I arrived in Madagascar not really knowing what to expect. I’d read all the stories about coups and corruption and environmental degradation and then seen stunning photography that showcased the beauty of the country that seemed at odds with the doom and gloom I had been reading about. As with most things, the truth lies […]

It all started with the August 2013 issue of National Geographic. Page 99. Secrets of the Maya Otherworld, by photographer Paul Nicklen. It blew my mind. Dark underwater caves, crystal-clear water, and beams of sunlight that looked like lightsabers from Star Wars. I’d never seen anything like it. Seven months later, I was standing at […]

There are many ways to spend your billions… chasing space travel, buying football clubs or hijacking social media platforms. Or you can begin a rewilding project that you will never see the end of. It will continue long after you’re dead, but maybe future generations will see the good in it and perhaps a small […]

If travelling with your kids is about expanding their horizons and ambitions, then my recent trip to Greece was a roaring success. Seeing, doing, and thinking about things so different from life at home led to some moments of profound parenting joy. Not to mention some unexpected career announcements. Admittedly, most parents might wish their […]

The tables sometimes were only a foot off the floor, and a woven mat of bamboo was where you sat.  Sometimes there were no tables, just cloth. There was one meal that was on the roof of an unfinished 4 story building, where the rebar was sprouting out of the blocks threatening to impale unwary […]

D.H. Lawrence once wrote a story called “The Man Who Loved Islands”, in which his protagonist, a Mr. Cathcart, seeks to avoid the complexities of human interaction by moving to progressively smaller, more isolated islands. That doesn’t end too well for him, but I must confess to a similar penchant for islands – never the […]

When Madagascar broke free from the continental landmass of Africa 90 million years ago, all of its wildlife was marooned on board, passengers on a boat floating out in the Indian Ocean. As a result about 90% of its wildlife evolved nowhere else on earth. It’s most famous inhabitants – the lemurs – proliferated and […]

I don’t really speak fluent ‘art’. I can hold my own, don’t get me wrong. I can walk into a gallery, spend time with a piece, and know if it does something for me. I just draw the line at confidently talking about references and market trajectories. But what I do know is Mexico City. […]

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 […]

“A dreaded summer day, so let’s go where we’re happy and I’ll meet you at the cemetery gates” — The Smiths A trip to the cemetery on holiday is something of a hard sell, I’ll admit. But whether it’s due to my angsty teenage years as a goth or my love of 19th century literature, […]

I landed in Dubrovnik under the most Dalmatian atmospheric conditions, with the warm Scirocco wind from the South, locally lovingly called Jugo, coming to greet me, setting the tone with a low, gray hanging sky and damp air. Like in every coastal culture, winds do not just dictate the route of boats: they’re also believed […]