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)