My experiences in the wilds of Africa have equipped me with a specific set of skills to deal with things like charging elephants and angry lions. These skills tell me when to stand my ground, and when running is the more prudent choice. Having said that, there are certain things I’m just not ready for, […]

Close your eyes (enough to allow for some mental visualization, but not so much that you can’t read this). Now, imagine that you’re standing on an 18th century rampart overlooking the sea. The air is humid and heavy, the sun warm like a pancake on your forehead. Seagulls are swooping around, making noise, in their […]

If you’re going to build a hotel out of mud and straw, and place it on the far side of nowhere, then it had best be good. If you’re going to officially nickname it a ‘house of dreams’ and charge a thousand Euros a night, then it had best be phenomenal. Dar Ahlam, hidden in […]

Whenever possible, we try to bring you the unique, the quirky and the off the beaten track. Occasionally though, we can’t help but point out the obvious—things that everyone knows about but that are so good we just have to mention them. Angkor Wat is one of those. Chances are if you went to Southeast […]

I slowly navigate my ATV along a winding path, through coarse salt grass and lonely stands of palm trees. The sun is low in the sky and the desiccated landscape is bathed in that magical golden African light. All of a sudden the path widens and I’m there on the edge of the Makgadikgadi Pans. […]

Fly to the bottom of the world, turn left and continue right to the end of the road, driving for an hour on the bumpy dirt track to the end of the lake, and you’ll get to the 100 year-old Patagonian lodge of Helsingfors, the best of Patagonia’s remote lodges. Founded as a working estancia […]

Half the fun of travelling in Asia is learning to embrace the chaos and congestion, the colour and the noise. The other half is finding a place where you can escape the mayhem, and slip into a zone of visual, aural, emotional calm. Such retreats can be hard to find, especially in the increasingly turbo-charged […]

If you like to think about food as much as you like to cook it, eat it, grow it, discuss it, find it, dig it up, hunt it, forage for it, bottle it, ferment it or even shoot it, read on: we have the trip for you. La Petraia is a bio-dynamic field-to-fork agriturismo high up […]

The stretch of the Thames that runs from Oxford to London is an almost uninterrupted perfect run of weeping willow’d prettiness, unspoilt villages and top notch pubs. No better way to discover it than by plying the river in a 100-year-old rowboat with a few friends. Jerome K. Jerome’s 120 year old book “Three Men […]

North of Toronto’s urban sprawl lies a secret universe of undulating hills and dense forest, not to mention the best horseback riding in all of Ontario. Rawhide Adventures operates out of Peace Valley Ranch in the Mulmur Hills, where the cattle are grass finished and the resulting beef is amazing (order a grilling box before the summer is […]

P.T. Barnum may have had “The Greatest Show on Earth”, but that was over 100 years ago. And you had to pay for it. These days, the finest, funnest, freakiest show we know happens every day in Marrakech’s Djemaa el Fna square. And it’s free. If Morocco is a target for the traveller craving the […]

I’ve spent a few nights in the Mazarakis Guesthouse in Mystra, but I’d happily stay for a week. It’s one of those rare B&Bs where the location is as good as the welcome is as good as the rooms is as good as the food. Yup, I’m afraid this is going to be a gushing […]

Brazil’s not known as a country to cover its charms. And yet, the little towns of Paraty and Tiradentes are largely hidden from the traveller’s initial glance. One is tucked in the mountains of the interior, the other snuggles the coast (about halfway between Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo). Geographically they’re 430 km apart, […]

Cusco has its fair share of hotels, welcoming grubby backpackers, blue rinse jet setters, and everything in between. You could spend hours (if not weeks) choosing the best place to bed down. If you’re a hotel aficionado and want to be wowed, it’s no done deal; there are several properties worthy of distinction. And of […]

If you’re keen to explore the pata-negra heartland of Spain’s Extremadura region, make the Monasterio de Rocamador your base. Surrounded by the oak groves typical of Extremadura, which teem with semi-wild pigs munching on acorns and getting tastier by the minute, Rocamador is a weird, wonderful and totally unique hotel, in a quite unlikely part […]

How can it be that a town of two thousand people (give or take a thousand), a hundred temples and shrines (give or take a dozen), and a 350 ft high granite rock (give or take an elephant) doesn’t feature on Google Maps? You can zoom in ‘til the holy cows come home, but you […]