Yesterday was our first full day of voluntary self-quarantine at home in San Miguel de Allende, where the fear of impending coronavirus cases looms like the thunderclouds that mark so many summer evenings here in Mexico’s high desert.
As a traveler and photographer I’ve always been drawn to people as much as to the places they inhabit. So with “social distancing” the phrase of the moment and our fate for the indefinite future, I hope to spend part of our sequester posting photographic memories of encounters that moved me...and spark hope of journeys still to come.
First up: the manager of a refurbished 16th century caravanserai (inns that offered shelter to traders along the Silk Road) near Yazd, Iran - one of the most fascinating, friendly and beautiful countries I’ve ever visited. When I was there on a travel assignment for USA Today in late 2008, locals were optimistic that the country’s still-nascent tourism industry might help build bridges to the West.
Not then, not yet...and not anytime soon. But in a world turned upside down by COVID-19, the words of the 13th century Persian poet Rumi have taken on a poignant new resonance: “Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.”
