Eurasia in motion
I am a writer and field educator based in Yunnan, southwest China. I studied Chinese and Iranian history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and have worked independently ever since. I have contributed to ethnographic research on Central Asian medical traditions and spent years travelling and working across China, Tibet, Southeast Asia and Central Asia.
My work brings together cultural history, religion, landscape, food and agriculture, trade and migration, and contemporary life. I design and lead experiential journeys, field seminars and educational programs for international students, travelers and learning communities, using places as classrooms and direct encounter as a way of understanding cultures and ourselves.
My particular interest is in the connections between places and people: how landscapes, roads, markets, religions and everyday practices carry histories forward.
Books, editing and press contributions published beyond this site.
On the Aral Sea (Hebrew)
Read in GlobesFood culture in the Pamir Mountains (Hebrew)
Read in HaaretzLijiang, China — International ecotourism magazine
Read in EcoclubArticle (Hebrew)
Read in YnetSilk Road travel essays on Urumqi, Kashgar and the Karakoram Highway, TravelChina (Hebrew)
Read on TravelChinaWriter profile and essays on culture, history and travel (Hebrew)
Writer page on TarbThe bitter route: the rhubarb road (Hebrew)
Read in Healing ArtsKumis: essence of the steppe (Hebrew)
Read in Healing ArtsSix subject areas that run through the essays, field notes and programmes. Each one is grounded in a place or a body of work on the site.
Living in southwest China, I write and lead journeys from the province up: county markets, minority polities, the old cities of Dali and Lijiang, and the way contemporary life still moves along historical grooves. The focus is on how the centre and the margins of the Chinese world have shaped each other.
Trade, migration and civilisational contact across the Pamirs, the Gansu corridor and the Taklamakan margins. I read routes through logistics, water and evidence on the ground rather than romance, and connect the medieval manuscript world to present-day border societies.
Mahayana formation in west China, the encounter between Buddhism and local practice, and religion as it is lived in kitchens, on roads and at shrines. My field seminars move between text and place, asking how doctrine, ritual economy and ordinary devotion keep each other alive.
Mountains, rivers, passes and settlement patterns as active forces in history and belief. I treat terrain not as backdrop but as an archive: sacred geography, irrigation, cartography and the forms villages take when they have to survive the same valley for centuries.
Tea, grain, fermentation, markets and the agricultural landscapes that hold a society's history in edible form. I follow ingredients from cultivation through kitchen to ritual, tracing how material life carries memory and exchange.
Small-group study journeys, field seminars and walking lectures that treat place as a classroom and encounter as a method. I build programmes around explicit questions, pre-departure reading, structured observation and written reflection.
I work with travellers, students, learning communities and institutions through journeys, teaching, research and writing.
For small groups who want to travel with a reader of the place rather than a conventional guide. Programmes are shaped around a subject — a road, a cuisine, a religious landscape — and move slowly enough for real encounter.
Study journeys for schools, universities and learning communities. These combine pre-departure reading, field notebooks, local guests and a written output, with the journey treated as an act of inquiry rather than a product.
Short, intensive programmes that mix seminar discussion with time on the ground. Recent examples include Buddhist Roads in west China and the Silk Road Gateways route through the Gansu corridor.
Curated walks in Dali and the Erhai Valley that read streets, temples, markets and food systems at close range. These are public-facing formats as well as bespoke sessions for small groups.
Longer projects that combine archival reading, field observation and writing. The Dali Infusion retreat and the ongoing Tea Roads work are examples of place-based projects that grow out of years of fieldwork.
Essays, field notes, research pieces and talks in English and Hebrew. I also work with editors and institutions on commissioned writing that brings scholarly material to a literate general audience.
Cities, caves, pastures and passes that appear in the writing and in the journeys. Select a marker to read what the place is doing here.