Straw sandals, fold-away boats, a penny-farthing bicycle, camels, yaks, ponies, even a cow: just a few of the means by which my ‘passionate travellers’ made their incredible journeys across vast distances. We are a migratory species. For millennia, our ancestors
Fleas, Bedbugs and Other Travelling Companions When one of my ‘passionate travellers’, the great essayist and philosopher, Michel de Montaigne, toured Italy in 1580, he found Florence inhospitable: “I was forced to sleep at night on the dining room table,
“Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.” [Gabriel García Márquez] How often have we experienced an episode in our lives that has touched us deeply, and thought,
It wasn’t that Bashō travelled widely, but that he journeyed deeply. Although he walked 800 kilometres on his second trip, he stayed within his own country – Japan. Inland travel was difficult and hazardous in the 17th century –
Legendary Travellers:2: Journey to Lhasa Dressed as a beggar, a revolver concealed in her bodice, fifty-four-year-old Madame Alexandra David-Neel walked into Lhasa, the holy city of a country forbidden to foreigners. By her side strolled Yongden, a young Sikkimese monk
