The Heart of Lightness
Winter 2016
East Greenland is one of the most starkly beautiful places on our planet — and has been almost impossible to access, until now. Michelle Jana Chan ventures deep into the land of the midnight sun.

The View From Here
September 2016
There are few lodges in Africa more embedded in the community and landscape than Tassia, located as high as eagles fly on Kenya’s Lekurruki Ranch, on conservation land owned and managed by the Mukogodo Maasai. To stay here is to be absorbed into the wilderness — six rooms and 60,000 acres — caressed by the hot thermals [...]

Discover the Origins of Mankind
September 2016
In addition to luxurious lodges, wildlife encounters, and stunning landscapes, this experience will take you deep into the world of the Leakeys, the legendary family of paleontologists who have made numerous important discovers on the shores of Lake Turkana, near the Ethiopian border.

Take a deep breath...
August 27, 2016
If you have seen Luc Besson’s 1988 film The Big Blue, you will know about the moment when the sport of freediving was propelled into the public consciousness. One character, Enzo Molinari, aims to dive the deepest, holding his breath the longest and pushing his body to the limit. The other, Jacques Mayol, is less interested in breaking records. [...]

Beyond the clichés
July 31, 2016
Rio is the word on everyone’s lips right now – but there is more to Brazil than Ipanema beach, Sugarloaf Mountain and the Art Deco landmark of the Christ the Redeemer statue. The country’s attractions are many and diverse, from the vast natural wonder of the Amazon rainforest to 16th-century colonial cities [...]

The Gold List 2016
February 2016
For 23 years it has been one of the best in the bush. And now, finally, joyfully, Singita’s original safari lodge has had a well-deserved makeover by the South African design powerhouse of Cecile & Boyd. Walls have been removed to let in the sunlight and anything stuffy or colonial, the tartan and the heavy drapes, has been binned [...]

The Comeback: Nepal
February 2016
Less than a year after suffering a double earthquake, Nepal is showing renewed spirit. Not only is the country reopening repaired tracks, but championing routes such as the Natural Annapurna Trekking Trail, which avoids just-built roads and allows trekkers — with relief and nostalgia — to return to the Annapurna Circuit and Tilicho lake. [...]

Travel Guide 2016
December 2015
It’s big on drama, this place. The location alone — on the Oloololo (try saying that after three G&Ts) escarpment, 1,000 feet above the Maasai Mara — will knock your little khaki shorts off. This striking new lodge has big names behind it: owned by safari legends Steve and Nicky Fitzgerald; designed by Silvio Rech and Lesley Carstens [...]

Room with a view
December 2015
Where are we? Angama Mara, Kenya. Why we love it? There’s a chink of sunrise. A fuzzy horizon, 60 breathtaking kilometres away, becomes defined, as do smudges of acacia. From your bed, atop the Oloololo escarpment the Maasai Mara begins to take shape and in the distance hot air balloons sail past. [...]

Blood Lions warns against the dark side of African voluntourism
December 1, 2015
Blood Lions focuses on the captive lion breeding and canned hunting industry in South Africa and raises questions about whether a number of centres that offer activities such as cub petting and the chance to “walk with lions” are part of bona fide conservation, research or education projects. [...]

Why you should travel to Kenya now
July 18, 2015
As the “Great Migration” of East Africa moves north from Tanzania to Kenya, there is unprecedented availability and value for money this year in the lodges and camps of the Maasai Mara Game Reserve and its surrounds. Some operators say hotel rates may be 30 per cent lower than usual. [...]

Underwater Love
July 2015
The fish around here know how special they are. They shimmer and glow and sparkle like stars in their own biopic, performing in the spotlight of crepuscular sunrays. There’s the arresting electric-blue giti damselfish with its flash yellow tail, the alluring doe-eyed, deep reef cardinalfish, and the jamal’s dottyback with aqua-rimmed eyes as startling as Daniel Craig’s. [...]

One Step Ahead
June 2015
Kenya’s having a tough time right now, but its fans are hardy sorts and nobody can deny that the Maasai Mara, the site of the annual wildebeest migration, is one of Africa’s greatest game reserves. And now there’s a new place to stay: Angama Mara, on the Oloololo Escarpment minutes from the Mara Triangle and flanked by that kopje [...]

Infinity and beyond
February 13, 2015
Standing on the banks of the Maroni River, I look across the brown choppy waters from Suriname to French Guiana as ferrymen hustle for my business. It’s too far to make out St.-Laurent-du-Maroni in much detail, just a few mustard-colored buildings, a communication aerial and low-rise warehouses by a jetty. [...]

Sweetie, Darwin! Galapagos
June 2013
In the Galapagos, size matters: GIANT tortoises, ENORMOUS whales sharks, albatrosses with 10-FOOT wingspans. But with boats, smaller is always better here. Think of the logistics: shuttling 100-plus people between ship and shore via Zodiacs. No thanks. You must go small, and one of the very smallest vessels [...]

Sexy fish
July 2012
There is a very special spot off remote north-west Bali where petite schools of delightful mandarin fish, about the size of a Nemo, congregate at sunset to do a glorious flirty courtship dance. The lady plays it coy, hiding between the coral branches. [...]

Shhh, it's a secret
March 2012
Isla Holbox is a little-known island cast off the Yucatán Peninsula, only a couple hours from Cancún and Cozumel but encapsulating everything those towns are not: low-key, low-rise and low in tourist numbers, with golf buggies the only transport along soft sandy lanes. [...]

All the right moves
September 2011
They’re on the march. That massive, muddled great-migration herd of wildebeest, zebra and antelope thundering through East Africa to face the perilous crossing of the Mara River, chocker with crocs. So where to stay for the spectacle? [...]

Driving across Uganda to meet gorillas
August 15, 2009
The political instability in central Africa has stunted the growth of tourism in Uganda, despite landscapes to rival those of neighbouring Kenya or Tanzania. Safari vehicles are uncommon enough that children wave frantically when they pass. [...]

A different kind of value added
March 7, 2009
There are grey elephants and brown elephants and black elephants - but nothing compares to the red elephants of Tsavo. Elephants may be created equal but, after a vigorous wallow in mud, the Tsavo breed of south-east Kenya are ablaze in the colours of terracotta, vermilion and claret. [...]

Wild abundance
January 17, 2009
A raindrop falls in the upper reaches of the Angolan highlands. It trickles off the waxy leaf of a rubber tree into a stream. The stream courses through the verdant Caprivi Strip of Namibia to join the Okavango, one of southern Africa's mightiest rivers. [...]

Ice, ethics and the call of the wild in Antarctica
May 4, 2007
Seeing the Big Five wonders of the Last Continent is certainly thrilling, but visiting the region poses a dilemma for travellers. It doesn’t sound like much of a holiday. Antarctica is the coldest, driest and windiest place on earth. [...]