Walk in the Garden of Turia - June, 2014 - Guest post

The Garden of Turia (Jardin del Turia) is unusual park in Valencia, Spain because it is the old riverbed of Turia river. After a The Great Flood of Valencia in 1957 the river was diverted and the dry riverbed is now a green oasis that crosses the city all the way to the port.

The Music Palace

This is a place for leisure and culture. You can have picnic with the whole family, or you can jog or play football. There are sport areas for everyone.

There are many bridges overhead.

Las Torres Serrano

The park keeps you away from the city noise thanks to it's low level.

At the end of the garden there's the Biopark, the city's new zoo. The place offers a beautiful view to the city.

Tent from single square tarp sheet, enclosed with floor for £2

After receiving e-mails and questions how exactly I configure and pitch up my single tent-cape I realized that it may not be so obvious, so I decided to upload this video in which I am showing to a friend of mine - Karen how to do it. I hope now is clearer how this is done.

In short, 2x2 m (6x6 ft) tarp (tarpaulin or any other waterproof and strong enough material cut at square), stick 1.2 m (or 4 ft), 3 pegs (or just sharpened pieces of wood) and piece of string 1.5 m long are used and the pitching up should take only a couple of minutes if practiced. It could be used as rain-cape (similar to the "plash palatka") or hammock, weights around 250 gr and is very compact and light compared to the retail tents.

And just to note in the video the sides don't align perfectly, because this tarp was not exactly a square and the eyelets were not evenly spaced, but its still good enough for £2 tent. However if anybody wishes to invest some time, it can be cut to proper size and the eyelets can be realigned and the result will be very neat fully enclosed tent.

This smaller configuration has some advantages like its easier to use as rain-cape, its a bit higher, so one can sit inside somewhat comfortably, uses single pole and needs smaller spaces. The disadvantages are that it is not so comfortable, higher (easier to be seen) and when used as hammock not very comfortable, because is shorter.

For exact proportions and folding geometry look at Single Tent Cape
For videos about the configuration of double tent see 2x3 Single Sheet Tent and 2x3 Tent - rain test

Tent from single 2x3 tarp sheet, enclosed with floor for £2

After receiving e-mails and questions how exactly I configure and pitch up my double tent-cape I realized that it may not be so obvious, so I decided to upload this video in which I am showing to a friend of mine - Karen how to do it. I hope now is clearer how this is done.

In short, 2x3 m (6x9 ft) tarp (tarpaulin or any other waterproof and strong enough material cut with sides 2 by 3), 2 sticks at 1.2 m (or 4 ft) each, 2 pegs (or just sharpened pieces of wood) and piece of string are used and the pitching up should take only a couple of minutes if practiced. It could be used as rain-cape or hammock, weights around 350 gr and is very compact and light compared to the retail tents.

And just to note in the video the sides don't align perfectly, because this tarp was not with sides 2 by 3 exactly and the eyelets were not evenly spaced, but its still good enough for £2 tent. However if anybody wishes to invest some time, it can be cut to proper size and the eyelets can be realigned and the result will be very neat fully enclosed double tent.

For exact proportions and folding geometry look at New Tent Design
For my previous video about testing it in rain this tent see here.
And for a video about pitching up and configuration of the single tent see Single Tent Cape.

First impression of Gothenburg, Sweden - Guest post

Gothenburg, Sweden is one of my favourite places. I've been visiting it since 2008. That year I lived and worked there, and fell in love with the city.

The first thing that I noticed about Gothenburg is that it is so green when viewed from the air. An endless forest.

Despite being the second largest city in Sweden it gave me a feeling of a small town. There was an atmosphere of calmness and relaxation. It looked to me that road traffic almost didn't exist. That created the impression of eternal weekend. It was almost impossible to feel stressed there.

The main boulevard Avenyn, ''The Avenue''

This is how typical housing blocks in the city look like.

Interestingly sometimes there are no streets between the blocks. They are built on a hilly terrain. Like some giant just pined them up in the forest. I tried sometimes to walk to the city centre, but at some places it was very difficult to cross the terrain.

View from my window

View from my window

View from my window

Sometimes I could spot rabbits and deers through the window.

Because of the calmness and tranquillity, one thing that I could always had for sure was a good sleep.

Jogging - core human activity - the basics

Humans evolved to walk and run at low speed for long periods, so to compensate the drawbacks of the modern sedentary life-style we have to turn to the roots, and there is a lot of walking and jogging.

Its not necessary to do daily marathons, but 2-3 times per week for 30 min or 1 hour we must do some jogging and another 2-3 times per week for 2 or 3 hours we should walk. The best way to do this is to be barefoot or at least with some minimalistic foot-wear. While jogging, only our fore-foot should come in contact with the ground. This will teach us the correct posture and technique for natural running, so we can avoid pains, injuries and deformations, which nearly all modern people suffer.

Some food for the thought:
Jogging
Endurance running hypothesis

Topics for research of cultures and people

Happened that in my life I stumbled a few times on some odd and interesting people and their cultures and every time I was rather taken by surprise and didn't knew what exactly to look for and some time later, while recounting the experience I've been realizing that I've missed many interesting moments about them. So to avoid this happening in future I decided to put together list of topics in which I am personally interested in regard of researching specific cultures.

Also while I've been thinking about this topic it sprang in my mind the side project to collect information about some less known tribes and cultures, which information is often spread around the net in different places and often is wrong and contradictory. And the plan is that the points from this list will roughly correspond to separated posts about each ethnics/tribe I'm planning to do. The idea is eventually to have a full article, which will encompass all of these topics and this article will serve as complete source of information about the specific culture in one place. Ideally this has to be article in Wikipedia, but as I'll be unable for the moment to provide reliable sources it has to be put somewhere else and even if not properly sourced the information at least will be available in condensed form in one place. I'm not sure how exactly should be called such article, may be "Ethnographic study of X"? So I'll be grateful for some hint from more knowledgeable readers. Also I'd like some feedback about the list, what I missed, what I categorized wrongly, etc.

So, lets list these topics:
1. Language
2. Writing systems
3. Symbols
4. Clothing and how it is made
5. Utensils and how they are made and used
6. Tools and how they are made and used
7. Weapons and how they are made and used
8. Hunting and fishing tools and weapons, how they are made, used and by whom
9. What is hunted, when and how for each specific type of prey
10. Religion, belief system, superstitions, legends, myths, oral traditions, tales, etc
11. Customs and rituals, all particular ones listed, illustrated and explained
12. Marriage, coupling customs and rituals
13. Relations between sexes, duties and rights
14. Attitude to death, rituals and customs
15. Naming
16. Food, what is it, from where is taken, how is made, eaten, etc
17. Husbandry, what, how, by whom, when
18. Animals, what kinds, for what propose, how, by whom, where, when
19. Martial arts, training, rituals, competitions, tools/weapons
20. Festivals, celebrations
21. Songs
22. Dances
23. Free time, when, how
24. Daily life, breakdown by time, tasks, type of people
25. Annual and monthly changes, migrations
26. Work, which days, how long, from what to what time, breakdown by sex, age, trade
27. Attitude towards sex, customs, rituals
28. Rising children
29. Medicine, what, how is made, found, by who and how and by who is taken and given
30. Agriculture, what, how and for what propose is grown
31. Plants, what, how are collected or grown, how are harvested or found, how are processed and kept, for what propose, by whom
32. Housing, what is it, from what is made, how is made, where is made and by who is made
33. Water, how is found, kept, used, processed, when, by who
34. Fire, how is made, kept, used, when, by who
35. Laws, courts, authorities
36. Social hierarchy
37. Other materials used, when, how, etc
38. Decorations and motifs
39. Beauty and personal aesthetics
40. Physical description and particularities of the people from the culture

That is more or less what I am interested in the different cultures and this list is going to be the first approximation of my "Don't forget to find about ..." manual.

Thanks for reading and see you soon.

Nomad camp of Golok people, note right shoulder normally is exposed while working or sitting. (photo taken at the 1938–1939 German expedition to Tibet)

Paleo life-style - basics

In this video I am explaining some of the core ideas of my version of the paleo life-style. Mind that when we say "Paleo" it is simply rough approximation as most of the fruits and vegetables were pretty different even few centuries ago, but is the best we can do in urban setting. 

Essentially I am doing 1-2 hours of physical exercise a day, which consist of jogging between 30 and 60 min, several series of sit ups, push ups, squats, shadow fighting and more.

My daily diet consist of eating once (rarely twice) a day in the evening the following:

*grapefruit

*200-300g of meat (fish, chicken, pork, etc)

*half avocado scooped with spoon

*onion (garlic or something similar)

*juice from half lemon

*50g nuts (walnut, hazelnut, pecan, etc)

*random fruit or berry

*random vegetable

*banana

And as general note, most of the calories should come from meat

Below follows excerpt from the video:

I'd like to share some basics of my lifestyle. First I have to give you some background. Few years ago I used to be 120kg. Since then I dropped around 40kg which was about one third of my weight and I managed to maintain the muscles and improve my health with a simple combination of exercises and diet.

First I'd like to talk about the exercises. The basics are I'm doing everyday between 1 and 2 hours light exercises, which includes jogging between half and one hour, and some general exercises like kick boxing, push ups, sit ups etc. I'll describe in more details what and how exactly I'm doing in another blog. For now I'd like to concentrate on the other component which is the food.

There are several core elements that I'm eating every day – meat, grapefruit, banana, some fruits, berries, onions, nuts, lemon and avocado. Some of these thing may be changed in some of the days, but essentially that's all. I'll explain the reason in another blog.

The first thing that I'm normally eating is one grapefruit. It gives me a sense of fullness. The next is about 300gr of row meat, more often fish, with onion, lemon and half avocado. I normally eat after that some nuts, usually about 50gr and after that some berries, carrots. Some days I may eat one raw egg, which turned to be my favourite part. I like it's taste. Finally I eat a banana, which improves my digestion and generally because I like the taste.

This is my one and only meal most of the days and I'm eating it normally after 6pm. After few days you can get used to eat only one meal a day and all this is giving us much better sense of fullness then cooked food, hamburgers and so on. Probably the reason is that we've been design by Nature to eat this kind of things, without salt, sugar, and other processed food, and so our body doesn't receive wrong signals if we are full of if we have to gorge more for some reason.

Another thing that I wanted to say today is that I gave up smoking half year ago. I'm using Nicotinell lozenges in case I crave nicotine. The nicotine itself is not the bad part of cigarettes. The tar is. I feel big improvement in my health and well being.

These are the basics. In future blogs I'll be explaining in more details each one of the things that I'm doing and why I'm doing them.

A Walk In Wintry Swedish Forest - Bohusleden, Stora Mölnesjön - Christmas 2015

Here I'll share one of the better experiences I had in my life, the walks around Stora Mölnesjön and Vättlefjäll Natural reserve. The name of the track we used to follow is Bohusleden and I highly recommend to the visitors of Gothenburg to spare a day and see these lakes, regardless time of the year. Its equally beautiful in every season and while popular hiking trail, its still relatively less walked.

The Bohusleden trail starts (or at least passes close to) Rannebergen, a part of Angered suburb in Gothenburg, Sweden. Also there is the border of Vättlefjäll Natural reserve and the lake Stora Mölnesjön. This natural reserve is somewhat typical for Sweden place. One can clearly see the rocky ground, covered with relatively thin layer of soil and here and there fallen trees, which have the root system visible and one can see how it is spread very thin and wide over the boulders below. The natural reserve is pretty humid place (as most of Sweden) across the whole year and this means that there are always big swamp and bog areas, which are often difficult or even impossible to cross. Also it is good idea to be somewhat careful with the wild life as there are some dangerous animals as moose, bear and red deer during the winter or adder and mosquito during the summer. I guess making noise while walking is enough of deterrent for most of the bigger animals and spray to repel mosquitoes for the smaller. About snakes, the adder can be dangerous, but it rarely injects venom when biting and even then the venom is unlikely to kill healthy adult human, but still its a good idea to look at our feet when walking in the forests. Actually I plan in some future articles to cover more in detail the information about these animals. Also its worth to note that this place is not so far from the polar circle and in midwinter the day is pretty short, the sun rises above the horizon for something like two or three hours a day and by 3 o'clock its already dark. Having that in mind we can enjoy our walks around the lakes in Vättlefjäll, which during the summer months radiate the spirit of the Scandinavian nature and one nearly expects to run across some mythical forest creature like dwarf or hulder

So it has been snowing for few days and the fog was thick. As I said we went for a walk in the Vättlefjäll Natural reserve. Stora Mölnesjön was frozen, which is its usual state for this time of the year, however the continuous snowfalls we observed the last few years are not so usual. Anyway there were a few people having their walk and enjoying the scenery. Also we passed through few typical houses built in the outskirts of the reserve and the lake and I think that it should be very nice to live in this area. It is just 30 min away from the city centre but I have the feeling that the civilization is already far away. The temperature was well below zero, but there was something rather interesting, young local guys were taking bath in the icy waters of the lake in hole they cut in the ice. So, here we have few of the pictures from that day, enjoy!

First view of Stora Mölnesjön

Stora Mölnesjön swamp

Villas around Stora Mölnesjön

Bohusleden trail starts

Stora Mölnesjön view from the trail

Ice Bathing in Stora Mölnesjön

Thick Fog over Vättlefjäll

Mini-bridge at Stora Mölnesjön

Stora Mölnesjön, connection between the lakes

Bohusleden track passes sometimes over boulders

Bohusleden

Further the Bohusleden trail

At the Bohusleden trail one can see often these tree trunks used as bridges over swampy places or small brooks

Its tricky to cross one of these when its frozen, but lighter animals walk easily over the ice

One of the impossible to cross swamped areas

View of the frozen lake in the fog

Walk in the centre of Sofia (test video)

This video is not meant to be touristic guide, but rather it will try to give a feeling of what to expect to see when visiting Sofia. Also I'm learning now how to do videos, so the shaking camera and other weak points are some of these beginner's things. So I joined few short clips, which I had from before in one longer and played a bit with the video creator and this is the result. I learned a few things and I think the next videos will start to improve little by little.