What? It’s only November and my 2015 calendars are almost ready??! Yes, gentle reader, in a rare instance of advance planning, I have managed to pick out twelve of my favourite photographs from the past year, and the printers are working their magic on them as I type (well, probably not, given that it’s 8pm on a Monday evening, but I can hope…)

The pictures I’ve selected were all taken in Kayin or Kachin State in Myanmar, or Tibet and Xinjiang in China. All four regions have been afflicted by long-running ethnic conflicts, and yet – despite all the difficulties faced in their daily lives – I found the local people incredibly welcoming, the scenery often bewitchingly beautiful, and it’s those qualities that I hope to share in this calendar.

Mr September strikes a pose © Jo James

If you would like to buy one (or two, or…), you can do so in my very bare “Shop“, where, for the princely sum of HK$138 (or £11, US$18, €14) plus postage it can be yours!

All profits will be donated to people I met while I was in Myanmar earlier this year; to Ma Myat in Hpa’An whose father, a soft-spoken gentle man, has been stricken with pneumonia; to Sein Win in Bhamo, a 72-year old self-taught engineer and part-time tour guide who hopes to build an airplane (don’t laugh, he’s already had a stab at making a helicopter) so that he can, in his words, “see the world before I get too old”; and to Mr Book, in Hsipaw, who donates supplies to country schools and gives succour (in the form of his revivifying ginger tea) to footsore travellers.

May 2015 be a good year for them, and for us all!

J xx

Soundtrack: “Calendar Song” by Boney M

**Update**: Anyone want to see minuscule versions of the final picture selection? Here you go then…