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Travel Stories Out of Asia

 

 

The Frontier of Our True Country

· A Story Out of the Wakhan Corridor ·

  • Joseph
  • January 3, 2021
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“From dark to dawn and dawn to dark again. At night, he wakes in dark and, straining his face against the hood, he believes he sees starlight. Dawn, and they have him up on his feet, walking. All day they cross a vast and awesome land. In his vision, the land is the earth at the dawn of creation, back in the beginning, when light and darkness still ranged over the face of the earth.” So begins “The Frontier of Our True Country,” a story of war, flight, travel and transformation out of the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan.

Journey with a boy, a mule, a band of Pashtuns, and an American soldier, a deserter, to the fabled land of the three frontiers, where the Pamirs and the Karakorum meet the Hindu Kush at the westernmost end of the Himalaya on the roof of the world and the mightiest mountain ranges on earth wed and become one. An elemental land where the sky seems eternally sprent with stars and existence brushes up against the mythical, the lyrical and the violent and even human drama seems wed to the timeless course of a river.

Lobsang and the Snow Lioness

· A Story of Tibet ·

  • Joseph
  • May 3, 2020
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“Listen, friend, and I will tell you an old story that’s still good. One day, the Buddha went up to the snow mountain to pray. This was long ago in one of the Buddha’s past lives, before the Buddha was the Buddha. Back then, in his own boyhood days, he was still a young bodhisattva full of unfulfilled yearning and struggling to find his way.” So begins “Lobsang and the Snow Lioness,” a story of modern-day Tibet imbued with elements of myth and mystery; an imaginative work of literary fiction rooted in a real-world place and inspired by the author’s travels in Tibet.

Journey with Joseph and The Land West of Long Mountain Project to the Land of Snows, to the Roof of the World and the heart of the earth, to a small town called Manigango in the green highland heart of Kham, in the grasslands of Eastern Tibet, where a yak herder and young boy named Lobsang with a love for the earthy, for the bardic and the lyrical goes on a quest in search of annihilation in the wake of his brother’s self-immolation, but in the end experiences the transformative force of mystery and the healing power of violent grace and finds something closer to enlightenment and to peace of heart. In short: to an experience of the sublime on earth. Come, friend, and listen, and the Bard of Manigango will sing to you the story of “Lobsang and the Snow Lioness,” a story which aspires to be a modern-day myth for a myth-starved modern world.

Welcome to the Land West of Long Mountain Project

· A Summertime Greeting from Gansu ·

“Welcome to the Land West of Long Mountain Project.” Dispatch No. 1: Some Notes on Travelling and Storytelling, and an Aspiration Statement from the Author for the Project. Readers will learn more about Joseph Modugno, and the roots of the Land West of Long Mountain Project are discussed and explored. “Portraits of Asia: 2009-2019,” a collection of photographs from Western China, Central and Southeast Asia and the Greater Himalaya is also shared in a bright and colorful mosaic gallery, along with pictures of Joseph’s own decade of travel in Asia and his life in Gansu.

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