17th August, 2012, Iquitos, Peru. The little dugout canoe took us one at a time over the muddy red river. It was rather dodgy vehicle, rolling like it was greased and barely clearing the water, but gliding smoothly once you relaxed into it. Our respected Tabaquero (and former Peruvian kung-fu champion) Ernesto followed me and…

I returned to the Amaru Spirit centre not knowing quite what I was getting into but willing to give it a go. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, as some great author of truisms once said. Excepting the quixotic romance of travel, or perhaps because of it, factors in my life were not adding up to a…

In answer to the question “what did you do on your holiday?”, attending funerals would normally be seen as a strange, macabre reply, but when visiting Tana Toraja in the highlands of southwest Sulawesi, we have to make an exception. In this beautiful land of mountains, rice paddies, boat-shaped houses and perhaps the friendliest folk…

India 2011 I felt thin and denuded as India’s dry February landscape. On an amazing trip through Asia and still feeling sorry for myself. Things were getting to me. The bleak multitude of human shapes like empty sacks in the dust and swerving headlights, the stink of urine and car exhaust. Given the smorgasbord of…

  When I first came to Bangkok it was August, 2003 and Thailand was a mystery to me. “The land of smiles”: beaches, exotic temples, pretty women. But something ill was afoot. It wasn’t just that I found the Khaosan Road “backpacker ghetto” boring nor that the energy at the Koh Phangan pre-full moon beach…

 The buzz of poorly earthed, pole-mounted megaphones bursts into life at 7am. A pseudo-operatic chorus of unmistakably patriotic zeal fills your hotel room. You know you are not in Kansas anymore. Laos (Lao) is a funny place. It is still a one-party “communist” state controlled by the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party. Early morning public propaganda…