Inside the Travel Lab

Ouchijuku Village, Japan For some reason, these photos look calm. Yet in reality, a blizzard raged and the muted glow of the snow-plough’s headlights provided just enough light to let me capture this scene: fragile, snow-cloaked candles beneath an otherwise relentless black sky. Sleet assaulted our eyes, abraded our cheeks and hounded our cameras, while [...]

The steam rising out of the drain cover caught my attention first. It was a cold, vengefully cold mid-winter morning in Hungary as I paced along the tarmac, limbs mechanical yet numb, face frozen, eyes rimmed with weather-induced tears.

Everyone was…

The older I get, the more I enjoy cooking classes. With an opening statement like that, I’m in danger of whirling around in a cartoon swirl and remerging as an immaculately groomed housewife from the 1950s: hair set, rosy-cheeked smile, skirt that sticks out like a snipped triangle and the scent of freshly baked cookies following me around like a caricature cloud…

This Photo Friday, I bring you Croatia’s Capital at its warm and wintry best. Check out more about the #ironroute over here and watch this space for the words…They’re on their way…

From the moment I opened the parcel, I could tell it was going to be special. I’d expected a standard “how to cook book” but instead I discovered a dreamy journey to India, bound between hardback pages adorned with purple and gold. Tasting India by Christine Manfield is clearly a labour of love. With India, [...]

Time, this week, played tricks on me. An illusion: disappearing, twisting, sliding and slipping away… This photo, from the kamakura matsuri or igloo festival in Tohoku, Japan last year, just seemed to fit for this week’s Photo Friday. The region had just recovered from one of the harshest winters on record – and yet none [...]

I hope to bring Ljubljana to life for you here on Inside the Travel Lab, piece by piece, over the course of 2012 as part of my #IronRoute Project. Yet to spare you the overload experienced by my hard drive, oh long-suffering reader, I’ll start with this bite-sized list and fill in the gaps later.

I’m going to tell you a secret. I’ve longed to visit Ljubljana. I’ve longed to let my tongue run over the improbable syllables of its name before I even knew how to say them…

Whenever I feel the cold breath of winter on my neck as autumn runs out of time, my tastebuds turn to octopus, the signature dish at…

Apparently, it’s bad form to write about sunsets. And even to take photos of them. And even to start sentences with “and” – but right now…