The oldest part of the Silk Road was originally called the Jade Road along the string of oases watered by runoff from the Kunlun mountains of northern Tibet on the southern edge of the Takla Makan desert in Chinese Turkestan.  This is where the finest jade was to be found, washed down from Tibet. This is the route that Marco Polo took with his father and uncle in 1272 to reach the court of the Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan.

This is what the Jade Road looks like today, near the fabled oasis of Khotan.  Save for the road being asphalted and the farmer’s cart being towed by a small tractor instead of a donkey, Polo would recognize it.  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #179 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Nakhal Castle, Oman. If you want to see an ultra-rich Arab sheikdom with exotically designed skyscrapers, you go to Qatar or Dubai. But if you want a more genuine Arabia of Sultan’s palaces, of forts and castles perched on rocky crags, of traditional villages tucked away in mountain fastnesses, of rock pools and grottoes gushing with spring water hidden in secret valleys, a place out of Arabian Nights rather than one of garish ostentatiousness – then you come here to the Sultanate of Oman.

Omanis are a polyglot people from all over Arabia, Persia, and India who’ve lived here for millennia, creating a cosmopolitan trading society that adheres to its traditional culture. There are fabulous hotels with great bars, concerts by the Omani Philharmonic Orchestra, and once outside the capital of Muscat, an Arabian wonderland so exotic it seems out of a movie. We’ll be here in the Spring of ’22. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #119 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The Tibetan Monastery or “Gompa” of Spituk overlooks the Upper Indus as it flows out of Chinese Tibet and towards Baltistan in Pakistan. The Indus here is the geological dividing line between the ancient Karakorum mountains and the younger Himalayas (40+ million years old and growing: Mount Everest rises 2 inches every ten years).

We’re in Indian Tibet here, a region called Ladakh where Tibetan culture flourishes freely. Wheeler Expeditions first explored Indian Tibet – including running the remote Zanskar River tributary of the Upper Indus, one the world’s most thrilling whitewater experiences – in 1992. We’ll explore it once more in the summer of 2022. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #128 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

April, 1979 – on the sea ice at 90 North latitude, the North Pole. I was one of the more unusual Profiles for Dewar’s Scotch. It was the 3^rd of my 21 expeditions to the very top of our planet. One thing that stood out for me was the photographer brought false ice cubes of carved polished crystal for the photo you see of a glass of scotch perched on a small pressure ridge. That’s the way the pros do it. One genuine item he brought was a case of Dewar’s. We had one heck of a party on top of the world! (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #75 photo of Jack Wheeler)

On either side of the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar there are two small mountains known since great antiquity as the Pillars of Hercules. The pillar on the northern, European side is the famous Rock of Gibraltar. That on the southern, African side is Mount Abyla, Phoenician for “lofty mountain.”

The legend for the Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans was that Hercules pushed the two pillars apart to join the Mediterranean with the Atlantic. We think today of Hercules as a comic-book bodybuilder, while the truth is opposite. The entire ancient Mediterranean world very seriously worshipped him. For the Phoenicians, he was Melqart, King of the Earth. For the Greeks, he was Heracles, Divine Protector of Mankind. He was the same for the Romans, who pronounced his name as Hercules.

The Phoenician trading port of Abyla has a history of 3,000 years, from Phoenician to Carthaginian to Roman to Byzantine to Christian Visigoths to Islamic Berbers to Portuguese – and since 1668 to Spain, which continues to govern it today as the Spanish Autonomous City of Ceuta on the Mediterranean coast of Morocco.

Ceuta is a charming European city with beautiful beaches, open air cafés with great sangria, very relaxed and pleasant. It is here you find the statue of Hercules separating his Pillars commemorating the legend pictured above. Easy to get to with high-speed ferries from Algeciras near Gibraltar, Ceuta is definitely worth your while to experience. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #137 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

“To Sua” means “giant swimming hole” in Samoan. It’s a collapsed lava tube hole on the south coast of Upolu in Samoa. On top of lava cliffs overlooking the South Pacific, you clamber down the ladder for a memorable swim. To Sua is but one of the attractions of Samoa: gorgeous waterfalls, marvelously friendly people, and the historic home named “Valima,” of Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), where he and his wife Fanny spent his last years.

On a hilltop rising above Valima is the gravesite of “Tusitala” – Stevenson’s Samoan name, meaning “Telling of Tales.” Engraved on the side of his tomb is his famous epitaph he wrote himself:

Under the wide and starry sky

Dig the grave and let me lie:

Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you 'grave for me:

Here he lies where he long'd to be;

Home is the sailor, home from the sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.