A bit about us

Poor John and Leggy Peggy biking in Hamburg

Welcome to our mayhem!

We are John and Peggy Bright from Canberra, Australia’s national capital.

Poor John (which will be his handle forevermore) is a retired Australian diplomat and lawyer. He is long suffering and I force him to do all this stuff. Yeah, right! Check out the truth. He’s from Adelaide, South Australia. And he loves travel and adventure.

I’m a freelance writer, specialising in plain English for the Australian Government. I’m originally from Nebraska, but left the USA in 1976 because I won a scholarship to do my master’s degree at the University of Cairo in Egypt.

Poor John and I met in Cairo. After my degree work, I returned to the USA to lecture in journalism at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. A little later we hooked up again and got married in Ajlun, Jordan, in 1980. After that, we spent quite a bit of time in the Middle East—especially Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. Our first daughter was born in Damascus, Syria. We also had a few years living in South East Asia.

This blog is mostly about our extended road trips and the camping, sights, meals, happenings and occasional souvenirs that go with them.

A stroll in the desert in Turkmenistan

We’ve done a lot of time in cars, vans, trucks, buses, tuk tuks, trains, boats, ferries, donkeys, horses—you name it. And stayed in tents, hostels and cheap hotels most of the time. We’ve been part of many cook groups and shopped our way through food markets (one of my passions) in most parts of the globe.

We’ve loved two overland journeys in Africa, a Silk Road jaunt from London to Sydney (through the ‘Stans’ and Tibet), a second Silk Road trip from Tehran to Beijing, two expeditions in South America, many long jaunts in Australia, a train journey across Canada, an array of memorable tours in the USA, two road trips in India, and an expedition through Bhutan.

I reckon we’ve each more than 200,000 kilometres by road in the last five years—I wish there was a way to convert those to frequent flyer miles.

But our travels go way back and, when time permits, I’ll write about other, older adventures that you might find interesting. I love food, cooking and collecting cookbooks. I share that too, and you can check out my other blog—Cooking on page 32.

So drop in often—ask questions, leave comments. If you sign up to follow the blog, you’ll get an email every time I post a new item.

Confession: I’m almost always a little behind on the blog. Poor internet connections, too busy sightseeing, bouncing along on the back of a truck, lack of power are all reasons the blog jumps around from continent to continent (we’ve been to all seven).

Hope you don’t mind wondering exactly where in the world I am. There’s still lots of the world to explore.

Awards
And a quick comment about awards. Thanks in advance to everyone who nominates me for an award. It is most appreciated, but I will have to keep this blog award-free. We travel so much and in such remote places, I feel lucky when I have enough internet connection to get a blog post done. So thanks but please understand.