Inside the Travel Lab

As a child, I always wanted to swim with dolphins. And if I’m honest, as an adult as well.

Swimming with dolphins has become a cliché in the repertoire of half-formed dreams, wishes and wonderings of those who realise that their time on this earth is limited. Yet…

Bright white and blue – that’s the typical image of a glacier, isn’t it? Milky glacial water, iridescent ice and a sky full of sunshine or perhaps the swirl of falling snow.

The Baird Glacier in southeast Alaska has a rather different chemistry…

I’m offline in the ice of Alaska at the moment (I know, poor me) – but here’s a photo for now: an impala in the Moremi Game Reserve, Botswana

Despite the stillness of the water, there’s no sound of silence. Insects skim across the reeds with a soft buzz and woodpeckers…

The Oceanográfico forms part of the spectacular City of Arts & Sciences complex in Valencia. As the largest aquarium in Europe…it makes me uneasy.

“We’ve been here all week,” say the first couple we meet in Sawai Madhopur, when we ask the question that’s on everyone’s mind.

Japan has no shortage ofonsen, natural hot springs where people dip in and out of skin-scalding pools in order to soak, scrub and just relax and say ahhhhh.

Yet in Jigokudani Yaenkoen, macaque monkeys got there first.

Pedro Martina’s sun-worn face lights up as he grabs my shoulder and points into the distance.
“Three of them are under the water now,” he says. It’s certainly not the first time Pedro has hunted whales…

With only 2000 pandas left on the planet, they can be tricky to track down. In Chengdu

These days, I take promises of viewing exotic wildlife with more than a pinch of saltwater. Particularly endangered species. To find pandas I had to travel for days. To glimpse a tiger, I shivered morning and night under a blanket of frost.
But to see turtles in Barbados? I only needed to…