Archives: Guide

It was October 2008 and the notes from the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics were still hanging in the air as I began my journey along the grandiosely named "Trans-Sumatran Highway".

The small, blue cockleshell in the reed didn?t look very confident. We climbed carefully into the boats and the boatsmen started. The snort of the ponies died away behind us.

We open the hive and at least 100 bees hit my face like bullets. As the bees dart for my exposed hands, I curl my fingers, feeling flesh swell against the crunch and hum of stingers and bee-wings.

It was 11 years ago yet very few travel encounters have come close to matching the experience of myself with six of my, then, close friends on a bus across the country from our university in the small city of Grahamstown...

I met a holy man in India once. Well, sort of. And not in an Eat, Pray, Love kind of way.

One of the great things about travelling is that you get to meet a lot of new people in a very short space of time. Remembering exactly who they all are and what they all look like, however, is not always easy.

The sun bathed my face and back in a warm, all-encompassing glow. I heard the rubber tyres of my wheelchair grip the wooden boardwalk.

“How did that song go?” he asked. We sat in the back of the taxi, in forty degrees of heat, not quite believing our ears. Selim had just declared his love for Tina Charles.

We sit, just a friend and I at the edge of a deserted road, edging closer to the bushes lining the road, desperately trying to stay in the shade.

‘Madam, it’s the perfect weekend getaway from Bangalore’, the travel agent had promised us.