It is a profoundly somber experience to stand here on this abandoned weed-strewn airstrip.  For this is Runway Able on Tinian Island in the Northern Marianas, where 75 years ago today, on August 6, 1945, a B-29 nicknamed Enola Gay piloted by Capt. Paul Tibbets took off with Little Boy in its bomb bay bound for Hiroshima – and three days later on August 9, a B-29 nicknamed Bockscar piloted by Maj. Charles Sweeney flew off with Fat Boy in its bomb bay headed for Nagasaki.

This lost bit of tarmac is the most consequential airstrip on earth.  Be prepared for a deep complex of swirling emotions if you ever stand here yourself. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #14 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

When Marco Polo crossed the Tien Shan mountains and reached the Silk Road oasis of Kashgar in 1273, he faced an enormous desert of endless dunes called the Takla Makan, meaning “You go in, you don’t come out.”  To avoid this fate, the Silk Road at Kashgar splits in two – above to the north of the dreaded sand sea via the oases of Aksu and Turfan, and underneath to the south via the oases of Yarkand, Khotan, Charchan and Charklik.  The two routes came together beyond Lop Nor, the eastern extension of the Takla Makan, at the oasis of Dunhuang.

His father Niccolo and uncle Maffeo had earlier taken the northern route to first meet Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan, but now with Marco they took the southern route.  They traveled in caravans of two-humped Bactrian camels, often crossing dunes on the edge – just like the photo you see.  In 2008, I retraced Polo’s route along the southern route – part of it by motorized hang glider. He would be fascinated, I’m sure, to see what a camel caravan looks like from the air! (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #13 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

We’re all familiar with the famed Rock of Gibraltar, huge and imposing from the outside – but inside the Rock itself is the enormous St. Michael’s Cave with fantastical formations colorfully illuminated.  For millions of years, rainwater created fissures in the Rock’s limestone widening into huge caves with the steady drip of mineralized water creating massive stalactites hanging from cave ceilings and stalagmites rising up from cave floors.  A phantasmagorical experience.

Gibraltar has been a British territory since 1713 when Spain ceded it in the Treaty of Utrecht.  Thus also high up inside the Rock are the Great Siege Tunnels the British dug then lined with cannon emplacements to defeat Spain’s attempt to seize Gibraltar in the 1780s.  Walking through the tunnels, you peer below looking down where the Spaniards and their French allies were vainly dug in – and where there is now an airplane runway stretching across the isthmus.

That’s just a glimpse of what to discover visiting Gibraltar, as there’s so much more!  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #12, photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Equivalent to the Hawaiian Islands in the Pacific are the Azores in the European Atlantic. You’re looking at Lagoa das Sete Cidades (Lagoon of the Seven Cities), an example of the Azores’ astounding beauty. As Hawaii is a part of the US, the Azores are a part of Portugal – since the 1430s first discovered uninhabited.

Everything grows here, cedar forest to giant tropical tree ferns, fruit from citrus to tropical, plants from corn to taro. Flowers are riotously everywhere. The sea swarms with fish being on the main Atlantic migration route for whales and dolphins. The islands are immaculately cared for by Azoreans, no pollution, air sparkling clear, weather in the 60s in winter, 70s in summer, so peaceful they are virtually crime-free.

Azoreans love drinking parties, cheerful festivals, and bright colors – with their charming homes painted the color of key lime pie, raspberry mousse, or oceanic blue. They love liberty so much they’ve had this motto emblazoned on their coat of arms for centuries: “Antes morrer livres que em paz sujeitos”—" Rather die free than live in peaceful subjugation.”

This is one of our planet’s truly magical places. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #11 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

June 15, 1961.  It was quite a shock to me when I was the surprise guest on Ralph Edwards’ famous television show.  My “Life” at age 17?  How could that be?  The show’s producers were intrigued by a recent Life Magazine story of my swimming the Hellespont as did Leander in Greek mythology (December 12, 1960 issue) that also had photos of me on top of the Matterhorn and with a Jivaro headhunter.

Without my knowing, they flew my guide for the Hellespont swim, Huseyin Uluarslan, from Turkey to LA, the same for my guide on the Matterhorn, Alfons Franzen, from Switzerland, to be on the show.  Most amazing of all, they got the Chief Prefect of Police for Ecuador, Jaime Duran, to pick up Tangamashi (the Jivaro who adopted me) and his brother Naita by helicopter from their Amazon encampment, then fly them from Quito to LA.

I was dumbfounded.  So there we are in the photo, left to right:  Ralph Edwards, Jaime Duran, Tangamashi, Naita, a very young yours truly, and Ralph Ferguson, son of medical researcher Dr. Wilburn Ferguson who translated for Tangamashi. Quite a moment for a 17 year-old boy – and no doubt for Tangamashi!  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #10)

These Mongol nomads in the vast grasslands of central Mongolia milking their goats have a way of life unchanged for centuries. All of our concerns, worries and fears that plague us are totally irrelevant to them. They don’t know about them and wouldn’t care if they did.

Spending time with people such as these gives you an invaluably broader perspective of life on our planet. Our concerns, the issues that dominate our headline news, suddenly seem more parochial and far less important. An evening drinking kumiss (Mongol beer, fermented mare’s milk) in their yurts, telling stories, laughing at jokes – you realize how easy it is to relate to them through the core humanity we all have in our souls.

Exploring Mongolia in this way is a priceless adventure. We’ll be there again in the summer of 2021. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #9 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

In these trying times, it’s important to appreciate the beauty of America – both the physical beauty like here at the McWay Waterfall in California’s Big Sur, and the moral beauty of America’s founding principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence.

Driving through all 50 US states as I have done with my sons gives you an awareness of the astounding beauty you discover, together with the cheerful friendliness you’re met with, in every state.  They overwhelm whatever ugliness and unfriendliness you may chance upon.

Studying American history in an unjaundiced way gives you an awareness of how a moral foundation of every individual American’s inalienable right to their own personal life and liberty and the pursuit of their own personal happiness has enabled the creation of the most successful nation ever to exist – a success of widespread freedom and prosperity that overwhelms the multitude of imperfections afflicting our country.

Earth is not Heaven, humans are no angels, America is far from perfect – and we must never let the perfect be the enemy of the good. It is only with love and respect can we help America strive towards what Aristotle called the Kalon, the morally beautiful. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #8, photo ©Jack Wheeler)  

10,000 years ago, the Sahara was green, with lakes, rivers, and such an abundance of animals it was a hunting paradise for people who lived here. You’ll find their petroglyphs carved on to rock outcroppings like this that my son Jackson and I found on a Trans-Sahara Expedition in 2003.

The Milankovitch astronomical cycles that drive Earth’s climate produced a West African monsoon that greened the Sahara back then. When the cycles shifted ending the monsoon, the Sahara turned dry desert as it remains today. Political cycles that permitted a peaceful crossing of the world’s greatest desert have also shifted, making this too dangerous now.

A Trans-Sahara Expedition is one of the world’s great adventures. Hopefully, one will be possible again in the not-too-distant future. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #7 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

In a remote corner of the Pacific Ocean, off the island of Pohnpei in Micronesia lies one of the world’s great archaeological mysteries: the only ancient stone city built on a coral reef. No one knows who built it or how.

Micronesians say their ancestors called it Soun Nan-leng, The Reef of Heaven. Their name for it today is Nan Madol, the City of Ghosts.

On artificial islets connected by a series of canals are massive walls up to 25 feet high enclosing temples, tombs, ritual centers, and platforms for thatch homes – all made of giant columnar basalt stone. Eons ago, lava flows on Pohnpei cooled into vertical pillars. Over a thousand years ago, ancient Micronesians began hauling these basalt logs miles away to build this stone city. With an average weight of 5 tons, 10,000 pounds – and some up to 25 tons, 50,000 pounds each – how they did this remains unexplained. It lies deserted today, abandoned and lost for centuries.

Paddling a kayak through the canal maze of Nan Madol to clamber over these monumental stone complexes in solitary silence – for visitors are rarely here – leaves you in a state of unforgettable awe. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #6 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

April 15, 1981 – this is the exact moment when I landed on the sea-ice at 90 North latitude, the North Pole, to set a Guinness World Record for “The Northernmost Parachute Jump.”

On a Wheeler Expedition to the top of the world, we landed our ski-equipped Twin Otter on a configuration of ice called an “old frozen-over lead” precisely at 90N.  My clients got out, we took the fuel drums out, rear door off, took off again with me, the pilot and co-pilot.  I had pilot Rocky Parsons go up to 8,000 feet for a mile of freefall, directed him to the spot – tiny black dots of our people on the ice – told him when to cut the engines, and I was out the door.

OMG what a rush, falling straight down on the very top of our planet, a world of ice below – meadows of rubble ice, rivers of open water called leads snaking through the ice, lakes of water called polynyas, pressure ridges of turquoise ice, terminal velocity, back flips, somersaults, fun in the sky.  Altimeter shows 2,500 feet, time to go – pull out the hand deploy, see the canopy furl out in full, grab the hand toggles, spin around for more fun, line it up to come in next to everyone, stand-up landing, Guinness Book.  Totally cool. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #5 photo ©Jack Wheeler)  

This Xikrin-Kayapo tribesman and his people live in the deepest heart of the Brazilian Amazon on tributaries of the Xingu River.  You wonder what he would think of us as panic, fear, and madness engulfs our civilization.  Having spent time in his village not long ago, I’m confident he would simply shake his head in bewilderment and say, “Please just let us live our lives in our forest, that’s all we want.”

True indigenous tribes who keep to their traditional way of life are so rare now in the Amazon or anywhere else where they once flourished. Each one is a precious living cultural heritage of humanity. It is such a privilege when they share their way of life with you. They deserve to have their wish granted, as my tribesman friend would express it. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #4 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.  [Click on “Read more” for the story]

You’re looking at something historically and scientifically astonishing.  It is what remains of an astronomical observatory built 600 years ago – in 1420 – by a Sultan in Central Asia who loved science and mathematics more than war and conquest.

Born Mirzo Taraghay, he is known to history as Ulugh Beg (“Great Ruler,” 1394-1449).

Grandson of the nomadic conqueror Tamerlane (1336-1405) who devoted his life to war upon other peoples as did his ancestor Genghiz Khan, Ulugh Beg ruled over Sultanate of Turan, known to the Romans as Transoxiana – the land between Central Asia’s two great rivers, the Oxus (now the Amu Darya) and the Jaxartes (the Syr Darya), from his capital of Samarkand.

It was in Samarkand, the most fabled oasis of the Silk Road, that Ulugh Beg built his circular observatory, three stories high of white marble.

This really isn’t photoshopped – it’s what a sunset actually looks like on the Luangwa River in Zambia. Best way to enjoy it is with a gin-and-tonic Sundowner with good friends on a dream Africa safari. Zambia is an undiscovered gem, the best safari country in all Africa right now.

Fabulous luxury lodges, iconic animals of Africa in amazing profusion, and much less expensive than the well-known safari regions elsewhere.  I told you all about our Africa Dream Safari in January.  It filled up fast – but then you know what happened to us and the whole world.

We’ve rescheduled it with new dates, August 1st to 11th.  We can now take one, possibly two more couple(s) and maybe one single.  Enjoy the description and all the cool photos below, and if you’re serious about joining us, email me at jack@wheelerexpeditions.com for a special discount I may be able to offer you.