Desroches Island: the first view that catches your eye

Desroches Island, Seychelles

Raindrops decorated most of my days in the Seychelles, the hours passing beneath skies streaked with charcoal, while I huddled like an over-protective mother around my-definitely-not-waterproof camera gear. I made footprints in the sand and cycled along the wet earth, feeling it spring from the bounce of the casuarina tree leaves. I took cooking lessons, searched for turtles, experienced beach profiling and battled with my inner emesis on a deep-sea fishing boat (No, I haven’t missed the “n” off and it’s definitely not as spiritual as it sounds. Ask Google.)

But in those brief moments of joyous sunshine, I took photos. Particularly of those Desroches’ creatures who didn’t seem too keen about the rain…

The parts of Desroches Island visible at second glance...

Disclosure: I travelled to Desroches Island as a guest of SeyExclusive. As usual, editorial control remains mine, all mine…

Desroches Island: The Seychelles in the Sun first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

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 our voices had long since been swept away.

This street, a beautifully preserved row of thatched cottages from Japan’s Edo Period, is only 300 metres long.

Walking it under these conditions, felt like 300 years. Which is handy, really, since that’s roughly how old the place is.

Ouchijuku Village used to be an important staging post on the route between Imaichi and Aizu Wakamatsu. Over time, the world grew faster and its importance faded away. Yet it kept its character and today provides a delicious taste of traditional life in Japan.

As does this photo of a woman waiting for us as we arrived at our hotel. Total and utter dedication. And possibly frostbite. I shiver at the thought.

Disclosure: I visited Japan in 2011 as a guest of the tourist board. As ever, I have complete editorial freedom.

This post forms part of Photo Friday on Delicious Baby. Head over there for some more travel pics.

A Quiet, Snowy Village in Japan first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

Everyone was cold. I saw it in the hunched shoulders and stooped spines of the commuters who huddled past, bundled beneath thick duffel coats, pressed scarves and peaked hats.

Which was why the drain surprised me.

Whimsical fingers of mist curled through the gaps, growing thinner as they spiralled up towards the sky, the sky which experience told me still loomed overhead but which I avoided looking at in case I inadvertently exposed another sliver of my neck to Budapest’s biting air.

No, these wisps of steam alone could tell me that I was on the right track, that my heavy, hurried feet were carrying me towards the Szechenyi Baths.

Baths in Budapest

Thermal baths are to Budapest what baguettes and boulangeries are to Paris or yellow taxis are to New York. From the Szechenyi, to the Gellert, to the Lukacs, a range of extravagant, resplendent buildings reside on both the Buda and Pest sides of the city, plunging beneath the earth to draw up thermal waters for the benefit of cleansing and healing its citizens, not to mention providing the necessary environment for a game of chess.

That’s right, chess. I’d seen the iconic pictures, now I longed to see the real thing.

Thanks to the lovely people at the Budapest Tourist Office, I’d been granted the right to take photos within the Szechenyi Baths. No thanks to the hideous behaviour of one woman at the admission gate, most of that time was lost. A story for perhaps another day, despite its insight into life before and after the fall of the iron curtain and the interesting debate about clothing, steam and near freezing temperatures.

Eventually, I was in – and the clock was ticking.

Changing Rooms: Cropped to Protect Those Within

I raced through the subterranean changing rooms with their peeling paint and faint sense of psychiatric prisons from films of the 1950s. I strode through the exercise rooms with skull-capped water aerobics classes that reinforced that impression. I threw those ubiquitous swimming hats for shoes across my feet and burst into the fresh air of the central area of the Szechenyi Baths…

That reedy steam I’d seen clawing through the drainpipe outside now billowed and bellowed across the outdoor pools, cloaking and claiming swimmers who soaked in its scorching path, not to mention the stony Venus who twisted her spine around to watch.

Here in the heart of Hungary, I watched thermal water turn to vapour in the home of Budapest’s oldest thermal bath (on the Pest side of the city at least.)

And while cold air turned my rapid breath into clouds, I found a place for playing chess.

This post forms part of Photo Friday on Delicious Baby. Head over there to see some more travel photos.

It also forms part of the #IronRoute project - a journey from Istanbul to Berlin that criss-crosses back and forth across the former Iron Curtain. Read all about it here.

The Water of Winter: Baths in Budapest first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

Travel Zagreb through these photos from the #ironroute…

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…

How would you choose which photos to use to show a whole city?

Travel Zagreb Through Photos – The 5th City on the #IronRoute first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

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 of us had any idea that such a devastating earthquake and tsunami were just around the corner.

Has time ever played tricks on you?

Time Disappears first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

A Beautiful Moment

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 I’m a little tired of playing by the “rules.”

On my last night in Jordan, I watched the sun dare me to take photos. I watched it burn and blaze and cast its flaming brilliance across the stone columns of the Citadel in Amman. I stood on the dry earth that has seen mankind live and work here for more than 7000 years, while flocks of birds swooped above and the lights of a city flickered among the distinct harmonies of the call to prayer.

History

I took in the crumbling dust of Stone Age remains, striking Roman columns, and key references to the world’s three biggest monotheistic faiths. I heard languages from around the world and watched people interact with politeness and respect.

People

This trip to Jordan has reminded me why I love to travel, why I love seeing something new and something different and yet how beautiful it is to remember that we are all connected and that we have more in common than we have differences that set us apart.

It’s difficult to write about things like this. For one, it sounds incredibly naive, as though I’m a teenager ridden with misplaced passion and angst. For another, as a journalist, writer, blogger, whatever others want to call me, it opens the door to bullying and ridicule.

The first point is easier to deal with. I know full well that there is evil in the world. I’ve been spat on, urinated on and assaulted while I’ve tried to save someone’s life. I’ve looked serial killers and psychopaths in the eye and I’ve dealt with the fallout of hatred, whatever the cause, whatever the label: religious hatred, racial hatred, misogyny and so on. I don’t see a distinction. Hatred and violence is still hatred and violence.

Luckily, those experiences dwarf the more recent ones and keep them in perspective. I know that a number of people confuse journalism with hurting people and being negative for the sake of it. No matter what they say, I won’t subscribe to that view.

It’s tiresome and I try to ignore it, but sometimes it takes up more space in my mind than it deserves.

Like now, when I’m standing on the Citadel in Jordan.

Reality

I’ve travelled here as a guest of Visit Jordan, a situation that makes me more critical than I would be if I’d come here alone. I value my words and I value my reputation and I always want to remain objective. Not everything here has been perfect, not everything deserves a trickle, never mind a gush, of praise.

But perhaps I’m in danger of letting the scrutiny – and occasional bullying – of the outside world interfere with that objectivity. In my efforts to provide a balanced view, I’m almost shying away from the truth.

The truth is, that among the questions, the debate, and the more detailed articles that will follow, travel still brings plenty of moments of simple, pure appreciation and joy.

And it would be a shame if I, or anyone else, lost that in the honourable journey of remaining objective.

The Citadel of Amman in Jordan is a standard tourist attraction.

At sunset, it looks beautiful. Exceptionally beautiful.

I hope you enjoy the moment. I certainly did.

Have you ever had a beautiful moment while travelling?

A Beautiful Moment – And Breaking The Rules first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

Life’s been high on adventure lately, if low on sleep. Usually, I manage to find something beautiful, something that moves me wherever I go. But last night, in Petra, that didn’t happen.

Petra By Night

Lit only by candles and a shower of stars overhead, Petra’s passageway to the Treasury hides its main attraction beneath a reverential darkness. The curves and ripples of raspberry-rust rock that mesmerize by day disappear at night, lost in the inky silence.

Footsteps move across the stone and cats cry beyond in the shadows.

We are, after all, approaching a tomb. Or a temple. The Treasury was built not to store money – but to commemorate the dead or to worship the gods. Petra, as you might expect from a city that’s thousands of years old, has plenty of mysteries.

As we grow nearer, a voice sings to the solemn crowd, an invisible man among an expanse of candles shrouded in brown paper bags.

Petra by night wasn’t beautiful and it didn’t move me. Amid the half-light in Jordan, it overwhelmed me.

Petra By Night

I’ll write more about Petra and Jordan soon. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy these photos as I grab a few moments of sleep…

Disclosure: I am visiting Jordan as a guest of the Jordan Tourist Board. All views, as ever, are mine.

UPDATE: I have gathered my posts about Jordan and a list of travel resources for Jordan on a page over here. For a romantic interpretation of Petra at Night, read A Perfect Place to Propose by Keith Jenkins of Velvet Escape, while Melvin from Traveldudes headed straight to the bar.

The Power of a Path Into Darkness first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

Little India, Penang

Take a look at these photos. Then imagine the percussion of hissing and fizzing around you.

Close your eyes and feel the sticky weight of the sunshine, its humidity heavy on your skin while sonnets of spice and a chorus of cardamon clash with cloves, cumin and chopped coriander on the streets of Little India in Penang.

Close your eyes and let this Photo Friday take you to northwest Malaysia.

A Sonnet of Spice & A Cauldron of Colour first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

Third, and most significantly, I’m about to climb into an oversized picnic basket that’s going to whisk me hundreds of metres above the earth with not so much as a seatbelt, a lifejacket or a parachute on hand. There’s not even going to be a well-groomed semaphore routine pointing out the nearest emergency exit.

I’m about to step into a hot air balloon. And it pains me to tell you I feel nervous.

Hot Air Balloon Flames

A man unfolds a giant tent, laying it in front of an industrial-sized hairdryer and we all wait. The fabric billows slowly off the ground, air easing into its edges and rippling through to its tip.

I’m surprised at how large it is. After only a few minutes, there’s space for men to walk inside, a chamber larger than a marquee that glows an eerie soft green.

I’ve dreamed about hot air ballooning for years. As a child, it seemed a great adventure, as a teenager a romantic hope and then in my twenties, a thrilling chance to see the world. Those years have passed, however, gathering along in their wake an appreciation of pain, of accidents, and of multi-faceted safety concerns.

I don’t believe in mystical karma. I really don’t, yet is there a whisper of unexplained uncertainty in my semiconscious, slumbering mind? I have tried and tried and tried to get to this stage before, in many different countries with many different alarm clocks. I’ve taken time off work, driven through darkness, stayed up late and monitored the wind, the thunder and the raindrops before enforced cancellations reminded me time and time again how impotent we all are in the great scheme of things. How utterly insignificant.

After a while, I gave up trying. Perhaps some things are not meant to be. Then, a few months ago, the chance appeared again.

Then disappeared.

Maybe some things are not meant to be.

Now I stand in that field, mist curling around the trees like an 18^th century painting. My breath hangs translucent in the air and I watch the tent take on the shape of a nuclear-powered lightbulb.

Maybe, maybe things aren’t meant to be. Maybe all that science means nothing. Perhaps never-ending near-misses really do mean that I should stay away, that the malevolence of the weather has protected me from danger and disaster in the sky.

I climb in.

I’m with friends and colleagues, a free-spirited crowd who don’t seem to have noticed the power-lines, the thin balloon fabric, the fire, and the insubstantial wicker basket.

Before I realise it, we’re gone. Not in a lurching, crushing, driving sense, but in a surreal, dreamlike flotation that teases us away from the earth.

The tyre tracks in the dew grow smaller and smaller. The second balloon fills my viewfinder before fading back into the field. On the horizon, the sun wins the race against the clouds and the slopes of the Pyrenees take shape, dressed in their finest British Racing Green.

The wicker feels stable and I can’t hear the wind.

We glide. Silently, weightlessly, floating through the sky.

Sunlight spreads across the forested volcanoes, highlighting each rise and fall with the excitement and care of a new mother introducing her baby.

I lean over the edge of the basket with a smile I haven’t felt since childhood.

This is the world we live in.

This is a brand new day.

And this, almost embarrassingly, is a dream come true.

I think about science, about superstition, about hope and dreams and joy and opportunity.

Earth, air, fire and water. That’s what ancient Greece believed to be the building blocks of the world. And from where I’m standing, only one of those is missing.

A friend taps me on the shoulder and passes me a glass. It’s cava rather than water, but I hope the Greeks won’t mind.

The bubbles sparkle as the sun strides onto the stage and the contours of Catalonia flow past below.

I know it’s not fashionable to say this, but I’m really, really happy.

Find more of my hot air balloon pictures here.

My first (successful) hot air balloon ride came courtesy of Visit Costa Brava. All views, however, are my own. Obviously.

I flew with Vol de Coloms, a local firm that organises hot air balloon rides complete with cava and a Catalan brunch afterwards. Great service, great fun, highly recommended.

Have you ever been in a hot air balloon? Or waited for years for the chance to do something?

Fire, Frost & Floating Across Volcanoes – A Hot Air Balloon Ride in Spain first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

Two days ago, I heard some bad news. The sort that starts with a phonecall, moves on to pacing, morphs into more phonecalls, scrambled packing and a last minute flight and ends with a bewildered arrival under the unforgiving lights of a hospital hundreds of miles away.

Unfortunately, it is a chain of events I’m sure many of you know well.

I won’t go into details, since not everyone lives online. However, I just wanted to take the chance to say thank you.

Thank you to the kind lady who sat next to me on the flight, whose actions made life that bit easier despite her having two young children to juggle. Thank you to the hotel staff, so helpful and kind in their last minute dealings. Thank you to the swarms of doctors, nurses, radiographers, porters, cleaners, cooks, paramedics, and lab staff who work every single night in unappreciated tiredness to make sure that when someone is ill, there is someone there to help them.

Thank you to every citizen who decided that paying taxes to care for the sick is a worthy thing to do.

Thank you for all the offers of help from friends far away, for the understanding shown by business partners and the patience I’ve received so freely.

Our papers and headlines carry words of fear and hate, war and competition, riots and greed and biting, bullying criticism. Yet each day also ushers in thousands of acts of unsung kindness, noticed – perhaps – by one person only in this six billion strong world.

I am so grateful I cannot really put it into words.

Thank you to my friends and family for help and support above and beyond the level of duty.

And above all, thank you to the person at the heart of this story, whose lifetime of unsung kindness forms a rhythm and a baseline that I cannot imagine being without.

I’ll be back to regularly scheduled programming soon enough – thankfully.

In the meantime, I found this quote when searching along the theme of gratitude:

The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you. ~John E. Southard

Thank you.

G is for Gratitude first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...