Battlefields big and small...

I'm back in DC now-- crashed hard in my own bed last night-- always nice. The thin foam mattress I slept on under mosquito netting in Chad doesn't compare. The nights there were sweat-drenched and buggy. Add in the wacked-out dreams that Malarone (an anti-malarial drug) throws in the mix, and there goes any restful sleep. Every morning I'd wake up in my little bungalow in Zakouma National Park and the floor would look like a civil war battlefield, littered with the bodies of thousands of insects that had somehow crept their way in during the night. There was no point in trying to step around them in the morning-- just too many. Crunch crunch.

But enough of that. I was covering a story on elephant poaching-- here are a few images...

No more bright lights...

I'm in a hotel room in N’djamena, Chad-- watching a made for TV rip-off of The Karate Kid on a fuzzy screen. "Mr. Miyagi" looks either Indonesian or maybe Filipino in this version--- and the faux "Karate Kid" is a blond-haired dude who just finished up a musical montage by, believe it or not, running down a beach. With characteristically perfect timing, the "Karate Kid's" archrival, as all bad guys do, rolled down the window of his limo in order to watch said "Karate Kid" training on the beach. Hollywood is indeed a thing of beauty. And by the way, the whole thing is dubbed into French. Ouch.

It took me over 27 hours to go from Hong Kong to central Africa. Last week's promo tour for "Somewhere in China" was fantastic, and completely hectic. I flew out of Hong Kong--- known for it's neon, and landed in Chad after dark, a place almost completely devoid of light. Flying in to central Africa was disorienting. None of the recognizable signs of a city-- just faint embers and dying filaments eking out their existence on the black earth below.

The city neon to the city noir.

On the record...

After a 20+ hour transit we just touched down in Manila to do a bit of a PR tour for “Somewhere in China”—the National Geographic Channel travel/adventure series my brother Pete and I are hosting. It’s six one-hour episodes covering China top to bottom and starts airing on NGC this Sunday, October 12 for the next six consecutive weeks.

So the Channel flew us out here to Southeast Asia for a week to run around giving a bunch of interviews and to host some photo workshops. Here’s the schedule in case you can make it to any of the workshops.

MANILA:
Oct. 13 – 1:30 pm
Filipinas Heritage Library (Makati Avenue – Ayala Triangle)

KUALA LUMPUR
Oct. 16 – 7:30pm
Westin Kuala Lumpur

HONG KONG
Oct. 19 – 2 pm and 4 pm
Hong Kong Space Museum

In between the workshops it’s back-to-back TV and print interviews…going to be a busy week.

And after finishing up the second workshop in Hong Kong I fly straight out that night to do more work with CNN in Chad. I would imagine there’s not too much demand for a nonstop Hong Kong – N’Djamena, Chad flight unfortunately…

Stay tuned...

At the end of this week, Pete and I head off to Manila, Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong for a promo tour for our show "Lost in China" (depending on what part of the world you're in it's also known as "La Otra Cara de China" and "Somewhere in China"). Anyway -- here's a link to some of the promotion the National Geographic Channel office in Australia is doing...

The show starts airing this October in some places, with launches in January and February in other parts of Europe.