where Noah’s Ark they say ran aground as the Flood waters receded, carving a notch on the summit before coming to rest on Mount Ararat about 50 miles to the north (in present-day Turkey).

The people here are wonderfully friendly. I was always told “welcome” everywhere. I was even spontaneously invited to a wedding party in a remote village. You’ll find it easy to make friends here too. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #3, photo ©Jack Wheeler)

You know the adage about the “800-pound gorilla” going wherever he wants to – such as five feet from you in the Virunga Mountains of Rwanda. It is one of the world’s great thrills to be this close to these giants and feel at ease doing so. They are “habituated” to small groups of people whom they ignore. You of course are very quiet and do nothing to alarm them, just observing the little ones playing, mothers nursing, young ones climbing trees, huge male silverbacks watching over their families.

Gorillas are vegetarians, males eating up to 75 pounds of vegetation a day – thus they spend most of their waking hours chewing! The biggest silverbacks never get anywhere near 800 pounds by the way – 450 to 500 pounds at most (like the fellow in the photo). Big enough, believe me.

Rwanda is one of the best-run countries in all Africa. President Paul Kagame deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for healing his nation after the genocidal horrors of the 1990s. That’s far in the past now in this beautiful, peaceful land. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #93 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

National Geographic calls the remote island of Socotra off the coast of Yemen in the Indian Ocean “the most alien-looking place on our planet,” because of its incredibly weird and bizarre plant life like the Dragon’s Blood Tree.

Yet it is safely far away from anarchic Yemen, peaceful and serene in its isolation.  And it contains places of mesmerizing beauty – like this natural infinity pool on a cliff edge high above the ocean in full view.  Socotra is spectacularly exotic, like nowhere else in our world. It is truly life-memorable to experience it. Wheeler Expeditions was there in the Spring of 2014 – and we’ll be there again in the Spring of ’22. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #129 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)