I was never supposed to go trekking in the Himalayas, you see. With a minuscule piece of hand luggage to last the entire trip, and clothing apparel tailored to the islands and beaches of Southeast Asia and the deserts of Rajasthan, it simply couldn’t work. The plan was to get to subtropical Kathmandu overland by …
I want to visit every country in the world, it is as simple as that. I cannot remember the exact moment that I decided I would aim for and achieve my own global conquest, in a geographical sense; I merely became aware one day that this is something I would do. The rapid and clear …
What a delight it is when a country confounds all expectations and delivers a rich and genuinely satisfying travel experience. After a mildly disappointing week in Laos, which provided plenty of social and physical activity but lacked the cultural and culinary stimuli of its near neighbours, it was left to unheralded Bangladesh to reignite my …
“Do you have any long trousers? We are going to my private members’ club this evening, but there is a dress code and they do not allow shorts.” I don’t know what exactly I was expecting from my week-long sojourn in Bangladesh, but it didn’t involve boujee nightclubs, and certainly not during Ramadan. It was …
Well, where to begin? Picking a mere 9 photos is a genuinely tricky task, because Japan delivered it all on this visit, truly. From global award-winning digital art installations to budget Michelin starred meals, via lifetime running achievements and official world records, fantastic human encounters, and even an early blossoming of the famed sakura: Tokyo …
I can very clearly remember my initial impressions of Tokyo, as I wandered around the planet’s most densely populated metropolitan region in an almost permanent daze on the first day of what was to be the shortest of my four visits to date, exactly ten years ago. I had sneakily booked the flights on a …
Hello. It’s been a while. So long, in fact, that I am struggling to even rationalise how much has happened since my last blog post, nearly two years ago. In chronological order since those long forgotten musings: I became events manager at a backpacker hostel in Peru’s Sacred Valley; fell in love very much at …
Sand, sand, sand… Sand as far as the eye can see, and beyond. Whatever scenery I was expecting from my first week in Peru, 500m high dunes, desert oases, and hundreds of kilometres of arid coastline was not it. And if the landscape has changed dramatically from Ecuador, so too has the pace of travel. …
If the common travel adage is true that one should always leave a reason to return when leaving a country for the first time, then omitting to visit the Galápagos Islands on this visit to Ecuador should pretty much guarantee a return trip in this life rather than my next incarnation. That it is my …
Here we go again. My view of the quite majestic Volcano Chimborazo (furthest point from the centre of the earth, and closest to the stars), disappears from my bus window seat view as we dip into a valley and are engulfed yet again in the white mist. The sky too is gone. Only the very …