So were all sitting around ogling another absurdly sublime plant-based meal at another glorious vegan restaurant, when it occurred to me to ask aloud: "Wait, why are we having to CONVINCE people to go vegan?" It just seemed crazy. Thus, herewith, some of the culinary sublimity that's waiting here for you when you, too, finally decide to stop torturing baby animals to death and embrace plant-based cuisine....   (read more)

An absolutely magnificent, cruelty-free Thanksgiving feast....   (read more)

Weight management seems to be one of the biggest challenges in modern life. Here's what I've learned about what works....   (read more)

Fabulous cruelty-free Thanksgiving spreads from master chefs (along with no cancer and heart disease, or environmental destruction); versus 50 million horror-movie deaths. The choice is yours! :)...   (read more)

Renaissance marketing guru Tim Ferriss' new book is about hacking the human body. Amidst the wackier bits, I think there are some real gems in here for health, nutrition, and fitness. So, in about four minutes, here's what I got out of this book that I'm actually using ("Fuches Take-Aways")....   (read more)

Well, since I realised yesterday's post was nothing more than • 34.5% blatant vegetarian agit-prop; and • 65.5% unbridled and horrifying vanity... it's occurred to me to try and atone by posting a couple of personal favourite health and fitness tidbits (which might actually be of use to some of you out there)....   (read more)

So Tag Zwei opened with the traditional free hotel buffet breakfast....   (read more)

And so Alex rang up and said, Dude - I'm going to be in Munich for a few days if you want to cruise over, and I thought, Hey - Random jaunts to the Continent are precisely what Americans living on this side of the Atlantic are supposed to do...   (read more)

Awoke from a series of long, vivid, detailed dreams (probably something to do with being in a real bed!); and Tim and I went down to the dining room (a dining room!) for a leisurely continental breakfast (breakfast!)....   (read more)

Morning, breakfast in an amazing upstairs room with, reassuringly (to, you know, me) several guns on the wall. Rather less reassuringly, there was this countour map of the West Highlands, which our hosts thought they were being helpful in pointing out to us....   (read more)

Morning, breakfast in an amazing upstairs room with, reassuringly (to, you know, me) several guns on the wall. Rather less reassuringly, there was this countour map of the West Highlands, which our hosts thought they were being helpful in pointing out to us....   (read more)

Morning, tea in our room, and Tim happily moblogging from his bed. Me: This feels like redemption. I can't tell you how much time on how many trips I've kept people hanging about while I typed, or edited images, or battled net-cafes....   (read more)

So, Danielle, in her inimitable way, suggested "you should take off your sunglasses for at least one damn photo." I've scoured the entire set - and this is it. A tiny, silly photo taken in a mirror at the back of a restaurant. That's the one photo of me from the entire trip not wearing sunglasses. Oops....   (read more)

"Israel will be annihilated." - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad...   (read more)

"The wing of melancholia flicks at me today, perhaps because I have learnt nothing new here, perhaps because of my bad night, perhaps because of my dreams." - Graham Greene, Congo journal...   (read more)

THE DEVIL: Well, well, go your way, Senor Don Juan. I prefer to be my own master and not the tool of any blundering universal force. I know that beauty is good to look at; that music is good to hear; that love is good to feel...   (read more)

Q: Just how much Graham Greene do you intend to read, anyway? A: Every word he wrote....   (read more)

Lying in my tent in the Lizard, near to the pigs, I dreamt long, vivid, grand, yet frustrating dreams. Really long and involved. I wonder how time compression works in dreams. Are we like Data, reviewing video at impossible speeds?...   (read more)

Morning now, and I am standing on the stairs to the slide of the camp site playground, soaking up the first sunlight. I am not sitting here, nor anywhere, due to the dew, which is just a monster. The surface of the world couldn't be any more drenched if a thunderstorm had stopped five seconds ago....   (read more)

In nomadic camp life, you really do just get into the rhythm of waking at dawn. Badger! badger! badger! What I took to be a badger ran by, along the opposite edge of the field, with a crust of something in her jaws....   (read more)

So - Ali was right. The bus driver really doesn't have anything better to do than tell you where to get off the damned bus....   (read more)

Yes, of course, I know, it's always the Michael Show here. However, it is about to become All Michael, All the Time / Too Much Michael Is Never Enough / I Want My M(ichael)TV Channel. Walking alone, the dispatches inevitably become more or less the Story of Me....   (read more)

Awoke at, yes, half-seven again - what is it with this St. Ives campsite reveille? - to, yes, another glorious morning. I packed up much of my stuff, tried to shake some of the overnight dew off the tent (in anticipation of packing and carrying it later)...   (read more)

Awoke at, yes, you guessed it, same time as always, 7:30. But alone this time? you ask? Au contraire, mein freund. For, with Tim's departure, the critters have come out in their legions to cheer my morning....   (read more)

Well, you guessed it - it was another totally glorious morning on the hill overlooking the bay, and we were up at half-7. I showered while Tim packed up (sniff); and we both headed down the hill for a farewell breakfast at the cafe....   (read more)

Awoke ten minutes before my alarm was to go off (I know - but we were meeting for breakfast, and generally wanted to get an early start) to an absolutely glorious morning. While languorously performing my toilette in the sparklingly lit mirrors of the immaculate bathroom, the radio reports: "Twenty-two degrees today, clear skies, cool breezes - and plenty of sunshine!"...   (read more)

Yesterday I woke up and it was all over and everyone was gone....   (read more)

And so morning arrived at the gloriously well-appointed camp site that was somehow wildly inferior to all the pub back yards we'd camped in. Note to self, I thought: Four pints is one pint too many....   (read more)

So, our acute food problem so far had largely consisted of three parts: 1) breaking camp and leaving town before anything opened; 2) getting into the next town after everything had closed; and 3) not packing nearly enough trail food to get us from one to the other....   (read more)

"The effortful shepherding of one's confusion and faint nausea, which I assumed was the basic existential package, turns out to have been a temporary condition." - Martin Amis...   (read more)

I left the office shortly after 6pm - an hour after the last civil servant had melted away - and walked the streets of Soho. I headed north then west, bouncing pinball-like through the brilliant rectangle of Soho...   (read more)

The World Cancer Research Fund has just published their list of the 20 best foods to prevent cancer....   (read more)

Did I mention my resolution to read only English novelists while I'm here? Luckily, England's produced one or two decent ones. ;^) I actually broke down once, which event I memorialized in this poem:...   (read more)

The hop from Amboseli to Nairobi was painless, and our quick drive-by of downtown Nairobi tended to underscore why we weren't being dropped off in the city proper. Lamentably, these days, Nairobi is literally one of the most dangerous and crime-ridden cities on the planet. ...   (read more)

Serengeti, and Ngorongoro Crater, that's what reason we have for leaving. In Tanzania, the town of Arusha is the gateway to these places, and that's where we're heading today. But first a few last orders of business in town....   (read more)

I emerge from my "life enjoyment break" in African Gelato Heaven into the lightest, gentlest sprinkle, which has floated in on the offshore breeze. Looping hotelward, but wide, I find myself in the proper, local (non-tourist) market - filled with stalls, vendors, shops, honking vehicles, and thousands of faces (all of which but mine are non-white)....   (read more)