Young men from many cultures must endure rituals to enter manhood. The young Hamar men of southern Ethiopia’s Omo Valley, prove their manhood by eventually succeeding at ‘cattle-jumping,’ a challenge that requires them to walk across the backs of livestock. It carries great weight in the Omotic tradition as it is the only way an…
Read MoreTake a tour named Japan in Spring and it’s perfectly reasonable to expect to see cherry blossom ... and lots of it. What I didn’t expect was the fervour that came with the pursuit – I can now identify with those crazy tornado chasers in the southern USA! We certainly didn’t put our lives at risk but…
Read MoreIceland conjures up images of a remote island in the arctic, with freezing temperatures and a small population. After all, who could live on an island in the middle of nowhere with icy cold winds blowing for most of the year? While this is pretty much true, there are still many reasons to visit this…
Read MoreI cannot recall visiting any country in any part of the world where the people are more welcoming than in Iran. This might sound like a big statement but it’s true. Within my first 24 hours in Tehran I was invited to play table tennis, asked where I was from on numerous occasions and frequently stopped with a smile, an out-stretched hand and a…
Read MoreI’m fortunate enough to have visited the land of fire and ice on a few occasions. It’s a destination that few people can pronounce and even fewer know where to find. Kamchatka is a peninsula in Russia’s Far East forming part of Southern Siberia. It lies between the Pacific Coast and the Sea of Okhotsk. Look on…
Read MoreI liked to think I was well travelled but my recent visit to Uzbekistan made me realise that skiing four continents (even including sliding down a couple of runs in Kashmir in the 70s!) had left me a little culturally underdone. We always deliberately followed the path less travelled but exploring The Stans made our…
Read MoreMosi-oa-Tunya translates to The Smoke that Thunders. It describes the world’s greatest sheet of falling water aptly, where over 500 million litres of water each minute pours over the 1.5km wide gorge. At an average of about 90 metres high, the UNESCO-listed falls are not the highest in the world by any stretch, but they…
Read MoreEven in the dry season, the Okavango Delta in Botswana's north west, is an amazing sight. It’s the world’s largest inland delta, which, depending on the season, sprawls across some 15,000-22,000 square kilometres. For travellers, the delta starts and ends at Maun (pronounced “Mown”), a town of a few thousand people and many accommodation options, from camping to…
Read MoreSamarkand - conjures up so much when you say the name. One of the oldest inhabited cities of Central Asia, Samarkand was a legendary stop along the Silk Road, being strategically situated between China and Europe, in modern day Uzbekistan. During the 14th century, Samarkand came under the rule of the conqueror Tamerlane who had a…
Read More
