Travel Writing Competition 2011 Entries Page2

This is the first time I have ever gone to Istanbul and what a mystical, exotic place it is with so many sights and sounds to see.

“I don’t think her mother taught her anything,” whispered Josefina to her daughter, Maria Santana, both of whom sat on the back step of the house smoking their pipes.

People were banging on both sides of the train trying to get in, even as it started to more away sluggish at first from the overload, more people ran alongside desperate to get inside.

Her name was Estrella, and she lived behind two borders, and I was stuck among many more. I had stumbled upon her during one of my many wanderings. Exoticism, traveling, and the corresponding arrogance...

Salamanca’s Plaza Mayor is deliciously overwhelming. Neon-clad children ride scooters across it at midnight, navigating their way through clusters of tourists. University students, in scarves and sunglasses...

“Excuse us for staring but we’re not used to people like you here.” Smiling broadly, staring intently, ten or more people seem to emerge from invisible crevices of the tardis-like...

“Let me take you someplace.” We followed a narrow, hazardous route at a considerable speed, rounding hair-pin turns on a one-way road without shoulders.

Watching the sky turn red over the Valley of the Kings is a moment very few people will ever forget. One of the world’s great panoramas, the ancient city of Luxor sprawls on the east bank and the Valley of the Kings dominates the west.

It sat in the corner by itself, a silent menacing presence. It gave no clues as to its family of origin, terrifying in its brown ordinariness.

The sun beat relentlessly onto the red sandstone floor of the Jama Masjid in Old Delhi. Already sweating and parched, I staggered around the shaded cloisters on the perimeter of the courtyard...