* Bells ringing *

“Intermission is now over, please retake your seats”

I’m back from the Himalayas.  (Safe and sound — thankfully, we were nowhere near the avalanche that claimed a dozen or so lives in northern Nepal, and we were nearly a week into our hike by the time we heard about the plane crash on the route we’d flown to get up to the mountains.)

And in actual fact, I’m one country further on from there already, having spent a whirlwind two days in Singapore en route to Hanoi, whose food I’ve been hungrily devouring over the last couple of days.  (Not that I didn’t hungrily devour Singapore’s, too.)

So, as promised, we’ll shortly be resuming our irregularly programmed regular programming, starting with Dubrovnik, before working our way through the Balkans, Egypt, Jordan, the UAE and Hong Kong before you even see another word written about Nepal.

In the meantime, here’s one of my favourites of the thousand-plus photos I happily snapped while wandering around the mountains.  (All of which I have yet to organise, caption, etc.)  That would be Mt Everest in the middle (with the sun poking out behind it), looking for all the world not as tall as Lhotse, to its right.  Enjoy!

The sun rising behind Mt Everest (centre) and Lhotse (right), as seen from Kala Patthar