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)

And his father too.  I started taking my son Brandon on expeditions with me at age five.  Here we are in the Serengeti during the Great Migration.  He saw three lion kills happen yards away, a baby born in a Masai hut – he’s never forgotten his first great adventure to this day, over 30 years later.

I encourage you in every way to take your children, grandchildren, nephews or nieces on an exploration of one of our planet’s many wondrous places when they are young.  It will be formational for them, a founding experience of awe for what a magically extraordinary world they are privileged to live in.  And your seeing it through their eyes will be a shot of youth elixir in your veins.  It will be a life-memorable bonding experience for you both. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #92 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Photo taken at an altitude of 22,000 feet (6,700 meters) in a AS 350 B3 ultra-high altitude Eurocopter on our Himalaya Helicopter Expedition.  We are looking into the Western Cwm (valley), West Shoulder of Everest in the left forefront, entire Southwest Face of Everest summit (29,029 ft-8,848m) to base on the left, Lhotse (4th highest on earth at 27,949ft-8,516m) straight ahead, the flank of Nuptse on the right.

The climbing route is from Base Camp to Camp I past the top of the Khumbu Ice Fall (bottom of photo), up the Cwm to Camp II at the foot of the Lhotse wall, scale via fixed ropes to Camp III perched on the wall, then up to the notch between Everest and Lhotse (on the horizon in the photo) that is the South Col and Camp IV.  The summit is reached from there via the Southeast Ridge on the other side of the photo.

We’ll be here again in late April-early May next year.  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #91 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

June 2002, the Vulture’s Mouth Glacier. In the deepest heart of the Gobi Desert of Mongolia, south of the Flaming Cliffs where Roy Chapman Andrews discovered dinosaur eggs in the 1920s, there is a naked spine of mountains called the Gurvan Saihan. In the Gurvan Saihan there is a deep gorge called Yol Alyn, the Vulture’s Mouth. And in the Vulture’s Mouth, there is a glacier.

It is not a big glacier, the continual ice buildup of a stream that never melts even in the heat of the Gobi summer. Yet it is a glacier nonetheless, thick enough for my son Jackson and I to walk on for more than a mile.  The Vulture’s Mouth Glacier is just one of a multitude of extraordinary experiences Mongolia has to offer the explorer. Are you up for exploring it with me next summer of 2021? (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #90 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

At the Temple of the Peacock Angel in the Yezidi holy city of Lalish, you find this entrance to a Sacred Spring with a carved black snake, revered by Yezidis as they believe a black snake stuck itself into a hole in Noah’s Ark and saved humanity.

The Yezidis are among the most ancient of all peoples in the Middle East.  Their heartland is in what is now Northern Iraq, or Iraqi Kurdistan.  You may know of them through the horrific butchery perpetrated upon them by the medieval terrorists of ISIS which gained worldwide notoriety.

They are a fascinating people whose syncretic beliefs are a mélange of Zoroastrianism, Syriac Christianity, Sufi Islam spiced with their own interpretation of all three.  In other words, they are their own people, no one else like them – peaceful, at ease with themselves, and immensely likeable.

Their protectors are the Kurds – an extraordinary people in their own right.  We’ll be visiting Iraqi Kurdistan and the Yezidis once more next year. ((Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #89 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The spectacle takes place in the fall at the May Day Stadium in Pyongyang.  I attended in 2010 and 2012.  It has to be seen to be believed.  You’re looking at 10,000 dancers, acrobats and performers on the stadium floor.  The background screen of a rising sun and Korean letters is a “card stunt,” 30,000 students holding colored cards composing it.

The number “65” is for the 65th anniversary of the surrender of Imperial Japan in World War II (August 15, 1945 – I took this photo in 2010), their Liberation Day (our V-J Day).  The snowy mountain depicted below the 65 is Mount Paekdu, where all North Koreans are taught their country’s founder Kim Il-sung defeated the Japanese and won the war (he was actually at a Soviet army camp near Khabarovsk, Siberia at the time).  They are never taught a word about the events a few days prior to their Liberation Day, nor to whom the Japanese surrendered.  Hands down, NorkLand is the world’s most bizarre country. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #88 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

A cliff-top fishing village on the Italian Riviera?  Nope, Azenhas (ah-zhane-yas) do Mar – Watermills of the Sea – is on the Portuguese Riviera.  This is a magic place of fairy tale castles, thousand year-old fortresses, luxury boutique hotels, fabulous food, great wine, gorgeous beaches, and postcard-perfect scenery everywhere.

The Portuguese people are among the kindest in Europe, while Portugal is one of the safest countries in the world.  Of all the planet’s First World countries, it’s hard to find one more calm and serene than here.

If you’d like a personal experience of the best of Portugal, Wheeler Expeditions can arrange it for you.  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #87 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

This is one of the magical places we experience on our Himalaya Helicopter Expeditions.  An independent kingdom for 650 years in the remote Mustang region of Nepal, it is one of the last places of traditional Tibetan culture on earth, unchanged for centuries.  There are sky-caves here – apartment complexes carved out of vertical cliffs 2,000 years ago – Drok-pa nomads in the high pastures, spectacular sacred ceremonies, all in a mysteriously beautiful setting where the Himalayas meet the Tibetan Plateau.  We’ll be here again next April. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #86 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

This is the fortress town of Shatili in an extremely remote Caucasus region in Georgia called Khevsureti. It was built by the Crusaders 1,000 years ago. The Khevsur people who live here trace their ancestry back to these Crusaders and until the 1930s still wore chain mail in feud-battles with other towns. I took this picture in 1991.

American traveler Richard Halliburton (1900–1939) saw and recorded the customs of the Khevsurs in 1935. The Khevsur men, dressed in chain mail and armed with broadswords, wore garments full of decoration made up of crosses and icons.  They don’t do that anymore, but they proudly retain their Crusader Christian heritage – for Georgia adopted Christianity in the 4th century AD.  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #85 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The ramshackle Club Obama is a shed on stilts above a garbage dump of a beach in Conakry, the capital of the West African country of Guinea.  It doesn’t get much business anymore because Obama is no longer popular here.  Guineans thought he would flood them with US taxpayer dollars but he didn’t.  “Obama did nothing for us,” they’ll tell you.

The sad truth is that Guineans have done nothing for themselves.  Independence from France came in 1958, and the place has been run by one party dictatorships, military juntas, and ridiculously corrupt leaders ever since.  It’s the size of Oregon, with 12 million people who have a per capita GDP of $800 a year.  Yet is has up to half the world’s reserves of bauxite (source of aluminum) and is #3 in world production, has diamonds, gold, and many other resources  – which all goes into the bottomless pockets of whoever the ruling elite are at the moment.

It’s the tragedy of so much of Africa writ large.  In 1974, after Cassius Clay had his “Rumble in the Jungle” in Zaire with George Foreman, he was asked by a reporter upon his return to America, “Champ, what did you think of Africa?”  With wit and wisdom he replied, “Thank God my Granddaddy got on that boat!”  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #84 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

What many consider the world’s most beautiful mosque is in Persia’s most captivating city, Shiraz.  Over four millennia older than Islam, over two millennia older than Persia, Shiraz was "Shirrazish," a city of ancient Elam at the birth of civilization in Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago.  Even then, Shiraz was famous for wine.  A thousand years ago, it was considered the best in the world.  Marco Polo praised it. No more.  Prior to the Islamic Revolution in 1979, there were over 300 Persian wineries. Now there are none.

Shiraz is still a city of gardens and flowers.  At the garden tomb of Persia’s most revered poet Hafez (1315-1390), young couples gather for discrete romance as they have for centuries.  The beauty of Nasr ol-Molk – with the sun shining through its stained glass windows covering the floor carpets in color, and the interior a dazzling display of pink tile ornamentation – can be overwhelming.  The same for the friendliness of the people – always welcoming with a smile for you.

Especially if you are American.  All the people we met love America and despise their rulers.  The Land of Persia is still here in today’s Iran, and someday it will be free, America’s ally again.  The wine will flow here once more.  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #83 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

In the Mediterranean, experienced travelers know the French Riviera from St. Tropez to Menton, and the Italian Riviera from Ventimiglia to Cinque Terre.  There is one Riviera in the Med they may not know – Albania’s. The Med has many beautiful coastlines, and just about all of them have been “discovered” by jet-setters to backpackers.  Not yet, however, for Albania from Saranda in the south across from Greece’s Corfu to Vlora across from the tip of Italy’s Boot Heel.

Here you find an abundance of gorgeous coves and pocket beaches tucked away with hardly a soul there.  The one pictured above isn’t even named on a map – there’s just a tiny wharf for local fishermen.  Yes, the Albanian Riviera is getting discovered, with boutique hotels and nightclubs sprouting up here and there.  But as for now, it’s still the Unknown Riviera, gorgeous with so much untouched.  You might want to experience it before it’s overrun. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #82 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

This is Mysore Palace, home of the Wadiyar Rajas who ruled Mysore from 1399 to 1950.  It is one of the many wonders of Southern India that’s far less known than traveler’s meccas up north like Agra and Rajasthan.

There’s the Nagarhole Tiger Sanctuary, more Asian elephants than anywhere else in the world, over 100 tigers, scores of leopards, their prey in profusion. Christian churches founded by Christ’s disciple St. Thomas in the 1st century AD.  Towering Hindu temples covered with tens of thousands of eye-popping multi-colored sculptures.  The gorgeous beaches of Goa, the serene peace of the Kerala Backwaters – “one of the most beautiful locations on earth” according to National Geographic, that you explore by luxury houseboat. It goes on and on.

And here also you find the business metropolis of Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India. We did all of this and more a few years ago, and may again in ’21 or ’22.  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #81 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

I showed this picture to my mother after my latest sojourn with the Afghan Mujahaddin fighting the Soviet Union and she didn’t see anything unusual.  She didn’t recognize her own son standing in the middle.  Good thing – if I had been caught by the KGB or Spetsnaz, it would have been, ahh… unpleasant.  I was there with the “Muj” at least a dozen times until they defeated the Soviet Red Army in early 1989 – which led to the Fall of the Berlin Wall eight months later and the extinction of the Soviet Union itself by the end of 1991.  It was one of the most thrilling – and consequential – adventures of modern times. ( Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #80 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The best place to see Roman ruins is not in Rome or anywhere in Italy.  It’s in Africa – specifically on the Mediterranean coast of Libya.  This is the Roman theatre at Sabratha built in the 1st century BC.  Over 2,000 years old, it’s still mostly intact.  Starting as a Berber village, the Phoenicians founded the city as Sabrat by 500 BC.  Then came the Greeks, then the Carthaginians, and after the Punic Wars came Rome.

The Libyan coast was a lush fertile place back then.  So much so that Sabratha and the other major Roman city nearby, Leptis Magna, produced several million pounds of olive oil per year – sale of which to Rome enabled them to achieve great wealth.  It’s a shame that Libya remains today in chaotic civil war.  Hopefully the day is not off when experiencing Rome’s most magnificent remains will be possible here again. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #79 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Our Glimpse 77 yesterday (11/03) was of the Wakhan Corridor – a skinny finger of northeast Afghanistan separating Tajikistan and Pakistan extending all the way to China. Click on the link to get the photo.  Note the large alluvial fan in the center on the Afghan side of the Amu Darya.  Now look closely and you’ll see a tiny white dot on the edge of the fan next to the green of the river bank.

What could that be?  Well, here’s my photo of it close up.  Certainly no Afghan village.  It’s a modern windowless compound completely isolated with no roads, trails, or any other habitation for many miles in any direction, reachable only by helicopter.  Any guesses?  It’s a CIA interrogation center, where captured Taliban are brought for rather intense debriefings.  That’s the Wakhan Surprise.  I’ll bet many of you canny old TTPers, however, aren’t surprised at all. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #78 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

This is the Wakhan Corridor traversed by Marco Polo on his way to China in 1273.  The river is the Amu Darya, known to Alexander the Great and the ancient Greeks as the Oxus.  The Wakhan is the finger of northeast Afghanistan designed in the late 19th century to prevent the Russian Empire in Central Asia from touching the British Empire in India.  It now separates Tajikistan from Pakistan with its fingertip the only border Afghanistan has with China.

Thus you’re looking at four countries.  The river forms the Tajik-Afghan border – Tajikistan is on the left, Afghanistan on the right, in the center distance are the Hindu Kush mountains of Pakistan, while in the far distance are the Karakorum mountains of China.  This is a fabulously exotic remote part of our world with people living here tracing their ancestry to the troops of Alexander.  Oh – and the surprise?  I’ll tell you tomorrow.  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #77 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

On a mountain top on the island of Corfu in 1890, Empress Elizabeth of Austria built a magnificent marble palace called the Achilleion, dedicated to her hero, the legendary Achilles of Homer’s Iliad.  Here she retreated from the world, amidst the palace’s gorgeous gardens overlooking the Mediterranean abundant with larger-than-life statues of her ideal man, “who despised all mortals and did not fear even the gods."

All of Europe knew her as Sisi.   Adored by her husband Emperor Franz Joseph I, renowned as the most beautiful – and most beloved -- woman of her time, she was Austria’s Empress for 44 years.  Her life ended tragically, murdered at random by an anarchist who wanted to “kill a royal.”

The Achilleion today is maintained immaculately in all its original glory as a museum you can visit.  Don’t pass the chance to see it for yourself. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #76 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 3rd 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)

In a hidden remote mountain valley there is a Christian monastery built over a thousand years ago by the students of a hermit who became the patron saint of Bulgaria, St. John of Rila.  The colonnade you see leaves you awe-struck.  Earthquakes, fire, pillaging by Ottoman raiders, all through the centuries the Rila monks would build it back ever-better and care for it immaculately.

It is little wonder that the Rila Monastery is a World Heritage Site.  The picture you see is only one small section of the magnificent frescoes of the exterior archways – and the interior is equally extraordinary.  There are nine more World Heritage sites in this Virginia-size country, like the 3,000 year-old (and still flourishing) city of Nessebar on the Black Sea.  Bulgaria is one of Europe’s true undiscovered gems. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #74 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

According to the many thousands of world travellers on TripAdvisor, it’s #1: Praia do Sancho on the Brazilian island of Fernando de Noronha.  You’ll also find it on just about any list of most beautiful beaches, such as Condé Nast, Harper’s Bazaar, and Luxury Travel.

The whole island is gorgeous.  Mention that you’ve been there to any Brazilian who hasn’t and their eyes get misty.  Fernando de Noronha (no-rone-ya) is the dream honeymoon, the dream vacation that only comes true for few in Brazil, as it’s hard to get to and hardly any place to stay once you’re there.

You have to get to either Recife or Natal in the far northeast, then fly 220 miles out into the Atlantic.  Then take a boat, or scamper down the rocks of a 250ft-high cliff to be on the sugar sand of this enchanting beach – which you’ll have almost to yourself.

For some reason, all those lists have the name wrong, calling it “Baia” or “Baio,” when it’s “Praia” (beach in Portuguese).  As the welcome sign proudly announces above the cliff trail: “Praia do Sancho – A Mais Bonita do Mundo,” Sancho Beach – The Most Beautiful in the World.  If you’re lucky to ever get here, you’ll surely agree.  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #73 photo ©Jack Wheeler)  

Live on a private houseboat exploring the jungles of Borneo by river and families of Orang Utans will be your neighbors.

To get here, you fly from Indonesia’s capital Jakarta to a small town in southern Borneo, Pangkalan Bun, on the Sekonyer River.  You hire your own houseboat called a klotok (shower, nice bed, good warm food and cold beer) and English-speaking guide to take you up river through the jungles of the Tanjung Putting Orang Utan reserve.  You’ll see proboscis monkeys, hornbills – and more wild orang utans than any other place on earth.

Spend time among them and you’ll understand how smart and human-like these gentle giants are.  It’s an endearing experience never to be forgotten.  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #72 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

This is “Tatik-Papik” (Grandmother-Grandfather), a stone monument built in Soviet days as homage to the mountain people of the Transcaucasus Highlands of Armenia and Azerbaijan.  After both became independent with the fall of the USSR, Armenia seized the Azeri part, known as Nagorno Karabagh.  Since late September, war has broken out anew, with Turkey supporting the Azeris and Russia supporting the Armenians.

The dispute could be settled easily with a “land swap.”  There is an exclave of Azerbaijan called Nakhchivan (see The Land of Noah, Glimpse #3) separated by a sparsely inhabited corridor of Armenia called the Mehgri Strip running to the border with Iran.  It could be swapped for the Armenian-populated portion of Karabagh.  Result: Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan are united and whole, Armenia and Armenian Karabagh are united and whole.

Should be win-win achievable given recent peace agreements achieved by our genius POTUS between Serbia and Kosovo, plus between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, and Sudan don’t you think? (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #71 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

January 2003.  Our campsite at dawn in the center of the Sahara called the Téneré in Niger. We found hand stone axes here 8,000 years old when the Sahara was green.  Crossing the world’s greatest desert is a true expedition, one of the most astounding adventures to be had on earth, geographically, culturally, and historically.  Unfortunately, it is too dangerous with lawless and ideological banditry today.  I can hardly wait to do it once more when it is safe again.  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #70 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Welcome to Transnistria, where Lenin still lives.  The strangest country in Europe is a narrow sliver of landlocked land along the east side of the Dnieper River sandwiched between Moldova and Ukraine. When both declared independence as the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991, the people here decided they were still part of the USSR even though it had ceased to exist.

The half-million Transnistrians are still pretending their country is a Soviet Socialist Republic.  Lenin statues abound, the hammer & sickle is on their flag, the state media broadcasts stories about “glorious Soviet history.”  Meanwhile, Transnistria’s economy is doing well thanks to bountiful Kremlin subsidies and as a haven for the Russian mob.  In the capital of Tiraspol I saw Beemers, Bentleys, and even a Corvette Sting Ray cruising the streets.  Restaurants and bars are packed.  Kids are well-dressed.  That’s a gaggle of them you see above happily playing on a Russian tank in a park.

Maybe it’s all kind of a funny game to everyone here.  As an American I was welcomed with smiles.  You will be too if you visit – it’s a truly unique experience! (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #69 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Here we are at the real Atlantis in Knossos, Crete. More nonsense has been invented about Plato’s myth of Atlantis – mentioned briefly in his Timaeus and Critias and not by anyone else in antiquity – than any other legend you care to name.

Yet like many myths, it was constructed out of something that really existed.  Atlantis is the Minoan Civilization of Crete, Europe’s oldest. By 2,000 BC, the Minoans had created the world’s first peaceful capitalist empire, based not on military might and conquest but on trade, with trade routes across the entire Mediterranean. They became immensely wealthy, building fabulous palaces and villas – but their cities were not fortified.  Europe’s original civilization was the most peaceful in European history.

Around 1450 BC, the Minoan island of Santorini 60 miles north of Crete – known to the Greeks as Thera – suffered a colossal volcanic explosion with the resultant mega-tsunami wiping the Minoans out on Crete.  It was “The wave that destroyed Atlantis.”  Yet you can see for Atlantis for yourself, its excavated villas with fabulous preserved frescoes, and step back into a period of inspiring history. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #68 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The magnificent Sher-Dor Madrassa, built in the early 1600s, is part of the Registan public square complex of the ancient Silk Road oasis of Samarkand.  What’s fascinating is the mosaic depiction of living beings on either side of the arch – a tiger and on its back a rising sun deity with a human face.  This is honoring the pre-Islamic history of Samarkand that goes back almost 3,000 years.

It was centuries old when Alexander conquered it in 329 BC.  For a thousand years as Central Asia’s great entrepot on the Silk Road between China and the Mediterranean, it was a cosmopolitan center for Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and Nestorian Christianity.   Incorporated into the Islamic world in the 700s, sacked by Genghiz Khan in 1220, rebuilt by the time Marco Polo in 1272 described it as “a large and splendid city,” Tamerlane made it his capital in 1370.

Colonized by Czar Alexander II in the 1860s within the Russian Imperial Empire, and by the Soviets in the 1920s within the Uzbek SSR, Samarkand is flourishing today in independent Uzbekistan.  There is so much to learn and contemplate upon when you are here. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #67 photo ©Jack Wheeler)