More news from Everest today, as you would expect this time of year, courtesy of MountEverest.net. I imagine we'll be getting updates and stories nearly every day between now and the end of the month, as teams are now preparing for their summit bids and we'll be hearing about various attempts as long as the weather holds out.

The biggest news today is probably that the Olympic Torch has made it to the summit! As most of you probably know, the Chinese sent a large team to the North side this season to practice taking the torch to the summit for next year when the Olympics will actually be held in Beijing. The team of 17 Chinese climbers who summitted on Wednesday had several torches with them and confirmed that it burned brightly while on the highest point on Earth. Apparently the Chinese burned brightly on the way down however, as they were observed to have been smoking cigarettes on the descent.

David Tait has moved up to ABC and intends to make a summit bid, along with Phurba Sherpa sometime in the next few days, weather permitting. David is reported to be ahead of the other teams and will rest in ABC for a few days before proceeding up to C1 on Sunday, C2 on Tuesday, and C3 on Wednesday. From there he'll assess the situation and then make his push. David is going after the historic Double Traverse and plans to descend into Nepal after climbing on the North side. After a rest there, weather and health permitting, he'll go back up the mountain and come down on the Tibetan side, ending up where he started.

On the South side all eyes are on the weather forcast. There has been a report of a team making a summit push, but having to turn back due to the high winds. But it seems everyone is returning to BC and ABC in anticipation of things improving soon. The Mountain Madness Team was suppose to leave on the 9th, but now intend to move up on the 12th, so we can expect the action to really get going over the weekend and into the early part of next week.

To be clear, this was a restaurant rather than an actual hotel (a bit like Saravana Bhavan, I suppose). Either way, my local colleague took me to an outlet of this place to try some food from Hubei province, like this river fish with tiny bones that apparently was a favorite of Chairman Mao's. And yeah, I liked the food here, including some delicious vegetable thing laced with bacon, as well as even the simple lotus root soup that had been stewed for hours on end. Apparently soup is a requisite part of Hubei food, but otherwise is relatively similar to Hunan food in its spiciness.

Drombeg is one of the finest of Ireland’s stone circles and certainly the most popular, attracting large numbers of tourists due to it’s picturesque setting. Like most of Ireland’s stone circles, the construction of Drombeg is thought to date to the middle and later period of the Bronze Age, approximately 3000 years ago. 

Stone circles are often considered to be places of ritual and ceremony. Drombeg is aligned with the setting sun of the mid-winter solstice (on the 21st December), a hugely important time in the ancient calendar as it marked the shortest day and longest night of the year. A time of rebirth and renewal as from that point on the days begin to grow. Drombeg’s  celestial alignment was first noted by Boyle Somerville in 1923, who saw that when observed from the entrance to the circle, the sun is aligned with the position of the large recumbent (horizontal) stone. 

The site has long been imbued with folklore and mythology, with the large recumbent stone being called ‘The Druid’s Altar’. In his book ‘A Guide to the Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany’, archaeologist Aubrey Burl records the story of Boyle Somerville who returned to the site in September 1935, accompanied by a psychic; Miss Geraldine Cummings: ‘She did not like the place. She felt it was…a place where animals, if not small children, were sacrificed at each winter solstice. She ‘saw’ a priest in blue and saffron robes standing at the altar of the recumbent about to kill his human offering… Drombeg was cursed. It was ‘guarded by spirits of darkness’. I didn’t notice anything overly sinister myself during our visit on Wednesday, instead of blue robed Druids we just saw a number of camera wielding tourists enjoying a lovely sunny day in West Cork. If you’re interested in more of the folklore associated with the site, do visit the excellent Voices of the Dawn website.

The site was excavated in 1957 by E.M. Fahy. He discovered that there was a compact gravelly surface within the circle, with a central pit containing the cremated remains of an adolescent and a broken, coarse pot dating to 1124–794 BC, perhaps as Aubrey Burl hints, this young person was an offering to the ancient gods. 

People still leave offerings of trinkets, coins and sweets on the Axial Stone

Nearby to the stone circle you can discover the stone foundations of Bronze Age huts and a well-preserved fulacht fiadh, these are a typical Bronze Age monument and fulacht fiadh are found across Ireland. Like this fine example at Drombeg, fulacht fiadh generally consisted of a stone-lined pit or trough, filled with water. Stones were heated on a fire, and when the stones were red hot they were dropped into the water, eventually causing the water to boil. Their function has been long debated in archaeology, from the traditional view of cooking places, to dying clothes, bathing pools or saunas and even as a brewery.  Back in 2007, I was fortunate to attend a reconstruction of a fulacht used to brew beer in County Galway by archaeologists Declan Moore and Billy Quinn. The simple process worked a treat, and produced very drinkable (and pretty strong!) ale. Just the kind of thing you’d want for a long cold mid-winter evening waiting for the Solstice!

The remains of the fulacht fiadh

Drombeg is a lovely site to visit, and on a bright sunny day there are few better places to be in the world than West Cork! You’ll find the site less than 10 mins drive from Rosscarbery, off the R597 road to Glandore at co-ordinates: 51.564561, -9.086998. The site is open all year round and is free to enter.

Thank you for taking the time to visit our blog, and I really hope you find it helpful. If you'd like to support us please do consider downloading an audioguide from my website www.abartaheritage.ie, where we have over 25 guides that tell the story of Irish heritage and the majority are absolutely free to download. 

If you’d like to keep up with daily images and information about Ireland’s fantastic heritage sites please consider following Abarta Audioguides on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. 

It gives me singular pleasure to learn that Dhiraj Singh was awarded Honorable Mention (Feature Audio Slideshow) in the NPPA's Best of Photojournalism 2010 for his My Name Is Dechen.

Dhiraj attended my MultiMedia class at the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Manali last summer, and not only received a standing ovation on showing his audio slideshow (Soundslides), but was also awarded Top Award For Photography by the workshop's instructors.

A well-deserved honor to this immensely talented photographer and photojournalist...and he's a very nice guy as well.

I don't think Dhiraj will mind me plugging the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in this post...so if you are still on the fence about your participation in the Istanbul workshop, you may want to take into account that if you do attend it, you may produce a similarly powerful project or photo essay that could earn you prestigious awards!

The Foundry offers the best instructors there is...real working professionals who will show you the ropes, and either change or reinforce your mindset. All you have to do is to leave your ego at the door...that's all.

ExWeb has all kinds of climbing updates again today, with this one from Everest topping the headlines. David Tait is reporting that the Chinese team has placed 17(!) people on top of Everest this morning in what is described as very windy conditions. As of this writing, we're still awaiting official confirmation, but Tait has a good handle on what's going down (or up as the case may be) on the North Side. He hasn't forgotten about his historic double traverse of course, and the word is that he'll make his first summit attempt around the 16th of May.

Meanwhile, over on Dhaulagiri, there is news that Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner will be heading to the summit on her own. When she and her climbing partner Lucie Orsulova proceeded up the mountain to make their first summit bid, they arrived at Camp 1 to find that all the gear they stowed there was missing. Someone found their stash and cleaned it out. The pair soldiered on however, making it to C2 the next day and the proceeding to C3 the following. But the exertion of climbing was too much for Lucie, who began suffering from altitude sickness. The summit attempt turned into a resuce mission as they proceeded back down the mountain. Now, Gerlinde will make the bid on her own. She is a strong climber and has topped out on nine of the 8000m peaks, so things look good. Still, a solo climb on a mountain like this one is never easy.

Finally, things are starting to heat up in Pakistan as well, with teams starting to arrive on Nanga Parbat. The climbing season is a bit different in the Karakoram, and while Everest teams are nearing their big push, the logistics of the climb are still being worked out. Dodo is at home right now, fresh off his double header of Shisha Pangma and Cho Oyu, but he'll only take a short rest before going to Pakistan for a second double climb, this time on Nanga Parbat at K2. This guy sure know how to make us all feel like slackers. Hey Dodo! How about you stay home, sit on the couch, and watch some TV for a change? Please?!?

OK so I think I have a slightly better understanding of this local rabbitfish now than I did last time I ate this stuff. If my information is correct, this stuff normally goes for S$10/kg (US$3.50/lb), but in the runup to the Lunar New Year holidays, the price surges to well over S$100 (US$35/lb), in part due to a belief that it brings good luck, but also since this is usually when they get filled with roe and become sweeter.

Those in the photo above didn't seem to have any roe in them though, perhaps because they were frozen. And frankly, the meat otherwise didn't really have much taste, although I still enjoyed eating it thanks to that cilantro and sour Teochew chili sauce. I definitely want to try some fresh ones with roe to see what it tastes like though; I wonder if I can still get some at the market next week...hopefully at more reasonable prices?

Another climbing update from MountEverest.net today brings us news on the Spring Climbing Season in the Himalaya. Things are really picking up with all kinds of news starting to roll in.

Swiss Climber Ueli Steck has big plans for Annapurna, where he intends to climb the mountain by a new route, solo and in alpine style no less. Ueli, who recently set a speed record on the Eiger is warming up for Annapuran with summits on Cholatse and Pumori while he treks up the Khumbu Valley.

Over on Shisha Pangma, the Slovak Team are at 7000m and about to make their summit push, with weather conditions being less than ideal. On Dhaulagiri, Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner is celebrating a unique honeymoon. While she waits for her chance to go up the mountain, her husband is guiding another team on Manaslu. (Dude! You've got a keeper!)

On Cho Oyu the news isn't so good when it comes to summit attempts. Gavin Bate is reporting that his team is turning back, giving up on their attempts to top out. At 6800m, not far below Camp 2, they were turned back by an ice cliff that is making it all but impassable. Their climb, it appears, is over.

Alan Arnette brings us some news from Everest as well, where the word is that the HiMex sherpas will once again be the first on the summit, and by the end of April no less. Of course, these amazing climbers are laying down the fixed ropes that will allow the other teams to follow them up the mountain. Rumor has it that the Chinese team carrying the Olympic Torch may not be far behind though. Word from the South Side is that fixed ropes now reach up to Camp 3 and a number of teams are rerturning to Base Camp as part of their acclimatization process.

The last time I took a 787, it was on ANA. So I was kinda curious today to see how different United's version was going to be on this flight out of Denver. To my surprise when I walked in, they were using Continental's business class seats rather than United's, but that's actually a good thing since you get a lot more storage space that way. Fortunately, they've revamped Continental's in-flight entertainment system for the better, and we got the friendlier Continental staff too.

Of course, the lavatories didn't have any Japanese bidets in them, but they still had a mechanism to automatically close the toilet seat cover after you flushed. Otherwise, it was a 787, with generous overhead bin space, cool but unfamiliarly-opening lavatory doors, and electronic window shades, even if they were slow and never truly turned pitch black. Now that I think of it, I guess it was a relatively smooth ride without my eyes feeling dried out.

There was one annoyance that all of the 787's fancy new technologies could not fix though: somebody sitting near me was ripping some of the nastiest rotten egg farts for at least an hour, if not longer. I was also surprised that they didn't have Wi-Fi on board given that this is one of their newest planes. Later, I found a little card saying that "As a new aircraft type, the 787 requires further certification and development by Boeing before satellite Wi-Fi can be installed. We continue to work with Boeing to be among the first to fly the 787 with high-speed satellite Wi-Fi."

Photo © Andy Spyra/Courtesy FP Magazine-All Rights Reserved
I don't think of Foreign Policy magazine as one to feature top notch photojournalism, but it unfailingly does.

Its latest feature is on the 15th anniversary (if we can call it an anniversary) of the Serbian army entering the town of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina, and in the days that followed killing 8,000 Bosniac Muslim men and boys. The Srebrenica genocide was the largest mass murder in Europe since the end of World War II, and the country is still recovering from the war that ended 15 years ago.

The Shadows of Srebrenica is a collection of black & white photographs by the incredibly talented Andy Spyra, and is a powerful reminder of that era, and also reminds us that many of those responsible for this genocide have yet to be apprehended, especially Ratko Mladić.

Amongst the many powerful images, I thought the one above was the most evocative, with the hand and the shadow on the pavement.. Its caption reads: "At the gate of the Srebrenica cemetery, Mehmedovic gestures toward a memorial marker with the number 8,372, though no one knows precisely how many Bosniaks were killed."

Andy Spyra is a freelance photographer currently based in Hagen, Germany. After school, he traveled to Central America and South East Asia where he took up photography. He subsequently studied photography at the Fachhochschule Hannover. He‘s currently pursuing personal projects in the Balkans.

"The close relationships between the island’s Muslim and Hindu communities in fact reveal a blurring of religious and spiritual lines, reminding us of the artificiality of the labels of ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ and the ordinary human being’s ability to find accommodation and tolerance of the practices and values of his neighbors." - Gujarat’s Faded Testaments – The Parables Of Bet Dwarka

Asim Rafiqui is not only an excellent photojournalist, photographer, a thoughtful blogger, writer and commentator, but also a friend and an inspiration in many ways.

I've written a number of posts on his wonderful project The Idea of India, and its being supported by The Aftermath Project and Blue Earth Alliance in the past year, so it gives me great pleasure to announce that he was just awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to pursue this extraordinary project.

Asim will be based for a year in New Delhi starting this September, and the scholarship will allow him to continue, expand and delve deeper into this important project.

I encourage you to visit Asim's The Idea of India writings, as well as his accompanying blog The Spinning Head. I'm certain you'll bookmark both, and follow his explorations into India's past, present and perhaps future.

As a footnote, I am undeservedly privileged to be mentioned in Asim's The Idea of India, and hope to reciprocate the acknowledgment in a small way very soon.