Archives: Guide

As I open my eyes on a warm monsoon morning I realise I am not at home. As drowsiness lifts, I walk up to the window to take a look outside. I see a warm monsoon mist ascending the green mountains of the “Nilgiris”.

2 pairs of steely eyes followed my every move, the faces belonging to the eyes, emotionless yet purposeful. It didn’t take long for me to crack. “Ok! Ok! Fine! I will go jogging now!”

It’s a jawbone, the crunch beneath my hiking boot. A HUMAN JAWBONE! And there are still teeth attached. It is a grizzly reminder of why I’m here and to distract myself I focus on the colourful strings of prayer flags flapping around me.

To adequately portray a pilgrimage through Vietnam on paper is a seemingly impossibly task. When a naïve, untravelled, well-sheltered teenage girl embarks on a mission of compassion, a mere few minutes...

Protests had stalled our journey from Cusco to Lima. After dropping out of altitude overnight we inexplicably stopped outside the sandboarding town of Ica. We puttered into the arid town of Pisco, ten hours from Lima.

A trip breezing by without a glitch easily fades into the recesses of blasé memories. The foregoing description immediately disqualifies Mount Bromo, an active volcano, towering at 7,641 feet in East Java, Indonesia.

The drive to Pench Tiger Reserve, in central India, is long and the air thick with dust. Throngs of cars choke the road and roadside cattle stare at me with eyes yellow and insolent.

Cabin crew, prepare for landing! My six year old's hand of comfort squeezing mine tightly as we hit another ground in a different place. He is so used to our frequent travel, protecting mum as I pretend again that I’m afraid of a fall.

Is this even safe? My arm flies across my body grabbing the blue metal bars in the back of the songthaew—which is basically the bed of a pickup truck with a roof—as we take a sharp right turn.

Isle of Mull, October 1st, 2010, and I was on a quest for otters. Two days before, I had joined a wildlife watching tour, and at the very end of this tour we had spotted an otter...