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...
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...
Letter to Asylum Seekers
Dear Asylum seekers, First of all, welcome to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland – the cumbersome name of my home country, a name that not many of my fellow Brits actually know. We tend to call ourselves English, Scots, Northern Irish or Welsh. I...
The Amazing Library of Liverpool
In my experience libraries are fusty places with fierce ladies telling you to be quiet, or big silent tombs where grim students bury their heads in books for hours on end. Many public libraries in Britain have been closed and others seem to be underfunded, under...
Can God Help Addicts?
I avoid conferences and seminars as they can be so boring but recently I spent two days of my life at the Recovery from Addiction Conference at Chester University and it was really interesting. And I’m not saying this because somebody paid me to be there or write this...
The Martian Helped Me Overcome Writers’ Block
I wanted to see a film last night and the only thing on at my local cinema was The Martian. All I knew about this film was that it starred Matt Damon. The film is great and it gripped me so tightly that I forgot about the real world outside. It also helped me...
What’s it Like to Live With a Neurotic?
I am constantly reminded of the Glass Menagerie, a play by Tennessee Williams that I recently saw in Liverpool. The play is about a neurotic mother who lives in the past and makes her daughter’s life a misery. She reminds me of several people I have come across. The...
I Hate Starbucks but Still Use Them
I don’t think I’m alone in hating Starbucks, the American coffee shop that has spread its tentacles all over the world. They haven’t lied like Volkswagen did but they are hypocrites. The annoying thing is that I need Starbucks and if you get to the second half of this...
Hitching with a Migrant
I recently moved from Bucharest to Liverpool. During this transition I spent some time in London, where I got a phone call from a guy called Joel: “I work for BBC Radio 4,” he said, “and I’m making a show about hitching at night. I read your article about hitchhiking...
The Buzz of Getting Away
When I'm getting a train away from the city I often get a wonderful feeling of liberation. It's as if I’m leaving all my worries behind and heading into a bright new future where things will be different. I think some people have a similar feeling when they vote for a...
How Much Luggage Should I Take?
If you’re wondering how much luggage to take on your journey you’re asking the wrong question. The fact is you will fill up whatever bag you use for the journey, so the correct question is “What bag should I use?” If you’re thinking “I should make a list of all the...
Writing Articles is Easy – and Very Difficult
Writing articles is a useful skill and the ideal way for a traveller to provide updates from the road. It’s also the best way I know of organising my thoughts. Writing short articles teaches a valuable skill – how to select a universally valid point from an endless...
A British Newspaper Wants to Legalise Cannabis
British newspapers are overpriced and lacking in serious content. Why spend almost two pounds on the so-called “quality” press when you can buy a slimmed down version of the Independent – the “I” newspaper – for just 40p? Another problem with the British papers are...
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Romany Gypsies in Romania & Bulgaria
By Eion Gibbs Walking through Holland, Belgium, France, Italy and Slovenia the word gypsy didn't enter my thoughts once. This doesn't mean Traveller communities don't exist there, it's just that they're so far removed from everyone's daily lives that there was no...
Irish Travellers and Romany Gypsies
This article was written by Eion Gibbs, whom I met in Bucharest in April 2015. He was at the tail-end of a great walk across Europe, from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul, a ten-month epic in the footsteps of Patrick Leigh Fermor. After the furore I caused by...
Greece Makes Me Feel Wonderful
Right now, I’m in the Athens airport, rushing to write this article before embarking on the flight back home, to Bucharest. Over the past 10 days, since I’ve arrived here, I’ve been gathering comments from people about the financial crisis which, to be honest, stirs...
How I Got Work Abroad
Before I went travelling I had no idea about how to get a job abroad. I was beset by other fears: language, accommodation, money and the difficulty of beating my own complacency. If I had thought about it too much and if I had listened to my inner demons ("Who the...
The Republic of Moldova — First Impressions
There is something rather alien about arriving in a new country like Moldova, where you don't know your way round, you don't have any of the local currency and you don't know anyone. I am sitting in a cafe in Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, a tiny little European...
Working in Berlin
Berlin has played an important part in my life: it was the first place I visited on my trip to Tibet and I spent a month there in 1986, before the wall came down, and I was lucky enough to get a good look at a city that had been carved up by the great powers. The...
Kayaking in Sweden
When I was a kid we lived in a white house by the Firth of Forth, an estuary just north of Edinburgh. The house was so close to the sea that waves would splash into the garden when it was rough. Inside one of the garden sheds was an old kayak made of thin fibre glass...
The Paradox of Sweden
I'm staying in an old military base on one of the thirty thousand islands that lie outside Stockholm. From where I am sitting I can see massive cruise ships pass by, en route to the capital city, making their way through the forested islands. "A submarine was spotted...
Why Live Abroad?
By Silvana Some time ago Rupert asked me to explain why I live abroad and what are the advantages of travelling. After a while I thought maybe I'm complicating my life too much. Maybe I should stop living in a foreign country (Germany at the moment, France before...
I was Wrong About the Romani Gypsies
For many years I thought I knew the answer to the problems faced by the Romani Gypsies: education. If we could just make school more appealing to this population their situation of marginalisation would gradually end, and they would learn the skills needed to...
What I Learned from Camping
My first thought about camping is that I don’t want to do it: it’s cold and wet outside and even thinking about what I would need to pack sends a shiver down my spine. So much easier to sit in my warm room, go to work and meet a friend for a pizza this evening. Then I...
5 Reasons for Travelling Alone
Travelling alone was the only option when I went to Asia for two years. It was what I aspired to, what I planned for and what I built up to. The first page of my book, 9 Months in Tibet, is about overcoming my fear of travelling alone. Although I had a loving...
Dealing With Nationalists
Some of the most interesting places in the world are beset by nationalists and extremists: minority groups wanting to break away and form an independent state; high levels of anger between ethnic groups and almost everywhere you go the people hate, and blame, the...
Can George Get a Job in Mongolia?
My friend George asked me if I thought he could get a job in Mongolia and, even though I don’t know anything about the jobs market in Mongolia I instantly replied: “of course you can.” Before explaining why I am so confident in my answer I would like to introduce...
How to Adapt to Foreign Cultures
Learning to Adapt to foreign cultures is easier than you might assume. It’s all about attitude rather than about studying the country you’re planning to visit. Of course some people intensively study the culture, language and history of the place they’re visiting and...
Is Macedonia a “Fully Fledged Mafia State”?
A friend recently emailed me from Macedonia and said “we are witnessing a fully-fledged mafia state being endorsed for EU membership by some of the leading democracies on the planet.” I groaned. I couldn’t be bothered. I was on the road, visiting Istanbul at the time...
Did Cannabis Help me Write and Travel?
The quick answer is NO – cannabis did not help me write and travel – in fact, it did the exact opposite: it made me unable to write and paranoid when travelling. If I hadn’t given up the evil weed I don’t think I would have made it to Tibet or written a book about my...
Travelling Alone in the USA — How I Got Away
Manuela Boghian tells the story of how she got it together to go travelling in the USA for three months. When I wrote this article I was travelling on the Seattle - Fargo train. I was on that train for about 38 hours. My phone died so I was guessing the time after the...
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Improve Your Travel Skills on Weekends & Holidays
Weekends and holidays are the ideal opportunity to practice your travel skills. Most of us use weekends to catch up with sleep, housework, movies and other things which, in the grand scheme of things, are irrelevant for our personal development. I’m horrified by how...
How Hitchhiking Suppressed my Fear of Travelling Alone
Fear of travelling alone was a real problem for me. As soon as I got out of the suffocating grip of university I planned to escape, to travel to the other side of the world, to travel alone for years …
How to Get a Grant
Here is a story about how to get a grant. When I was in Montenegro recently I checked into a small guest house and asked if they had internet. “Of course we do” boomed the big cheery lady who runs the place, but when I tried to get online it didn’t work. I asked for...
Working in Vietnam
Riding a Belorussian motorbike, teaching English, avoiding expats, enjoying the crazy street life in Hanoi…Luke Dale-Harris describes his life while working in Vietnam.
When I was 22 – not very long ago – I joined an odd, small but growing …
The Beauty of Getting Lost
Getting lost in an unknown location is central to my approach to travel. If you have a sense of faith (“everything’s going to be okay”) and are not liable to panic, getting lost can result in discovering wonderful things and meeting new people. There’s also a...
Introduction to Working Abroad
There’s a curious relationship between cash and independent travel. On the one hand any form of travel is impossible without it while, on the other hand, money is the last thing I want to think about when planning a trip. In my experience the key to independent travel...
10 Skills for Independent Travel
There was no way I could have travelled to Tibet and spent two years abroad without building up what I call independent travel skills. These are the practices that enabled me to thrive in foreign cultures. In this article I will explain these skills in the hope that...
