Nina Karnikowski

1 week ago | watoday.com.au | Nina Karnikowski

Later, an American volunteer explains that while Bhutan prides itself on having no orphanages, monasteries often become homes for children who have lost their parents. After a dawn ceremony the next morning, thick with incense, chanting and the rhythm of gongs, we hike back to Thimphu. As we go, Thunder opens up about Bhutan’s pressures.

1 week ago | smh.com.au | Nina Karnikowski

, register or subscribe to save articles for later. Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. We’re hiking through pine-scented hills above Paro, the city fanned out below in a patchwork of rice paddies, timber-framed houses and temples. Our guide, a giggly man named Thunder who is dressed in a traditional gho (a knee-length robe tied at the waist), pauses to point out wild wormwood and Sichuan pepper sprouting along the trail. The air is crisp, the light soft.

2 weeks ago | smh.com.au | Nina Karnikowski

, register or subscribe to save articles for later. Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. We all dream of it: shutting up shop and escaping to some faraway locale for a long stint. Few of us, however, take the leap. Fear and logistics get in the way, so let’s break it down. First step, after getting crystal clear on your motivations behind taking said sabbatical, is organising leave from work.

1 month ago | smh.com.au | Nina Karnikowski

, register or subscribe to save articles for later. Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. We’ve been driving for the better part of five hours, traversing a dizzying series of switchbacks on a rough track carved along the cliffs, when the village finally comes into view.

2 months ago | smh.com.au | Nina Karnikowski

Travel Writer April 18, 2025 — 5.00am, register or subscribe to save articles for later. Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. It’s the day we’ve all been dreading. “Death day”, as we’ve facetiously called it; the second-last day of a Buddhism retreat at Kathmandu’s Kopan Monastery, when 130 fellow travellers and I will meditate on our own deaths. We’ve heard whispers about this meditation since the start of the 10-day retreat.