Archives: Guide

It’s just before seven and the shadows are slowly lengthening. To the right, monolithic mesas and buttes stretch to the horizon and glow orange, scarlet and copper red as the rocky outcrops absorb the last rays of the sun.

I hate tours but this tour of Rajasthan looked awfully cheap. And I like cheap. I turf up at a decent hotel in Karol Bagh, Delhi.

In the midst of this woman’s journey she is making each day count, she is visiting Aotearoa land of the long white cloud, commonly known as New Zealand. The woman sees a clearing and she can rest once more.

"Are you afraid of heights?" he asked. Had I learned nothing? A month earlier, when asked that same question, I got strapped to a cable, ziplining above traffic. My stubborn streak finds trouble for me.

‘I am Joseph, Duck Daddy,’ a voice booms. A spectacle covered in silt emerges like Neptune from the mud in Malta’s Sliema creek, clutching a rake.

“I don’t love you,” Anna started one typical warm, sunny, Goan day. My lean-to stood on the bluff. Overlooking the beach and the Indian Ocean, it faced west.

Arriving in New York can feel rather overwhelming. With hurried people, noisy conversations, cars and skyscrapers surrounding you. You may start to feel as though you’ve stepped into a whole different universe.

It sounded like trains rumbling through the quiet of night, only you never quite knew when to expect them. Most of the time my heart was beating as if I’d been running away from these invisible trains...

"Money comes and goes, but a carpet you have forever" according to Mohammed, the smoothly spoken owner of the carpet emporium I chanced on in Marrakech. "You know Paul McCartney and Brian Ferry? - Well they've bought carpets from me"...

Sami is a Turkish waiter who persuades my friend Jane and I to go night-fishing on his restaurant's boat.