Setting the Scene
On April 25, 200 Joyce
and I set out from our base in Connecticut on a month-long trip to 
Asia,
our first time in that part of the world. We had spent a year planning the
trip, studying the culture and history and trying to
get some understanding of the people we were going to encounter. We
tried to cover most of the places that lay claim to historic or cultural superlatives for one
reason or another.
The trip began in Tokyo and moved onto Nikko and Hakone, within driving distance of Tokyo. Then we flew onto Hong Kong. This was followed by plane rides to Guilin in southern China, Chengdu - the gateway to Tibet and finally, the high point of the trip, Lhasa, fabled capital city of Tibet.
After a few days in Lhasa, we flew to the northern Chinese city of Xi'an and completed the China leg in Beijing. We rounded out our journey by returning to Japan with visits to Hiroshima and fittingly ended in the Japanese jewel - Kyoto.
No person can claim to understand this planet until they have visited the east, where most of the world's population resides. The people are so different from what we consider the "norm" in the west. They look different, act different, think different, eat different, dress different. We soon realized why our worlds are so different and always will be. Yet, people all over the world are still human and finding ways to communicate and connect with each other, while challenging, proved to be most rewarding. To learn more, read on ...