Breadcrumbs

Herat Street
Herat Street

Introduction

 

Hello, and welcome. My name is Ivan Hurst and this travelogue is a collection of stories, photos, videos, and facts about my overland travels. It also includes holidays and short breaks. The stories start in the early 1970's, with occasional reminisces even further back in time. The initial year of writing this page is 2012, with updates in 2016, so there is a considerable gap between the event and writing it up.

This will, I admit, be a severe test on my memory. Especially as to some of the details and the exact location of the photos. I will be tempted to keep repeating 'as far as I can recall', or words to that effect. However, this would be even more boring, so please just take it as said. I will research as much as I can, especially from contemporary information. However, I am totally sure, that there will be gaps and errors. Please let me know if you can add or correct any information.

 

Maldives white sand beach

I am not a professional writer, so I'm afraid it won't be a gripping read that you will not be able to put down. I have not tried to make up for this shortfall my making it a 'kiss and tell'. In fact, I have purposely left out anything of that nature. I hope that, where I write about any of the people I met on my years of wanderings, I do not upset or offend them should they read any part of this.

I will try to make it interesting and informative with a lot of photos, and latterly, the odd video. I will also include photos of a lower quality than I would have liked, if it helps with the dialogue or the time line. I will include lots of maps to show where I have been, and the scale of some of the early expeditions and trips.

On a more positive note, (extract from)"inside these pages you can find stories of intrigue, elation and despair. I have dined with royalty and been arrested as a spy. There are stories of sleeping with lions, chasing rhinos, and charging bull elephants. The trials and tribulations of expedition life, the people and how they interact. Add to that beautiful and dramatic scenery, amazing wildlife photography. Cityscapes, landscapes, and more. Mountains, forests, deserts, glaciers, rivers, lakes and seas, and more."

The structure of this travelogue will be a combination of Continents and Oceans, and the expeditions, trips, holidays, or short breaks. I anticipate that this travelogue will become a very large site. It will take time to do this as Web building and writing this travelogue is purely a hobby.

I hope you enjoy it and find the information or photo you were looking for. The easiest way to achieve this may be to use the search provided by Google.

If you are one of the people involved in any of these trips please do contact me. See the contact page for details.

 

Guide, for version 2

 

The first thing to note is that the site is best viewed with 'Allow Active X'. I originally started building the site avoiding the use of anything that might normally be blocked by your browser. However, I found that too restrictive. The rotating banner images, the scrolling words, and many other less obvious things would all be disabled. However, if you chose to decline your browsers invitation to 'Allow Active X' the web site should still function reasonably well. I have not built in any harvesting script or cookies. Enjoy either way.

You will have noticed, I expect, that there are numerous menus. After careful consideration I concluded that a single menu would be too confusing both to build and maintain, and to use as a visitor to the site. Therefore there is a hierarchy of menus;

  • At the very top of the page you can navigate around my whole website, outside of this travelogue. Brown, no dropdowns.
  • Immediately below the top rotating image is the main travelogue navigation. This is set up by continents and oceans, and will get you to an expedition, trip, or holiday. Blue tabs, with dropdowns.
  • The next level is for navigation around the section, expedition, trip, or holiday. You are into the detail at this level. Also blue tabs with dropdowns
  • Occasionally, for long pages, there will be a on page menu for navigating around the page. This does not take you away from the page, just down to the area of your interest. Blue, but without dropdowns. It is included on this page as an example.

Links are another point of discussion. The way I have generally set it up is that external links open on a separate tab / window but internal links and navigation stay on the same tab / window. Where I can I have photos enlarge to a transparent film in front of the page if you click on them. If you have not allowed for scripts to run, it will open on a new page. Photos may also be used as triggers to link to other pages. Hovering over the photo should tell you what it will do on click.

There will also be several photo galleries, both on site and off. Some will be basic and others more exciting. To see some of the later you may need to have Flash and/or Silverlight installed.

 

Guide, for version 3

 

Version 3 is based around a Content Management System, and assumes a modern Browser. It is responsive to the type of devise that you are viewing on. Some of the fancy things such as Deep Zoom and Silverlight appear to have been dropped which may cause some problems.

Explore and enjoy.

Related Articles

Timeline

List of Articles

Counter

 

 

Free counters!

 

 

 

 The flag counter below is for my original travelogue, which is slowly being replaced by this one, but can still be found here.

free counters

 

 

News Flash

Change of host Sept 2023

 

Change of host Sept 2023

 

In the begining of August 2023 I transfered my ivanhurst.me.uk sites, including this one from 123-reg to IONOS. It was meant to be a simple task. However, that was to to be the case. The reason for the move was primarily the hugh increase in price that 123-reg was applying regarding email boxes. Previously, the upto 500 of the boxes were included in the various hosting packages I had. Now they were going to charge for each mailbox based on size, and as far as I could make out, this was going to cost me nearly £2,000. This was not acceptable, and I did not get satisfactory answers from support. So I turned of all the auto renews and stated to move sites and domains accross to IONOS.

Travel data problems

 

Travel data problems

This is where it starts to get a little technical.

The site is built on a content management system, CMS, using Joomla. Joomla is moving forward and version 3.10.?? is being discontinued. Future developments are for version 4.??

Similarly, PHP 7 is being replaced with PHP 8.

Part of the migration is relatively simple, I have already changed to a new template which works on the new platforms.

However, some of the helper applications, which work within Joomla are not yet ready.

Fabrik is one of those applications, if fact a significant 'Joomla Custom Website Application Builder'.

Refresh 2021

 

Site refresh Easter 2021

I decided to give the site a bit of a refresh over Easter 2021 and install a new template and some additional functions. One of the things I didn't like about the old site was the delay in text appearing which probably meant some people left before the content appeared. This has been corrected now.