One of the things that fascinates me when travelling is seeing how the modern world is mixing with local traditions. When visiting a village in northern Albania I saw this traditional house which has become home to an internet cafe. This was a small remote village, and during communist times would have been totally isolated, yet now has access to the whole world! Another sight of ‘old meeting new’ which remains in my mind, but which I wasn’t able to capture as we were travelling too quickly, is of a Bedouin tent I saw along the Kings Highway in Jordan. The tent was pitched in the sandy desert as I would expect it to be ... but what I didn’t expect to see was a 4x4 vehicle parked at one end of the tent and a satellite dish at the other end. How times have changed everywhere!

stories of lives : stories of nations