To celebrate the launch of my next adventure (and if you’re not yet aware of Mahaweli Challenge read on here), and with the summer taking a decidedly autumnal feel recently, it’s maybe time to consider curling up with a good ebook. To make your choice easier I’m having a summer… Continue reading
On returning from my Encircle Africa expedition I came up with a list of the must have kit items for self-supported travel in Africa. I wrote then that out of the 20 kilos of kit I chose (and spent five hours packing for the first time in the UK) it… Continue reading
What do you call the area outside of the comfort zone? According to Paul Schmid – and I have to agree – it’s called the pursuit zone. And so the pursuit zone was born, a website dedicated to ambitious pursuits and dreaming big. Hearing of my own attempts to escape… Continue reading
Dear Paul, It is doubtful you will ever come to hear of, let alone see, this letter; nonetheless my passion is so great that these words came to write themselves. You are renowned for being pessimistic in your travel writing, something you have readily admitted to in the past. But… Continue reading
One result of my Encircle Africa expedition was a collection of nine spiral-bound reporters notebooks purchased across the continent, containing approximately 120,000 words that formed my thoughts and everyday experiences. It has taken me the last 13 months – the same amount of time it took me to actually circumnavigate… Continue reading
There seems to be a publishing equivalent of waiting for buses: I wait weeks for a bit of my work to move from the ‘accepted’ pile, only for two pieces to make it to the ‘published’ pile in a week. However long it takes, it’s great to see my name… Continue reading
There are some things you can only learn by actually travelling. If travelling around the coast of Africa with a notebook for 13 months, through 31 countries and crossing 36 frontiers, taught me anything it was to never be mistaken for a journalist (or an Israeli). It is one of… Continue reading
The trouble with Mugabe’s apparent continuing election shenanigans in Zimbabwe – formerly the breadbasket of Africa – is that it tars the entire African continent with the same brush of unfree election cycles, which is simply no longer the case. Mali’s highly-praised presidential election just a few days before Zimbabwe’s… Continue reading
Instead of a 20 kilogram backpack I had a mostly empty bag weighing little more than the notebook and novel I had inside it. Despite living in a country where it was impossible to be further than 72 miles from the coast at any point in time, it had taken… Continue reading
This blog is a chance to relive what I was up to 6 months ago this week during the Encircle Africa expedition. My joy of having reached Cape Town – the halfway point on the exact half-year anniversary of leaving London – was tempered by the knowledge I had to… Continue reading
