RUDOLF ABRAHAM travel writer & photographer

(author, photographs, maps)
Winner 'Best Guidebook' award, Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild Awards for Excellence, 2008 (sponsored by Aquapac International)
The mountains of Montenegro are some of the wildest, most spectacular, and least visited in Europe. Nevertheless they are easily accessible, and many areas have well-marked trails. They present an opportunity to travel through outstandingly beautiful and remarkably unspoilt natural scenery, which as yet sees few visitors. The Mountains of Montenegro is the first comprehensive English-language guide to walking in this beautiful area, written by an author who has visited the country over a number of years and has lived in neighbouring Croatia. ...click here to read more about this book

(author, photographs, maps)
Rising suddenly and spectacularly beyond the narrow ribbon of coastal cities and rocky beaches, the mountains of Croatia have much to commend them as a walking destination. Ranging from gently sloping, forested hills to rugged tops and limestone crags, and reaching its most spectacular in the massifs, collectively known as the Dinaric Alps, it is a wilderness of magnificent grandeur, rich in wildlife and plants. ...click here to read more about this book

Torres del Paine. A Trekker's Guide (Cicerone Press, 2010)

(author, photographs, maps)

Walking in Croatia (2nd edition; Cicerone Press, 2010)

(author, photographs, maps)

In Progress:

Croatia (National Geographic Traveler, 2011)

(author, photographs as credited)

Trekking in Eastern Turkey (Cicerone Press, 2011)

(author, photographs, maps)

Contributing Author/Photographer:

Croatia. The Bradt Travel Guide (4th edition; Bradt, 2010)

(updates)

'Highly recommended…. Very detailed guide provides information for all types of travellers, from holidaymakers to backpackers, families to lone travellers.' (www.visit-croatia.co.uk)

The Road Less Travelled (DK Eyewitness, 2009)

(contributor)

A guide to the world's unspoilt sights and experiences - 1,000 fresh and fascinating alternatives to hundreds of well-known tourist destinations and sights, written by a team of travel experts and with a foreword by Bill Bryson. 'A book to keep by the bedside to fuel your dreams.' (The Mail on Sunday, September 2009)

J.M. Rogers, The Arts of Islam: Treasures from the Nasser D Khalili Collection (exhibition catalogue, Emirates Palace, Abu Dhabi, 2008)

(contributor; additional editing)

J.M. Rogers, The Arts of Islam: Treasures from the Nasser D Khalili Collection (exhibition catalogue, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2007)

(contributor; additional editing)

Art et Culture de l’Islam (Solar, 2006)

(text contributions and research; photographs as credited)

Islamic Art and Culture. A Visual History (Overlook Press, 2006)

(text contributions and research; photographs as credited)

The Timeline History of Islamic Art and Architecture (Worth Press, 2005)

(text contributions and research; photographs as credited)

B. Abraham, Worcester - A History and Celebration (Ottakar’s, 2004)

(photographs as credited)

C.E. Yate, Northern Afghanistan (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2003)

(introduction)

Robert Curzon, Armenia: A Year at Erzeroom and on the Frontiers of Russia, Turkey and Persia (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2003)

(introduction)

(introduction)
One morning in the spring of 1863, in a dusty caravanserai in the city of Tehran, a certain Hadji Reshid—ostensibly a dervish from Rum (Turkey) who was journeying eastwards in search of enlightenment—joined a caravan of pilgrims returning from Mecca; and furnished with only a pilgrim’s staff, a beggar’s bowl, a few rags of clothing and a small bag of silver coin, set off across the hungry wastes of Central Asia to Khiva, Bukhara and Samarqand. ...click here to read more about this book

Monuments and Memorials: Carvings and Tilework from the Islamic World (The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art VOL XXIV) (The Nour Foundation, not yet published)

(contributor; editing)

Rival to China: Later Islamic Pottery (The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art VOL X) (The Nour Foundation, not yet published)

(contributor; editing)

Recent Articles:

Hidden Europe

Seated on a worn and silvery metal bench, on a quiet tree-lined terrace in Zagreb’s Gornji grad (Upper Town), a lone figure gazes out over the red-tiled roofs and Secessionist facades of the city below. He sits, evidently lost in thought, his arms flung languidly across the back of the bench. The man is seemingly quite untroubled by the traces of graffiti on his chest and legs. Sometimes a passer-by joins him on his bench, perhaps leaning against him or slinging an arm loosely around his silvery neck, and on such occasions it is not always entirely clear who is keeping whom company.... ...click here to read more of this article

The Croatian village of Jovici sits above the western shore of the Velebit Channel - that long natural waterway which separates the Dalmatian islands of Krk, Rab and Pag from the nearby mainland. Jovici is about twenty kilometres as the crow flies northeast of the city of Zadar, on a finger of the mainland that pokes up towards the island of Pag. Holidaymakers and delivery vans speed north towards Pag, and Jovici hardly catches the eye: a single shop, a small church, a scattering of houses among fields of shattered rock, with a sublime view over the water to the mountains of southern Velebit beyond. Yet scratch beneath the surface and, like so many places on the map, this small village and its surroundings are found to hold many hidden histories.... ...click here to read more of this article

Angoulême hosts its enormous comic strip festival, called the Festival International de la Bande Dessinée, in late January each year. It is an event which regularly pulls close to a quarter of a million visitors to the city on the Charente river. Large marquees swarm with avid fans; there are performances, interviews and exhibitions; and artists sign and dedicate endless copies of their books... ...click here to read more of this article

Early one morning in the summer of 1908, a small party left the village of Thethi in northern Albania. And, having floundered through the waist-deep snow which still choked the Qafa e Peje or Cafa Pes, the travellers descended into the Ropojana valley, in what is now Montenegro. ...click here to read more of this article

Velebit, we are told in the words of an old Croatian folk song, is the haunt of fairies. It is a strangely beautiful place, its wind-scoured heights characterized by areas of bizarrely sculpted and weathered rock, studded with thickets of dwarf mountain pine, and pierced by some of the deepest sinkholes in the world. In winter, it is transformed into a snowbound landscape like something out of a painting by Caspar David Friedrich. Wild, eerie, fractured and disjointed. ...click here to read more of this article

Few are the visitors who probe Montenegro’s mountainous border with northern Albania. It is a fascinating and remote area, a spectacular landscape of isolated valleys and fang-like peaks, with a long and compelling history. Lying at the headwaters of the River Tara and the River Lim, and marching with the narrow finger of territory which forms the northern tip of Albania, this area constitutes one of the wildest remaining corners of Europe. ...click here to read more of this article

Wanderlust

'Travel Icon: Torres del Paine' (October 2009)

'Durmitor and Boka Kotorska. A Coast and Countryside Weekend in Montenegro' (June 2009)

BBC Countryfile

'Discover Northumberland's Winter Wildlife' (January 2010)

'Mt Caburn to Firle Beacon' (January 2010)

'Waltham Abbey and the River Lea' (December 2009)

'The Long Man of Wilmington' (October 2009)

CNN Traveller

10 City Breaks for Winter - Zagreb (November/December 2009)

Outdoor Focus

'Portfolio' (Summer 2009)

Silversea Cruises

'Adventures in Patagonia' (June 2009)

Canvas

‘Mughal Jewellery’ (March 2009)

‘Islamic Metalwork’ (January 2009)

‘Lacquer of the Islamic Lands’ (November 2008)

‘Pictorial Chronicles’ (September 2008)

‘Carpets from the Khalili Collection’ (July 2008)

Writing/photography for the web:

BBC Countryfile

'Country pubs' (December 2009)

World Travel Guide

Santiago City Guide (November 2009)