In these times of uncertainty, of information overload, of constant connectivity and shrinking attention span, many speak of the need for a digital detox, a cleanse. Some may find relief in putting away the mobile phone, or forest bathing, or yoga. For me, it’s clear that when you need to empty the cache on your […]
We drove to the top of a dusty ridge, golden and red from oxidized mineral deposits in the ground, crumbling walls of sand and stone that looked like cheap stale cake, and in the walls of the cliffs you could see bones. Here, there are no roads, no parking lots, just suggested routes in the […]
I think what I like about a desert is the contrast. On the one hand there’s the fundamental hostility of the environment, never more apparent than at midday when the heat of day hits like an anvil. On the other, there is the supreme stillness and spectacular beauty at the day’s margins. Nowhere have I […]
My latest research trip to Chile’s Atacama Desert was a return journey so I was planning to dig deeper into previously visited places and explore some new spots. Instead I found myself gazing upwards, and my understanding of this unique landscape became informed by its unique relationship to the skies. After a short flight from […]
Some of the sand piles reached upwards of 300 metres high. They say the name of this desert means “you can get in, but you can’t get out,” like some Central Asian Hotel California. The Taklamakan, the world’s second largest shifting sands desert, the backdoor of the Tibetan plateau. Just north of the desert is […]
My parents are African but I grew up in Canada, at times dreaming of far away places but mostly just grateful for summers spent paddling lakes, winters skiing ice, and weekends in hockey arenas all over Ontario. The travel bug bit me hard in my late teens, and by 20 I was working in the […]
There’s something relentlessly compelling to me about harsh environments. I find the way that they focus my mind to only the most immediate concerns very calming. It’s like having the volume turned down on your stream of consciousness. In that way, Namibia is something of a revelation. The entire country is functionally a pretty harsh […]
Namibia delivers wide open spaces in a way that few other places on earth can. Dominated by a massive and ancient desert, the dominant image in people’s mind seems to be landscapes of unchanging and endless sand. While it’s true that there is a lot of sand (and I do mean a lot – I […]
The Post Office Essays There is a particular magic we humans get to do. We can have an idea then translate it into a series of symbols which others, years later, can read, so that the idea enters into their mind. We can write and create books and essays and letters, and mark down our […]
I am not a person who wears a hat well. Top-hat or touk, I’ve never been able to quite pull it off. I envy those boys looking beatific in a beret, languidly posing in a Parisian cafe smoking Gauloises. I am not a milliner’s delight. When behatted, I tend to look a little like a […]
For most of us travel this year has meant moving about locally, if at all. I’m lucky then to live in such a wonderfully diverse country as Morocco with plenty of opportunity to explore. Morocco did surprisingly well in the initial months of home confinement, achievements that sadly, as with many other places around the […]
Taking a trip down Memory Road just got a lot more sandy. And adventuresome. This epic 6-night road trip, much more romantic when given its French title, La Route du Sud, will take you to some of the most remote and captivating areas of Morocco. I undertook the Route not long ago, thinking that after decades of living and […]
Deserts are defined as environments receiving less than 250mm of average rainfall per year. Lush! There are parts of Atacama that have never received rain, making it not only the driest place on earth, but one of the strangest, weirdest, most Martian places on earth. A place of wind-sculpted canyons, sandy desert, rocky peaks, active volcanoes, salt […]
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 […]