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…

Dust rose from the ground as the horse thundered past and the sun began its ablutions. It painted pinks and pomegranates, amber, pistachio, charcoal and soft apricot rust across the walls of Petra before calling it a day and turning in for an early night…

Sparks hissed from the fire where we clustered beneath the stars. The group fell silent, waiting for Hussein to finish his story. He sat cross-legged, wearing the traditional thawb and keffiyeh, his deep eyes lined with kohl.

“My darling,” he said, fixing his eyes on the girl in front of him. “Forget the astronomer. Come with me. I’ll show you the stars in the day.”

A man casts a glance over his shoulder before arching back and casting his line into the water. The street chatter and rush hour traffic drown out the subtle splash but from the look on his face, you’d think he stood alone in the countryside, miles from anyone, miles from anywhere.

In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell. I was at school at the time and I wasn’t entirely sure what all the fuss was about. Fast forward through the years and despite – or perhaps because of – having studied it briefly, watched the odd Bond film and read plenty of spy thrillers (both fact and fiction,) I’m still not all that sure.
Then There’s Ljubljana…

Usually, I manage to find something beautiful, something that moves me wherever I go. But last night, in Petra, that didn’t happen.

A man and a woman walk hand in hand through the speckled sunshine in Olot, Catalonia. Like many towns in the Spanish Pyrenees, the sounds of church bells, chatter and the occasional car drift through the trees, past the shops selling the local liquor, ratafia, and on through the stone alleyways to escape to the mountains beyond.

Unlike the others…

In the world’s largest delta, transport takes place on water. While a few motorised boats cruise along the main waterway, to travel through the reeds, you still need a traditional mokoro…