The turquoise lake

The next day I walked out of Gyantse in the direction of Lhasa. After a few hours I came across a scruffy old bus that was full of Tibetans and parked by the roadside. I stuck my head in the door, pointed eastwards and said Lhasa. They nodded and so I climbed aboard....

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Cities in the wilderness

It was another day of walking and there were very few vehicles; about one truck every hour, none of which even slowed down. Storm clouds approached, the temperature dropped and I was walking up a long, seemingly endless hill. Rain had started to pour down and the wind...

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My first podcast – what do you think?

Click on the player above to hear chapter 17 from 9 Months in Tibet, read my me. I've been posting short chapters from my Tibet book onto this blog, and recently a friend suggested I post a podcast version instead. "But I hate the sound of my own voice," I replied,...

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I wanted to weep and scream with joy

The plateau stretched out across vast distances, with each horizon serrated by mountains. It was an uninhabited desert, alive with colours and strange sounds made by the wind, much more inspiring than the rather static photographs one sees in the National Geographic...

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Hitching into Tibet

The road from Khasa was surfaced with gravel and clung to the gorge precariously. Soon it became clear why there was no traffic: as I walked along I could hear boulders crashing down from the forested gorge above, bouncing over the road and plunging into the abyss...

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Trendy travellers don’t walk

Kathmandu seemed seedier than ever as I waited for my Chinese visa. I had to keep busy, I couldn’t sit around all day or I would get depressed. It was August and the weather was hot, too hot, and by mid-afternoon I would feel slimy with sweat, as if I had been...

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Hustling for a Tibetan visa in Kathmandu

Kathmandu was the first Asian city I had seen that wasn’t built of concrete. This small city seemed genuinely ancient and the centre was full of Hindu temples, each one a hive of activity. Some were covered with elaborate stone statues of Hindu Gods penetrating their...

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Squeezed into an Indian train

Bombay’s main railway station is vast, Victorian and teeming with people. I stood there feeling at a loss as to how to navigate through the crowd. Bombay is the biggest city in India and I didn’t have the energy to explore it. I stood in a queue, requested a ticket...

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Africans in Bulgaria

I only stayed four days in Romania but it felt like months. I was glad to be sitting on the train to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, to be gradually moving on. Laurentiu and Cristina had brought me to the station, insisted I take some chunky sandwiches and waited on...

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Why you go Romania?

Next on the agenda was Romania, the biggest country in that part of Europe. I had been interested in Romania since university because it never appeared in the media. All the other Communist Bloc countries got mentioned now and again, but Romania seemed forgotten. All...

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Pretending to be an artist

Professor Fastl seemed like a kind man. He was tall, handsome and pre-occupied. He had renovation projects going on all over Austria and wasn’t going to look too carefully at this scruffy applicant. He had no reason to not believe …

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Meeting Princess Diana in Vienna

- You want a job? Here? In Vienna! Are you mad? You don’t even speak German! My new friend Andras was most amused. He was short, athletic, handsome and spoke fluent English. His family were obviously rich; he had his own flat in the centre of town and didn’t seem to...

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Cheating the system in Poland

I finally made my move and got a train ticket to Warsaw. After a few minutes the train stopped in East Berlin’s hauptbanhof (main station). There was a wild bustle of activity as hundreds rushed for the carriages, clouds of steam rose into the black metal roof arches;...

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Flogging books and driving trucks

Having finished university and gone back to Edinburgh, the big challenge was to raise enough cash to get to Shanghai – my target destination. Every job I’d ever done had only paid peanuts; washing dishes, selling books and working on building sites had been useful...

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Overcoming my fear of travel

Although I loved the city of Liverpool I found the university itself really boring. What helped me stick it out was mixing with ordinary people. In my first year I had hung out on a building site – there was too much drinking and fooling around to say that I actually...

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Fear of travel

We lived in a white house on the Firth of Forth, the estuary just north of Edinburgh. It was called Society House and there was a sign at the top of the road which read Private Road to Society. It was so close to the sea that in rough weather waves would crash into...

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5 Reasons to Publish an eBook

There's a ton of material online about how to publish an ebook and I've been rummaging through it for ages. Some of it's quite confusing but if I can understand it, anyone can. I'll publish my first ebook (a fairy tale) soon and that, I'm sure, will be my best...

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My First Day at School

How long can I stand in the burn until my feet go numb? Too long. Better to keep throwing stones into the deep bit. Maybe I'll wake up a fish. I wonder where all this water comes from? Up that hill I suppose. I can hear Daddy shouting my name. What does he want? It's...

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Bizarre Airport Experiences

Bizarre Airport Experiences

I travel a lot by plane even though it's environmentally destructive and increasingly boring. Airports in places like Bucharest or Tirana used to be so different from anything we'd seen in the west – the airport terminal in Tirana, a European capital city, was no...

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The Transylvanian Forest

The taxi wound through Transylvanian forest and dropped me in Brasov. I ducked through slim alleys into an underground restaurant. Over pickles, polenta and goulash, a couple described bears swaggering down streets, sniffing the air and picking any tit bits they...

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The Psychology of Travel

The original name of this blog was “The Psychology of Travel”. But what does this term mean? Is it some weird form of therapy? Am I a shrink? The answer to these questions is NO but I sometimes get mistaken for a therapist as I do freelance PR for rehab clinics. The...

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The train from York

A man in an anorak shuffles down the carriage. He sits heavily as if cut from a rope. A girl looks up, shifts and frowns into her book. He glances at her. His face looks shrunken, as though once bigger. The train picks up speed, sways on the tracks. Stiffly, like a...

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Train Girl

The train is heading south and I stand between carriages. My hand rests on the open window and darkness rushes past. Trees are rigid against the moonlit sky. Smoky clouds are ghost like. A man on the floor gawps into a glowing screen, the blue glare illuminates his...

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Bookclub

The pub was warm and glowing with orange lamps. Big men in suits told stories at the bar, arms gesticulating in front of them. Booming voices erupted from their flushed faces, eyes excited and glazed. They tipped back on their heels and laughed enormously to the...

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Stephanie Wolfe Murray

Stephanie Wolfe Murray

I would like to draw your attention to the of the wee book I recently published about my dear departed Mother – Stephanie Wolfe Murray. Just click on the blue lines above to get a PDF copy of it. I suggest you download it, read it and keep it somewhere safe as it's an...

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Captain Cutler

Captain Cutler by Tom Wigan. The long car crept slowly towards a green shed, wobbling through pot holes in the sandy track. The shed was wide and hunkered down in the ground. Behind, a forest stretched onto a hill. The trees let off a light, floating steam, damp and...

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Eulogy to Stephanie Wolfe Murray

Eulogy to Stephanie Wolfe Murray

This was the first address given at the funeral of Stephanie Wolfe Murray on the 5th of July 2017, at the Old Parish Kirk in Peebles. By Gavin Wolfe Murray. Stephanie, my mother, Mummy, the boss. She meant the world to me and I have been amazed to discover over the...

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Remembering Stephanie Wolfe Murray

Since the loss of our darling Mother I have wanted to write about her, but the feelings are too raw and all I can say right now is that grief is a much more confusing process than I had imagined. I thought it was just sadness and gloom but...

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Tibet and Nepal

Tibet and Nepal

I want to describe my last visit to Nepal, a fascinating little Himalayan country. Thirty years have passed since I was last in Kathmandu. My presence there was both dramatic -- I had been kicked out of Tibet -- but also depressing: I was broke, my dream of living in...

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Memory is an Unreliable Witness

Memory is an Unreliable Witness

I recently met up with Xander Berkeley, a Hollywood actor who played in one of the greatest thrillers of all time – Terminator 2 – which was made in 1991. He has featured in over 200 films and TV shows since then and is currently working on the Walking Dead, one of...

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To My Kickstarter Supporters

To My Kickstarter Supporters

I feel rather guilty that I've not updated my wonderful Kickstarter supporters, from whom I got £600 to do my bike tour of the Highlands, we well as the readers of my blog. My guilty conscience says "you took their money and ran…You didn't deliver on your Kickstarter...

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What was the Soviet Bloc Really Like?

What was the Soviet Bloc Really Like?

Soviet Russia was a very visual place, for all the wrong reasons. The colours were dark and gloomy, the people were listless and misshapen (air hostesses and officials tended to be huge while gymnasts and the poor were stick-thin). These were the images that we were...

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5 Ways to Get Good Deals Abroad

5 Ways to Get Good Deals Abroad

Intro by Rupert Wolfe Murray. One of the purposes of this blog is to encourage people to travel and to write. I'd like to encourage people to write for this blog. I'm always looking for personal stories about travelling, or writing, and in this instance I'd like to...

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Diary of my Scottish Book Tour

Diary of my Scottish Book Tour

Some rather ridiculous impressions from my recent bike/book tour in Scotland...in diary format. The photo above is of the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet, taken in 1987 by my friend Uli Zimmerman. 20 October, Edinburgh Today I will fly to Frankfurt, location of the...

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How Aberdeen Helped me Live in Tibet

How Aberdeen Helped me Live in Tibet

I have just cycled to the Scottish city of Aberdeen. It's sunny and I didn't know it was such an attractive city. Tomorrow at 2pm I will give a talk about my new memoir, 9 Months in Tibet, at a cool bookshop called Books and Beans. I will talk about how Aberdeen was...

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Writing about Tibet Helped me Find my Voice

Writing about Tibet Helped me Find my Voice

It’s bizarre. I’ve written so much about my time in Tibet – I’ve got a book about Tibet coming out next month – and yet I haven’t written an article about it since 1987. If I was a proper writer, a pro, I’d have been churning out articles to a band playing; I’d have...

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I Vote for Immigration

I Vote for Immigration

This started out as an email to my family, who are debating furiously on email about the EU referendum, immigration ... and the Armageddon which will happen tomorrow if the wrong side wins. My big question to all you Brexiteers is this: imagine you are in court and...

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Will You Cast my Vote in the EU Referendum?

Will You Cast my Vote in the EU Referendum?

I’ve screwed up: I’m registered to vote in Liverpool but am going to London on the day of the EU referendum. I know I know, I should have organised a postal vote but I didn’t. The voting card has a provision for people like me. It says something like this: “if you get...

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Liverpool’s Gobi Desert — Part 2

Liverpool’s Gobi Desert — Part 2

Imagine you're a microscopic insect who has crawled through the hole in the middle of an old vinyl record. You look around, get your bearings but all you can see is a vast open space that stretches out to the horizon in all directions. There's nothing in the...

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Liverpool’s Gobi Desert — Part 1

Liverpool’s Gobi Desert — Part 1

Camping is a paradox. On the one hand it's really simple -- you sleep outside -- but on the other hand it's really complicated: before you set off you must check you have a suitable tent (is it waterproof? do you have the poles and pegs?); do you have the right...

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In Defence of Foreign Aid

In Defence of Foreign Aid

A newspaper is like a puzzle. Journalists write material that fits the exact requirement of particular pages – news, sports, health, arts, business. Like every puzzle, the structure of a newspaper is clear and logical when you understand it.  Newspapers are...

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