From the 900s to the 1200s, the Pagan Empire built over 10,000 Buddhist temples. 2,200 remain on the plains of Pagan today, one of the world’s most wondrous sights – especially if you see them from above in a hot air balloon. It is truly astounding how much there is to explore and experience in Burma. We’ll be there once more for it all next February. I hope you will be one of your fellow TTPers to join us. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #33 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

“To Sua” means “giant swimming hole” in Samoan. It’s a collapsed lava tube hole on the south coast of Upolu in Samoa. On top of lava cliffs overlooking the South Pacific, you clamber down the ladder for a memorable swim. To Sua is but one of the attractions of Samoa: gorgeous waterfalls, marvelously friendly people, and the historic home named “Valima,” of Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), where he and his wife Fanny spent his last years.

On a hilltop rising above Valima is the gravesite of “Tusitala” – Stevenson’s Samoan name, meaning “Telling of Tales.” Engraved on the side of his tomb is his famous epitaph he wrote himself:

Under the wide and starry sky

Dig the grave and let me lie:

Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you 'grave for me:

Here he lies where he long'd to be;

Home is the sailor, home from the sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.

The ”Ark” was the palace-fortress of Bukhara rulers since 500 BC. The ancient Silk Road oasis has a history of 5,000 years. Today Bukhara is in Uzbekistan, one the Stans of Central Asia. Each are uniquely enchanting. Together they comprise one of the most culturally, historically, and scenically spectacular, yet mysterious and unknown, regions on our Earth. Let me know if you’d like to experience them with me by joining your fellow TTPers to explore The Heart of Central Asia – Sept 18-Oct 4, 2022. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #36 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Dalat, South Viet Nam, 1961. I was 17 years old. A friend of my father’s, Herb Klein, came by our house. He was a prominent businessman whose passion was big-game hunting. He had just returned from the mountain jungle highlands of South Viet Nam and regaled us with stories of the Montagnard tribespeople who were plagued by tigers with a taste for human flesh. He told me that after climbing the Matterhorn, living with Amazon headhunters, and swimming the Hellespont, hunting a man-eating tiger should be my next adventure.

“You’d be saving so many lives, Jack,” he told me. “There’s one I heard about from the Co Ho Montagnards that’s killed and eaten almost 20 of them in the forests outside the town of Dalat. I know who can guide you, he was mine, his name is Ngo Van Chi.”

Somehow, I talked my parents into letting me do this. I had saved up the money from giving tennis and judo lessons. So there I was, in pitch dark in a “mirador” of branches and leaves, holding a .300 Weatherby with a flashlight wired to the barrel, waiting for this man-eating tiger to come for the rotting water buffalo we set out as bait. Chi and I heard the tiger, I put the rifle barrel out, Chi clicked on the flashlight, I saw these two enormous red eyes, and fired.

And there he is, the Man-Eater of Dalat, who would never kill another human being ever again. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #175 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

On either side of the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar there are two small mountains known since great antiquity as the Pillars of Hercules. The pillar on the northern, European side is the famous Rock of Gibraltar. That on the southern, African side is Mount Abyla, Phoenician for “lofty mountain.”

The legend for the Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans was that Hercules pushed the two pillars apart to join the Mediterranean with the Atlantic. We think today of Hercules as a comic-book bodybuilder, while the truth is opposite. The entire ancient Mediterranean world very seriously worshipped him. For the Phoenicians, he was Melqart, King of the Earth. For the Greeks, he was Heracles, Divine Protector of Mankind. He was the same for the Romans, who pronounced his name as Hercules.

The Phoenician trading port of Abyla has a history of 3,000 years, from Phoenician to Carthaginian to Roman to Byzantine to Christian Visigoths to Islamic Berbers to Portuguese – and since 1668 to Spain, which continues to govern it today as the Spanish Autonomous City of Ceuta on the Mediterranean coast of Morocco.

Ceuta is a charming European city with beautiful beaches, open air cafés with great sangria, very relaxed and pleasant. It is here you find the statue of Hercules separating his Pillars commemorating the legend pictured above. Easy to get to with high-speed ferries from Algeciras near Gibraltar, Ceuta is definitely worth your while to experience. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #137 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The “Springs of Intensity” in Persian are a series travertine terraces in remote northern Iran of such impressionist beauty they look like a masterpiece of Claude Monet. For thousands of years, water flowing down a mountainside from two hot mineral springs depositing carbonates have built these natural multi-colored staircases.

Iran is an enormous country – almost the size of Alaska, four times the size of California – filled with wonders, natural and cultural. We were welcomed in every part of the country in our exploration of it in 2014. While the current political climate does not allow that today, the day will come before long when we will return. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #130 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

What better Glimpse could I post than this on Flag Day, June 14. I’m on the right, my skydiving buddy Chris Wentzel is on the left. The jump was performed at the Skydive Perris drop zone in Perris, California. The photo was taken by famed skydiver cameraman Norman Kent. Long may Old Glory wave over the country we love and cherish. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #211 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

North of Scotland are the Orkney Islands. On a windswept bluff above the North Atlantic, archaeologists have unearthed an intact Neolithic village of farmers and cattle herders that’s 5,000 years old (3200 BC) – centuries older than the Pyramids of Egypt. Their homes had beds, chairs, cupboards, flush toilets, running water, cozy, warm, and comfortable.

What you see here is just one section of the village. What I found particularly interesting was this sign at the entrance to the site.

These villagers enjoyed a warmer climate than today, more fertile land. Skara Brae is a 5,000 year-old refutation of the Global Warming Hoax. If you ever get to Scotland, be sure the Orkneys are on your itinerary. Skara Brae is only one of the places you’ll find fascinating. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #210 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Khasab, Musendam, Enclave of Oman, October 2006. The sharp tip of Arabia, known as the Musandam Point, sticks into the Persian Gulf, separating it from the Indian Ocean. The Strait of Hormuz is only 30 miles wide from Musandam Point to the coast of Iran, and through it passes a substantial fraction of the world's crude oil.

I came here to see the Persian smugglers. Go down to the wharves in Khasab and you will see them piled high with waterproof-wrapped bales of clothes, cases of soft drinks and juice, cartons of children's toys and electronic goods, an entire shopping mall of stuff, all ready to be crammed and tied down into 20 ft. long open speedboats with powerful outboard motors capable of outrunning Iranian Navy patrols.

There are dozens, scores, of waiting speedboats. The run from Khasab harbor to coves on the Iranian coast or the Iranian island of Qeshm takes about three hours. An average night will see dozens of speedboats racing across the Strait of Hormuz smuggling goods into Iran. The smugglers couldn’t have been more friendly to me. They hate the mullahs and are proud they are helping poor people in Iran. I had a great time with them. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #169 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

It only looks surreal – as so much of Central Asia can be. That’s why it’s one of the most magically entrancing parts of our planet. In a hidden valley high in the mountains of Tajikistan there is a stepping-stone series of lakes called The Seven Pearls of Shing. This is one of them at early sunrise.

The number of magically surrealistic-yet-real sights and experiences like this throughout Central Asia, be they in nature, in Silk Road history, in culture or with welcoming people everywhere, are as innumerable and they are unforgettable.

You owe it to yourself to at least browse through the photos of The Heart of Central Asia – Sept 18-Oct 4, 2022 so you can immerse yourself in imagining being there for real. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #209 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Originally nomads from the Tibetan Plateau, the Nashi people settled in the fertile Himalayan foothills of Yunnan over 2,000 years ago. From the ancient Tibetan religion of Bön, they developed a unique religion of nature-worship called Dongba. The progenitors of humanity and nature were two half-brothers, two mothers with the same father. Nature is controlled by a human-snake chimera called Shv – a statue of whom you see here.

The Nashi are a peaceful gentle people whose ideal is living in accordance with nature. They dress very colorfully, women have equal respect with men, they write with the world’s only still-functioning pictographic script, and are proud of preserving their culture for millennia. It is an enchanting experience to be among them. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #163 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

There are places in our world so staggeringly beautiful to have to see them to believe they exist.  Yet those people walking along the foot bridge can’t see what you’re looking at.  That has to be in the air, hovering from high above in a helicopter.  We live in a world of such beauty it really does take your breath away. And best of all, the beauty of the Grand Prismatic Spring  of Yellowstone is right here in America.

Here we are at Yellowstone in Wyoming, a wonderland by itself.  Just to the south are the Grand Tetons. To the west is the Sawtooth Range and the Middle Fork of the Salmon River – one of the best whitewater runs on the planet.  It goes endlessly on and on.  America the Beautiful is not just a song – it’s glorious reality. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World 135, photo ©Jack Wheeler)

As you can see, this place is aptly named. It is simply phantasmagorical – nature on LSD. Then again, so much of southern Utah is too, for close by Escalante are the Vermillion Cliffs, Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, Zion Canyon, Monument Valley and a lot more.

The entire area is Navaho country, so it is no surprise their native religion is based on peyote, a cactus containing the hallucinogen, mescaline, with the Navaho belief that nature surrounding them was designed by the Peyote Bird.

However, it is not necessary to take any hallucinogen to achieve a sense of ecstasy being here – just a deep appreciation of what a wondrous world – a breathtaking world – it is that we are all privileged to be alive in. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #180 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

July, 1984. The KPNLF – Khmer People’s National Liberation Front – was the Anti-Communist guerrilla movement fighting the Soviet-backed Vietnamese Communists in Cambodia. When I was first there in 1961, Cambodia was then a land of serenity, with a gentle and tranquil people who were at peace with themselves and the world. Now it was a land of indescribable Communist horror.

It was such a privilege to be with these brave men willing to wage war against that horror and bring freedom to their country. I told their tale in Turning Back the Terror, the February 1985 cover story for Reason magazine. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #20 photo ©Jack Wheeler)