[This extracted article appears in full in Write Your Way Around the World] What makes travel writing worth reading in a world awash with content? We’ll look at the ingredients of great travel writing, examine a short excerpt from Bourdain, then pull out ideas you can apply in your own work. The Ingredients of Great …
Read more “What Makes for Great Travel Writing? Travels With Bourdain.”
This article was first published in Storycraft. That’s the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.” – Jhumpa Lahiri Story is at the heart of all human knowledge, and from the earliest days of recorded narrative – from the times of tablets of clay and papyrus scrolls there have been reading …
Around the World in 65 Years: A New BGTW Travel Writing Anthology by Bradt Guides Delighted to have a story included in this new BGTW Anthology of Travel Literature. I wrote a piece on travelling in Montserrat in the Caribbean, staying in a very special location, and exploring this other ‘Emerald Isle’ in the Caribbean. …
[This article was originally published in StoryCraft – for the full article, click here] I have always been drawn to place when I write — whether in fiction or travel writing. Place is never mere backdrop — it is a character in its own right, intrinsic to the storytelling. But what does that mean in …
Read more “When Place Becomes Character – Travel as Narrative”
[This article was first published in The Green Travel Guide] I arrive to Porto by train, with no plan or itinerary, no agenda or checklist of places to visit. Not even a map. I will explore the old-fashioned way — on foot, no phone to help me navigate and if I get lost (improbable as …
For two days, we’ve drifted past schoolchildren waving from grassy banks and coconut groves, watched fishermen untangle their nets at dawn, and played endless games of travel backgammon on a rickety little table on the deck, as the kettuvallam houseboat glides through Kerala’s sleepy backwaters, greeted by kingfisher calls and the gently bobbing palms that …
Read more “Sailing the Backwaters of Kerala in ‘God’s Own Country’”
Wes Anderson Style Wanderings on the Rittner Bahn – A Belle-Époque train travel journey If you ever want to feel like you’ve stepped into a Wes Anderson film, I highly recommend a nostalgic trip on the Bahnl (as the locals call it) – a vintage Belle-Époque wooden train that shuttles gently back and forth along …
Read more “The Meteorologist, the Violin Case, and the 11:16 to Klobenstein”
“Istanbul is a book that is never finished; it is a novel that keeps writing itself, with every step you take in it.” – Turkish author, Selim İleri This time, I travel from Asia to Europe, crossing the Bosphorus from Kadıköy to Eminönü. It is late afternoon and the sun glints off the waves, seagulls …
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There are two Cubas: the Cuba of the imagination, and then there’s the Cuba I remember. Twenty years ago. The imagined version was shiny, idealistic, full of 1950s glamour. It’s all revolutionary zeal and Hemingway, brightly-coloured Cadillacs and palm trees. The Cuba I remember is not quite the same. There are wind-battered palm trees on …
It was Tove Jansson’s classic, The Summer Book, that first introduced me to Scandinavian summers and archipelagos strewn confetti-like with tiny islands, those in turn dotted with brightly painted wooden cabins. The all-too-brief passing of the northern summer months, the sense of urgency to seize every moment of sunshine and dappled light, before “it is …
Read more “Embracing Slow Swedish Summers – Island Cabin Living”