Iranian “Persian” Carpets from Chris Beauchamp on Vimeo. In July 2010, Chris and I visited Iran for 3 weeks. While there, we met a man named Abed. I like to describe him as an “Iranian hippie”. We spent four wonderful days with him in Esfahan, Iran. He shared his mind and style of life with us, taking us to the new, hip parts of town, as well the old historical ones. Above all, he opened our eyes to the history, the unique story and the life behind each and every Iranian “Persian” Carpet. Each carpet has meaning unique to itself. The two broad categories of carpets are City Weave and Nomadic. In this video, Abed teaches the significance of common symbols found in carpets. The video features the two Nomadic carpets Chris and I bought to commemorate our epic eight month journey and visit to Iran. Music by Niyaz. Footage…Continue Reading
This is a mixture of video clips and photographs taken during our trip to Siem Reap, Cambodia in August 2010. The creation of the video and the footage was taken by Laura Beauchamp. The featured photographs were taken by Chris Beauchamp. The video was made using iMovie. Laura was feeling cheesy when she made it so she used the “Photograph Album” video template. She also apologizes for the glitches in the sound, she’s looking into a solution. Siem Reap, Cambodia from Chris Beauchamp on Vimeo.  
Some of you may remember the Gibbon Experience from previous posts on the blog. The Gibbon Experience is a conservation project in northwestern Laos based on eco-tourism. Apparently the local people were hunting the gibbons to extinction before a conservation group helped them to transform that lifestyle into sustainable project. Tourists who pay for a chance to visit the Bokeo Nature Preserve also get to sleep in tree houses connected by a remarkable zip line network. We went for three days and had a fantastic time. The project is set up to employ as many locals as possible so as to spread the relative wealth. Although some of the trekking was a bit arduous in the humid jungle, the whole experience was fantastic. Check it out if you’re heading to Laos. http://www.gibbonexperience.org/ The music in this is by Canadian singer-songwriter Dan Mangan. http://www.danmanganmusic.com/ The video was edited together quickly using…Continue Reading
Unfortunately we don’t have better footage than this. Trust us: traffic in Tehran is far more “interesting” than presented here. It’s just really hard to get clips when it’s 35 degrees and you’re homesick and hungry. Don't ask why we came to Iran. Better to ask yourself why you haven't been.  
As promised, here is the video we created over the past few days for our pals at Second Home Hostel in Istanbul. It still amazes me that it can take over 30 hours of work to produce a video less than two minutes long. Hope you enjoy it. Attentive readers may recognize the beautiful female lead. If you’re coming to Istanbul, you can find these guys at www.secondhomehostel.com or through common booking sites like Hostel World and Trip Advisor. We recommend it! p.s. – This video is dedicated to Ben and Pen Clark. Thanks for hooking it up guys!  
May 16, 2010 – 7:30 pm Forget everything I said before. This place is not romantic. It’s deadly, unforgiving, and miserable. Full of pain and agony. Okay, maybe not that bad, but right now Laura and I are in low spirits. We’re tired. We ran out of mineral water, and can’t help but remember how Rashid carelessly drank some, and used some more for dishes and washing on our first day. Rashid can drink the well water, but we can’t for legitimate fear that the bacteria and microbes will make us sick. We’ve put some treatment pills in a bottle of well water, but have to wait two hours for them to do their work. We’re very thirsty, and have aches and pains throughout our bodies. Rashid said it would be an hour from our lunch spot, but it’s actually been about three, and the heat is the harshest we…Continue Reading
May 16, 2010 – Midday The nights out here have been wonderful. Not only do we get to rest while things cool off considerably and Rashid sets to work on the evening meal, but we also get to enjoy the type of clear, starry sky you can only find in a dry environment far from city lights, in the desert or the arctic. The company we paid to arrange this trek is called Caravane Mille Etoiles, the Caravan of the Thousand Stars, and the name is apt. The only thing they should work on is actually telling people that it is not a camel ride into the desert so much as a relentless death march in the baking sun. The dunes themselves have also been enjoyable, even though we have only been camping among relatively small ones (maybe 50m tall). Burying one’s sore feet in the still-warm sand and watching…Continue Reading
May 16, 2010 – Midday No entry for yesterday. Just too damned hot. Figured I’d make the effort today, despite my fatigue, before time and distance dissipate my memories like a camel fart in the desert. I’m not a religious man, but “prayer” is the closest thing to what was going through my mind as we struggled up and then crested each successive rise this morning only to discover yet another scrubby valley to cross—prayer that each one would be the last, that we would finally see the dunes and scattered trees that might provide enough shade for our mid-day break. But valley after valley was the same baked hardpan. All we saw was more desert. Another shadeless expanse to cross. Another few kilometers before yet another rise and the hope that this might be it. We crossed about eight of these valleys this morning alone, and the temperature is…Continue Reading
May 14, 2010 There is only an hour or two between the previous entry and this one. Since I wrote the last bit, we have eaten the day’s lunch. Rashid prepared and served us what he called “Berber Omelette,” an egg and tomato dish with peppers, onions and the usual spices that was remarkably like Turkish menemen. The camels are nearby, contented from the water we drew from a well right before lunch, and feeding on scraggly shrubs. Rashid is washing the dishes, which generally involves splashing some untreated well-water on everything and sloshing it around a basin. I try not to think that it’s the same basin the camels have drank out of, or that Rashid washed his feet in, or that Laura and I have also used to wash. Desert hygiene is not city hygiene. At least he’s using soap. Laura and I are actually feeling spoiled and…Continue Reading
May 14, 2010 The dusty streets of Zagora feel very far away and very long ago. It’s hard to believe it was only yesterday. The contrast between the desert and even a small town like Zagora couldn’t be more pronounced. When the wind dies down out here, it is perfectly still. Perfectly quiet. We are about six to ten kilometers from the camp where we spent last night. It is about 30 degrees Celsius in the shade right now, and we are passing the hottest part of the day under a desert tree. Our young guide, Rashid, 28, tells us it is called Tamarist in French, “Lit-luh” in Arabic, and “Tashwoodth” in Berber. He doesn’t know the English name. Rashid is himself Berber, descended from the desert nomads who once lived off the land in this area, but who have mostly settled down in nearby communities since Rashid’s grandfather’s time.…Continue Reading
This is the first part of a six-part series on our camel trek in the Moroccan Sahara. The additional entries will be posted each day over the next week. After that, you can see all six here. May 13, 2010 As I write this we’re only about two hours into our great Sahara adventure and it’s already the highlight of our Morocco trip. We’re in the back of a grand taxi—one of Morocco’s intercity shared taxis—speeding toward the small village of Tamegroute, where we will hopefully meet our desert guide and hop into a 4WD to head into the dunes. After scouring the overpriced tours available in Marrakesh, we decided to simply head to the desert on our own in the hopes of arranging something on the ground. That has proven to be a good decision. In Marrakesh we found several travel agents, who practiced varying-intensity versions of the hard…Continue Reading
We made this video in Zagora, the night we got out of the desert in order to tease our blog readers with the upcoming content and to let everyone know we were safe and sound.