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.

Known to the ancient Greeks and Romans as “Nakhsuana,” today Nakhchivan is an isolated enclave of Azerbaijan, cut off from the rest of the country by a strip of Armenia reaching Iran. You never heard of it because it’s unknown with a strange name – but the name literally means the Land of Noah. “Noah” is the Anglicization of Hebrew Noakh, or “Nakh” (“van” means “land,” “chi” means “of”).

Noah’s tomb has been built, destroyed, rebuilt, and destroyed again repeatedly over the millennia. It’s now been built yet again on the original site. Looming near is Haça Dag, the Notched Mountain – where Noah’s Ark they say ran aground as the Flood waters receded, carving a notch on the summit before coming to rest on Mount Ararat about 50 miles to the north (in present-day Turkey).

The people here are wonderfully friendly. I was always told “welcome” everywhere. I was even spontaneously invited to a wedding party in a remote village. You’ll find it easy to make friends here too. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #3, photo ©Jack Wheeler)

This is “Tatik-Papik” (Grandmother-Grandfather), a stone monument built in Soviet days as homage to the mountain people of the Transcaucasus Highlands of Armenia and Azerbaijan. After both became independent with the fall of the USSR, Armenia seized the Azeri part, known as Nagorno Karabagh. Since late September, war has broken out anew, with Turkey supporting the Azeris and Russia supporting the Armenians.

The dispute could be settled easily with a “land swap.” There is an exclave of Azerbaijan called Nakhchivan (see The Land of Noah, Glimpse #3) separated by a sparsely inhabited corridor of Armenia called the Mehgri Strip running to the border with Iran. It could be swapped for the Armenian-populated portion of Karabagh. Result: Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan are united and whole, Armenia and Armenian Karabagh are united and whole.

Should be win-win achievable given recent peace agreements achieved by our genius POTUS between Serbia and Kosovo, plus between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, and Sudan don’t you think? (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #71 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

We camped here overnight in May of 2019 crossing Turkmenistan’s Kara Kum (Black Sand) Desert. The Darvaz Gas Crater – known to locals as “The Door to Hell” – has been burning nonstop since 1971, when Russian engineers set it on fire expecting it to burn off and it never has. This is a night -- and a sight -- you’ll never ever forget. My son Brandon can vouch for that! (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #44 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

We’re all familiar with the sufferings of Job in the Old Testament’s Book of Job. But what happened to Job after his sufferings were ended? All the OT says is that, with his health and riches restored, he lived long enough to see his great-great grandchildren.

The OT says Job lived in the “Land of Uz,” which was “beyond the Euphrates.” That would place it in modern day Iraq. There is no connection between this Hebraic name and the land of Uzbekistan – meaning the Land of Uzbeks, a Turkic people. Yet the Silk Road city of Bukhara in today’s Uzbekistan is thousands of years old.

Jews have lived in Bukhara for 3,000 years, although almost all have emigrated now (some 150,000 Bukharan Jews live in Israel). Thus it is a very ancient legend that during a terrible drought in Bukhara, Job visited the city and struck the ground with his staff – causing a spring of healing water to gush from the ground, and continues to do so today.

A shrine was built around the spring – the Well of Job – and the water is clear and drinkable. One of the many extraordinary experiences in what we call Hidden Central Asia. We’ll be here again this coming May. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #114 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 this summer of 2022? (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #90 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Once a small Mexican fishing village far from everything, Zihuatanejo (zee-wah-tan-ay-ho) – Zee-wat to locals – has become a paradisical escape hatch for many seeking refuge from our pressure-cooker world. 150 miles up the northwest coast of Acapulco, Zee-wat is its own world of peace and serenity.

Stroll on the beach or along the Paseo del Pescador (Fisherman’s Path) with its shops, bars, and restaurants unbothered. Just relax surrounded by flowers, warm water, and blue sky. All the worries elsewhere in Mexico, much less in the US or anywhere else are not here.

The time to come is now, the dry season November-May. Prices are a bargain with the dollar way up on the peso. Non-stop flights from multiple cities in the US and Canada. Just a few days here will do wonders for your soul. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #182 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The magnificent Sher-Dor Madrassa, built in the early 1600s, is part of the Registan public square complex of the ancient Silk Road oasis of Samarkand. What’s fascinating is the mosaic depiction of living beings on either side of the arch – a tiger and on its back a rising sun deity with a human face. This is honoring the pre-Islamic history of Samarkand that goes back almost 3,000 years.

It was centuries old when Alexander conquered it in 329 BC. For a thousand years as Central Asia’s great entrepot on the Silk Road between China and the Mediterranean, it was a cosmopolitan center for Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and Nestorian Christianity. Incorporated into the Islamic world in the 700s, sacked by Genghiz Khan in 1220, rebuilt by the time Marco Polo in 1272 described it as “a large and splendid city,” Tamerlane made it his capital in 1370.

Colonized by Czar Alexander II in the 1860s within the Russian Imperial Empire, and by the Soviets in the 1920s within the Uzbek SSR, Samarkand is flourishing today in independent Uzbekistan. There is so much to learn and contemplate upon when you are here. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #67 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The Himbas are a tribe of nomadic cattle herders in far northern Namibia. Himba women make a paste of butter fat and red ochre clay called “otjize,” to protect their skin from the burning African sun and braid their hair for beautification.

The Himbas’ exotic practices are not for tourists. This is the way they live as one of Africa’s most genuinely traditional peoples. Living on the move in remote roadless regions, it takes an effort to find them. But when you do, coming with an attitude of respect, you will be welcomed with smiles and hospitality in return. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #66 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel “Dracula” described Count Dracula’s home as a castle located high above a gorge perched on a rock in Transylvania’s Carpathian Mountains. And here you are, Bran Castle, built in the late 1300s near the town of Brasov in Romania, and traditionally associated with Vlad Dracula (1428-1477).

His father, Vlad Dracul (Vlad the Dragon), as the ruler of Wallachia (southern Romania), led Christian knights fighting Ottoman Turks called the Order of the Dragon, or “Dracul” in Romanian. His son succeeded him as Dracula – “son of the dragon” – waging war upon the Moslem Ottomans so brutally he became known as “Vlad the Impaler” for impaling his enemies. They began spreading rumors of his being literally bloodthirsty, drinking his enemies’ blood.

Over the centuries since, Vlad Dracula has been celebrated by Romanians as their national hero in his liberation struggle from the Ottomans. But was Bran Castle his home? He had many homes, and was here many times during his campaigns. Visiting Dracula’s Castle is always a highlight of our explorations of Eastern Europe. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #56 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

August, 1971. Here is where the Ancient Greeks believed their 12 Olympian Gods lived, on the summit of the highest peak of Olympus – Mytikas at 9,571ft/2,918m. There are 52 jagged prominences of Olympus, but if you want to commune with Zeus, Apollo, Aphrodite, Athena and the rest, this is where you go.

It takes just two days: morning drive from Athens (4 hrs) to Litochoro, then the roadhead at Priona (2,500ft). Afternoon hike of some 3 hours through pretty pine forests to the comfortable Spilios Agapitos refuge (6,700ft) for dinner and a bunk bed overnight. You’re up at dawn for a strenuous but not technical climb up to Skala peak at 9,400ft. In my photo, you’re looking at Mytikas from Skala. It’s a Class B rock scramble – no ropes or gear, but this shouldn’t be your first mountain rodeo. Be careful!

I was by myself at the Mytikas summit and no selfies in those days, so I said my greetings to the gods, and I was back down at the refuge by lunchtime. You’ll be back at the Plaka below the Acropolis in Athens for ouzo and dinner. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #45 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

West of the Himalayan giants of Annapurna and Dhaulagiri in Nepal lies a roadless high wilderness inhabited only by Tibetan nomads called Dolpa. The region is named after them, Dolpo. The Dolpa practice the ancient pre-Buddhist animist religion of Tibet called Bön. They worship sites of nature they consider holy. And holiest of all is the Sacred Lake of Phoksundo.

The Dolpa consider the blue of Phoksundo an act of magic by the gods. Once you see it, you can only agree. This picture is not photoshopped – it is real. We visit it in late October when it is ice free on our Himalaya Helicopter Expeditions. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #41 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Aït Benhaddou is a thousand year-old kasbah or fortified village on the ancient trade route from the Sahara to Marrakech in Morocco.  It’s constructed entirely of rammed earth, adobe, and wood.

Remember the famous scene in Gladiator where Maximus shouts “Are you not entertained?!” to the bloodthirsty crowd?  It was filmed here, as were scenes in many other movies such as “The Jewel of the Nile,” and “The Mummy,” or the series ”The Game of Thrones.”

Yet this is no location set – people live here, scores of families, as they have for a millennium.  You’re welcome to come here to see how they live for real – as here Hollywood is far, far away.  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #181 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

This is St. Paul’s Natural Pool on Pitcairn Island, where in 1790 Fletcher Christian and his mutineers of the Mutiny on the Bounty settled, and where their descendants live to this day. They were awed by the uninhabited island’s lush beauty, with huge banyan trees rising above them like giant cathedrals, and thought it a Garden of Eden where anything grew, coconuts, bananas, taro, breadfruit, mangoes, guavas, passion fruit, yams and sweet potatoes in the rich volcanic soil.

Pitcairn has no beaches, though, so this was their swimming hole – and still is for Pitcairners today. They are happy to take you here, and to the island’s colorfully named spots, like Where Dick Fall, Oh Dear, Break Im Hip, Down the Hole – and to Fletcher Christian’s Cave, his lookout for British warships hunting them (they failed for 25 years) .

It’s not easy to get here – fly to Tahiti, then remote Mangareva from where you sail for two days on a supply ship. But you’ll be so welcome upon arrival. You stay in one of their homes in Adamstown and be treated like family. It’s a travel experience like none other. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #63 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

900 years ago, the Church of Saint George (Bete Giyorgis in Amharic) was not built – it was hand carved downwards from a horizontal rock ledge. There is nothing like the rock-hewn churches in Lalibela anywhere else in the world.

Christianity was established in Ethiopia in 330 AD and has flourished ever since. Experiencing the devotion still so very much alive in one of the oldest Christian countries on earth is inspiring. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #26 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

When my son Brandon turned 14, he asked me, “Dad, you climbed the Matterhorn at 14. Could we climb the Matterhorn together now that I’m 14?” It was 1998 and I was 54. I didn’t think I could do it, but his request meant more than the world to me, so I agreed. Each with our own bergführer guide, he breezed up, but it was a real struggle for me.

He made it, my guide didn’t think I could, so after summiting, Brandon came back down to get me. We climbed the last 500 feet together. Thus here we both are on the summit of the world’s most famous mountain. There are no words to come close to expressing what this means to each of us. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #35 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

You’re looking face on Everest’s West Ridge, the border of Tibet and Nepal. On the right is the Southwest Face in Nepal, on the left is the North Face in Tibet. Called Scoundrel’s View because this is a better view than trekkers to Everest Base Camp see (a viewpoint called Kala Patthar).

You have to make another trek up the Ngozumpa glacier (longest in the Himalayas) in the Gokyo valley, where above the fifth Gokyo lake at 16,400 feet you get to call yourself a “scoundrel” for seeing what Everest trekkers don’t.

High on the Northeast Ridge on the left horizon is the last place Mallory and Irvine were seen heading for the summit in 1924, and then disappeared. Hillary and Tenzing summited in 1953 via the Southeast Ridge over the right horizon. Everest Base Camp in Nepal is at the foot of the big snowy buttress below the West Ridge. Called the West Shoulder, it blocks any view of Everest from Base Camp.

On our Himalaya Helicopter Expeditions, we get an abundance of spectacular views of Everest, up close and personal – Scoundrel’s View is only one of many. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #29 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

This is the ruins of the Castle of St. Hilarion in Northern Cyprus. In 1191, the Byzantine ruler of Cyprus made the mistake of capturing a ship carrying Princess Berengaria of Navarre and held her hostage. She was the fiancée of England’s King Richard the Lion-Heart. You don’t do that to a guy nicknamed Lion-Heart.

Richard proceeded to conquer the whole island and turned it over to a group of French Catholic knights led by Guy de Lusignan. The knights built a series of fortified castles around the island to ward off the Moslem "Saracens." The most spectacular was atop a vertiginous crag high above the port of Kyrenia named after a crazy hermit who lived near there whom the knights dubbed St. Hilarion.

When Walt Disney was making his classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937, he chanced upon pictures of St. Hilarion’s Castle, which his imagination transformed into the fairy tale castle of the movie. Can you see how he got the idea?

In the castle museum, there’s an explanation with some of Disney’s original sketches based on St. Hilarion’s. Disney was an imaginative genius. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #139 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

On the south coast of Australia’s island state of Tasmania, there is a huge sea cave the aboriginal Tasmanians called The Mouth of Hell for the shrieking and moaning the waves and wind made emitting from it. Boatsmen prefer to enter it to this day protected by a cross on their fishing boat’s bow.

The wild beauty and mystery of Tasmania is absolutely extraordinary. At 35,000 square miles, it is the size of Maine with a population of less than half a million. Towns like Hobart and Launceston are charming, but the magic is in the uninhabited wilderness that makes up much of the island as a hiker’s paradise. That and a momentous coastline almost beyond belief.

If you’re ever in Oz, especially Melbourne, don’t miss the chance to explore Tasmania. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #150 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)

The southernmost portion of the Gobi Desert is called the Alashan in Inner Mongolia. Traversed by Marco Polo in 1273 on his way to meet the Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan, he said it contained a “mystery.”

For in the hidden center of the Alashan is an area known as Badain Jaran, “Mystery Lakes” in Mongolian. There are some 140 of these small lakes surrounded by enormous sand dunes. The photo you see is of one of these lakes, taken in late afternoon on a windless day, with the giant dunes above reflected on the water.

We were there in October 2017. We will explore Inner Mongolia and the Gobi again in October 2021. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #32 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)

The oldest part of the Silk Road was originally called the Jade Road along the string of oases watered by runoff from the Kunlun mountains of northern Tibet on the southern edge of the Takla Makan desert in Chinese Turkestan.  This is where the finest jade was to be found, washed down from Tibet. This is the route that Marco Polo took with his father and uncle in 1272 to reach the court of the Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan.

This is what the Jade Road looks like today, near the fabled oasis of Khotan.  Save for the road being asphalted and the farmer’s cart being towed by a small tractor instead of a donkey, Polo would recognize it.  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #179 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Nakhal Castle, Oman. If you want to see an ultra-rich Arab sheikdom with exotically designed skyscrapers, you go to Qatar or Dubai. But if you want a more genuine Arabia of Sultan’s palaces, of forts and castles perched on rocky crags, of traditional villages tucked away in mountain fastnesses, of rock pools and grottoes gushing with spring water hidden in secret valleys, a place out of Arabian Nights rather than one of garish ostentatiousness – then you come here to the Sultanate of Oman.

Omanis are a polyglot people from all over Arabia, Persia, and India who’ve lived here for millennia, creating a cosmopolitan trading society that adheres to its traditional culture. There are fabulous hotels with great bars, concerts by the Omani Philharmonic Orchestra, and once outside the capital of Muscat, an Arabian wonderland so exotic it seems out of a movie. We’ll be here in the Spring of ’22. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #119 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The Tibetan Monastery or “Gompa” of Spituk overlooks the Upper Indus as it flows out of Chinese Tibet and towards Baltistan in Pakistan. The Indus here is the geological dividing line between the ancient Karakorum mountains and the younger Himalayas (40+ million years old and growing: Mount Everest rises 2 inches every ten years).

We’re in Indian Tibet here, a region called Ladakh where Tibetan culture flourishes freely. Wheeler Expeditions first explored Indian Tibet – including running the remote Zanskar River tributary of the Upper Indus, one the world’s most thrilling whitewater experiences – in 1992. We’ll explore it once more in the summer of 2022. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #128 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

April, 1979 – on the sea ice at 90 North latitude, the North Pole. I was one of the more unusual Profiles for Dewar’s Scotch. It was the 3rd of my 21 expeditions to the very top of our planet. One thing that stood out for me was the photographer brought false ice cubes of carved polished crystal for the photo you see of a glass of scotch perched on a small pressure ridge. That’s the way the pros do it. One genuine item he brought was a case of Dewar’s. We had one heck of a party on top of the world! (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #75 photo of 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)

“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.

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)

First Lady Melania Trump would instantly recognize Lake Bled, for it is considered the most beautiful place in her home country of Slovenia.  It’s a glacial lake up in the Julian Alps near the border with Austria.  The small lush island you see has been a pilgrimage site for millennia – first to the Temple of Ziva, the Slovene goddess of love and fertility, then until now to the Church of the Mother of God.  For all that time, Slovene couples came here to get married.

There are 99 steps from the rowboat landing to the church, and from ancient times to today, the tradition is that for a happy and long-lasting marriage, the groom must carry his bride up all 99 steps while she must remain silent while he does.

Lake Bled is a place of deep serenity and joyous calm.  Come here to experience both. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #178 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

August, 1983. It was pitch-black dark as I and a couple dozen heavily-armed UNITA guerrillas were rumbling over the roadless Angolan bush in a huge captured Russian truck. Suddenly there was an entire pride of lions running in front of the truck’s headlights. As they scattered, without warning a massive black-maned male jumped in front of us. The driver didn’t have time to swerve – we crashed into him full on, killing him instantly.

The UNITA fellows had me pose with him the next morning – obviously with no rifle as I was not hunting. It was to memorialize a tragic ending to a magnificent animal. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #125 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)