The best travel experience I’ve ever had was in Laos, Southeast Asia. We’d arrived in the north of the country via a cockroach-infested slow boat on the Mekong River, and decided to head east instead of following most other travellers down the neck of the country. Our journey took us to a small village called Nong Khiaw, a place of staggering beauty and absolute peace, where we stayed for two nights in a bamboo hut that cost about £2 a night; the price included a free cockerel wake-up call. If off-the-beaten-track exists, this is the closest I’ve ever been to it.
The travel experience I’d most like to have is completing some kind of impossible journey, probably involving a motorbike and a gigantic hostile expanse like Siberia, or a small boat and the even bigger expanse of the Pacific Ocean. It’ll probably never happen, principally because I can’t ride a motorbike and I can’t captain a boat, but it’d be a great experience nonetheless. Failing this, I’d like to give India a second chance, as I failed to fall in love with it the first time, and I’m desperate to set foot upon African soil for the first time.
Creativity flows through Reykjavik like a river. It can be seen in the way people dress, in the music they produce, and in the entrepreneurial ventures they embark upon with a bright-eyed optimism that seems to be a national trait. Indeed, it’s everywhere, including the walls that peel away from the city’s central high street [...]
For such an unsuspecting and seemingly ubiquitous fish, cod has had an awfully big impact on Iceland. It is one of the island’s main exports, and as a consequence one of its main sources of conflict. An economy that relies so heavily on one commodity can’t afford to have that resource tapped by another nation, [...]
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but even that’s not enough to convey the superlative beauty of Iceland. I arrived in Reykjavik expecting to find a country as staggering as Scotland or New Zealand, but found something very different, a land that is utterly unique and totally beyond compare. Many of the [...]
I really hoped we weren’t going to come across any rivers during our road trip around Iceland. I’d read all about them in my guidebook: “… many people have drowned in their cars attempting to ford rivers in the interior… once in [the river], don’t stop (you’ll either start sinking into the riverbed or get [...]
When I said that I wanted revealing local insights that would peel back the layers of his destination, I never imagined our local expert in Reykjavik would take the brief quite so literally. I had expected to be ushered away from the tourist trail, of course, perhaps to a little known corner of the city, [...]
When Norman visited the world’s northernmost capital city last month, he wasn’t just going for the barbarian nightlife, the salubrious salmon fishing, or the chance to replenish his withered body and soul in Reykjavik’s geothermally-charged spas and pools, he was tracing the muddy steps of his ancestor, a Norse named Ingólfur Arnarson, who happened upon [...]
Five things you need to know about the Blue Lagoon, one of Iceland’s most popular attractions: 1. The water is so pure that additional cleansers, such as chlorine, aren’t needed. 2. The lagoon is heated to between 37 and 39°c by geothermal energy. 3. The water, which is mildly saline, travels 2000 metres before reaching [...]
Of all the things to do in New Zealand, bungee jumping is surely the most extreme. This is a sport that defies logic in every way, a true leap of faith that overwhelms the body with adrenalin and smothers the mind with fear. Some argue that skydiving is a greater feat, but those who’ve done [...]
1. A seed is planted, a tree is grown. After as little as 3 years, the first cacao seeds can be harvested. *** 2. The seeds are left to ferment; flavour develops, bitterness subsides, and cocoa beans are born. They are then spread and dried before being sent to factories as raw cocoa. *** 3. Next, [...]
There are a number of residential streets in southeast Moscow which all look the same. They are choked by inanimate cars and shaded by towering grey apartment blocks, entirely unremarkable and indiscernible from one to the next. Indeed, they are unsuspecting and inconspicuous, about as interesting as a collection of stamps, but this is exactly [...]
We know that journeying from place to place can sometimes take a while, and calls of ‘Are we there yet?’ can be somewhat distracting. In light of this we’ve come
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Music and travel go together like jelly and ice-cream. One without the other is sweet enough to satiate your taste buds, but when the two collide, something magical happens… Whether
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Our mission: to enrich travel experiences through local expertise Our network has 73 destinations with 53 coming soon… Locally informed, globally inspired My Destination is your supply of global
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