The Akodessawa Fetish Market in Lomé, Togo has to be seen to be believed. Here on display is a vast array of animal parts -- heads, skulls, bones, horns, skins et al – for sale to the adherents of Togo’s official religion of Voodoo. They are used to communicate with and pray to the huge variety of spirits and deities they believe in.

What you see here is a very small fraction of the market – there are thousands of animal parts here from entire elephant skulls to small mummified rodents. Behind the displays are stalls where voodoo priests cater to devotees for healing potions or being an interlocutor to the spirits. This is not sticking pins in dolls of enemies. The people of Togo and neighboring Benin believe deeply in their religion. Togo in West Africa is the size of New Jersey and has over 130 fetish markets in the country, with the largest here. This is an experience you never forget. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #273 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Originally nomads from the Tibetan Plateau, the Nashi people settled in the fertile Himalayan foothills of Yunnan over 2,000 years ago. From the ancient Tibetan religion of Bön, they developed a unique religion of nature-worship called Dongba. The progenitors of humanity and nature were two half-brothers, two mothers with the same father. Nature is controlled by a human-snake chimera called Shv – a statue of whom you see here.

The Nashi are a peaceful gentle people whose ideal is living in accordance with nature. They dress very colorfully, women have equal respect with men, they write with the world’s only still-functioning pictographic script, and are proud of preserving their culture for millennia. It is an enchanting experience to be among them. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #163 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

August, 2002. In the remotest Amazon jungle of Brazil, along a tributary of the Upper Xingu River, live the Xicrin-Kayapo people. They live traditionally as they have for centuries, isolated in their forests from the world. Here the young boys, painted and adorned, apprehensively await their initiation ceremonies into becoming young men. They are to be tested to show they have what it takes for the village to be proud of them.

In some of their eyes, there is confidence. In others less so. This is an ancient Rite of Passage, an enthralling experience to witness. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #229 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Banja Luka, Srpska.  You may never have of this country, the Republic of Srpska, that takes up half the size and 40% of the population of the Balkan country of Bosnia-Herzegovina.  The entire country was conquered and ruled for centuries by the Islamic Ottoman Empire, thus after the Ottomans fell in WWI and Yugoslavia broke apart after the Soviet Union fell, those Bosnians who retained adherence to Christianity through those centuries of Islamic occupation found themselves greatly outnumbered by those who had converted to Islam (“Bosniaks”).  So they (Bosnian Serbs) formed their own country which remains unrecognized by every other country on the planet.

They rebuilt their beautiful Cathedral of Christ the Savior – destroyed in WWII and never allowed rebuilding by Communist Yugoslavia – in their capital of Banja Luka.  You can see how gorgeous the interior is from the photo.  The whole country is beautiful with its lakes, forests, rivers, vineyards, sprinkled with old castles and charming villages. The people of Srpska are proud of what they have achieved and now simply want to live in peace with their neighbors.  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #300, photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Bukhara is the oldest city on the fabled Silk Road.  You’ve seen Glimpses of The Well of Job, where legend says Job of the Old Testament struck the ground with his staff, creating a well bubbling with fresh pure water that still flows today.

And of The Ark of Bukhara, the palace-fortress of Bukhara rulers since 500 BC.  The ancient Silk Road oasis has a history of 5,000 years.  I was first here in 1963, a 19 year-old teenager with a summer job of filming fabulously exotic places in Central Asia unknown to the West for a Hollywood stock film company.

I was not much older than these teenage ladies back then.  I took this picture of them when I was last in Bukhara in 2019.  It was so extraordinarily lucky of me to experience such magical places as Bukhara when young.  It’s enabled me to stay young at heart so many decades later.

Perhaps you have a teenage child or grandchild with whom you could experience its wonders together.  It will be a life-long treasured memory for you both. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #214 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

This close – if you’re at the right place at the right time in the right boat.  That would be the Canal do Faial channel between the islands of Faial and Pico in the Azores, populated by more spawning sperm whales that just about anywhere else.  It’s also a haven for many other whale and dolphin species on their migratory route between the North and South Atlantic.

You won’t believe how truly paradisical Madeira and the Azores are.  Not just the weather and the beauty, but how safe, calm, and serene they are, how friendly everyone is – so friendly because everyone here is at peace with themselves.  You’ll discover your inner peace here too.  While never being bored as there’s always something exciting to see and do.  Like being this close to a baby sperm whale. (Glimpses of our breathtaking world #195).