Travel Feature Stories - travel writing highlights

Paris by the balls: Paris, France

Watching rugby at Paris’ Stade Jean Bouin is like no other sporting experience reckons Matthew Genner, who sets about getting to grips with Parisian sporting culture.

Only in Paris, a city that embraces individuality, can ten thousand people arrive to watch a rugby match dressed in pink replica shirts, waving pink flags and holding heart-shaped pink balloons.. more....

Tales from the table: Dordogne, France

Kimberley Lovato gets a taste for the Dordogne (spiced by the recipes of chef Laura Schmalhorst).

Dreams are often born in the most unsuspecting places. Mine happened to be delivered by the postman. The postcard depicted the most beautiful village I had ever seen, enveloped in fog and huddled against a cliff at the edge of the Dordogne River.. more....

Land of hidden treasures: Iran

Aya Okawa takes a historical and spiritual journey through one of our most ancient lands.

For the modern reader, thoughts of Iran may conjure shadowy images of nuclear facilities, political figures, or even the stereotypical deserts often imagined to be the sole landscape of the Middle East. However, Iran is perhaps one of the world’s best-kept secrets, beholding a myriad of sacred sites, masterpieces of architecture, and unexpectedly diverse natural landscapes. Iran’s vast historical, artistic and spiritual legacy is arguably unparalleled in the world.. more....

Safari so good - Namibia, Africa

While spotting game in Namibia’s famed Etosha Game Reserve is a wild experience - the accommodation is anything but, writes Chris Ord.

In Africa there are no guarantees. Not that you’ll see a lion, nor a rhino, leopard, elephant or wild buffalo – the ‘Big Five’ as they are known and emblazoned on every imaginable souvenir and then some. . more....

Outraging bull? Madrid, Spain

Bullfights or Shakira? Christopher Cook ponders which is crueler as he takes a tour of Madrid’s Las Ventas bullring.

A 2002 Gallup poll in Spain found that nearly 70 per cent of Spaniards expressed no interest in bullfighting. A violent, bloody spectacle, animal rights groups argue that it is cruel while supporters believe that it is a culturally important tradition that should be kept alive. . more....

Wild cape wander: Table Mountain, South Africa

On foot is the only way to get to the wild heart of South Africa's Cape Peninsula Mountains writes Steve Bolnick

The clothing, skull and bones of the soldier given up for lost on the 30th of last month were found at the extremity of the Lion Mountain, [not far]from the beach. The cranium was half bitten off, so it is presumed that he was devoured by a lion.... more....

The Quiet Corner: Kep, Cambodia

Tim Patterson rates a bungalow in a shunned Cambodian village as the place to stay longer than you planned.

The most romantic bungalows in Southeast Asia are tucked high on a hillside overlooking the bullet-scarred and abandoned seaside villas of Kep, Cambodia, a small town near the border with Vietnam.. more....

Bottled in Mendoza: Argentina

Chris Ord discovers a drop from the seventies swinging the right way in Argentina’s Mendoza wine region.

“Grapes alone don’t make good wine, philosophy does and that’s our philosophy; always has been,” says Hubert Weber, Chief Winemaker at Bodega Weinert, one of Argentina’s premier wineries.. more....

Cheeting game: Namibia, Africa

Problem: your prized livestock - your livelihood - keep ending up as ravaged carcasses rotting in the African sun, the victim of midnight raids by local wildlife. Solution: fling the sheep and ‘farm’ the predator. Chris Ord visits a grassroots cheetah conservation project in Namibia.

That’s the thing about Africans, black, white or otherwise - they make the most of any situation. The glass is always half full, even when it hasn’t rained in months. . more....

Of myth and legend: Transnistria, Moldova

Tamara Sheward couldn’t imagine what the Eastern European nation of Transnistria was like: mainly because it doesn’t even exist. She decided to travel there anyway.

As we approached the border, it dawned on me: my parents were liars. “Don’t be afraid,” they’d coo to me. “It’s not real, and if it’s not real, it can’t hurt you.” So why was I quaking in my boots as we rolled towards Transnistria? . more....

Savouring Sinharaja: the jungles of Sri Lanka

Dave WiseWise appreciates the little things about a country that’s big on attractions. You just have to be open to them, creepy crawlies and all.

We’d been trekking through the hilly Sinharaja rain forest for about three hours when Sarath, our guide, finally lost patience with my apparent indifference to the place and, very politely, called me to task. ‘You don’t like it?’ he asked. . more....

Interview: author Tim Mackintosh-Smith

Dave Wise chats to Tim Mackintosh-Smith, the prize winning author and broadcaster once labeled as ‘a latter day Lawrence of Arabia’, about living in Yemen and his most recent travels.

So far I've followed Ibn Battutta from Tangier almost to the southern tip of India – admittedly with some big gaps, but I'd never planned to track him slavishly – via Egypt, the Levant, Arabia, Turkey and the Crimea. . more....

Andaman odyssey: Maya Beach, Thailand

On a whim inspired by the film David Webbtravels to Thailand in search of The Beach.

Three kilometres offshore of Ko Phi Phi Don, a resort island in Thailand’s Andaman Sea, it hits the four of us. The longtail boat we hired for the day is little more than a glorified canoe, totally unfit to breach the swells now reaching two metres in height. . more....

Another day in Buenos Aires

Anna Maria Espsäter revisits her love affair with Buenos Aires – one that continues despite the odd rough patch experienced during the low of Argentina’s financial crisis.

It was a small café off 9 de Julio – one of those ubiquitous Parisian-looking avenues that run like arteries right through the heart of Buenos Aires – that caught our lunch-longing eyes with its arrangement of quiches and flans in the window. After all, sightseeing can be such hard work without pit stops, and Argentina’s capital takes a marathon effort worthy of the odd refreshment. . more....

Blood and bombs: Potosi, Bolivia

Lucy Witter tries to avoid being splattered with llama blood during rituals celebrating the annual Pachamama festival in Potosi, a mining town perched high on Bolivia’s altiplano.

Ancient traditions remain strong for the people of Potosi, who are among the poorest in Bolivia. High in the harsh, barren altiplano, the historic industrial town grew up around the dusty red slopes of the Cerro Rico. Despite the unimaginable riches that the ‘rich hill’ has yielded, Potosi remains wretchedly impoverished, bearing tragic testimony to the dark legacy of the Colonial Era.. more....

Owning Oktoberfest: Munich, Germany

Chris Ord looks to steal Oktoberfest from the Germans.

Bierliebhaber vereinen!!* I’m mounting a campaign against the Germans. Organising a ‘coalition of the swilling’ if you will. I’m claiming Oktoberfest for the world. . more....

Easy riders: kitesurfing, Melbourne, Australia

Australia’s southern capital of latte culture is also a Mecca for wind and wave junkies who are taking to Melbourne’s seaside suburbs, writes Chris Ord

If the master of cross-pollinated inventions Leonardo DaVinci was into extreme sports, he would have invented kiteboarding. As history tells us, he wasn’t and he didn’t, instead leaving it to the Legaignoux brothers from France to fuse their love for surfing with the possibilities of kites.. more....

Balloons ’n burritos: Albuquerque Hot Air Balloon Fiesta, USA

Adee Braun gets all het up, in more ways than one, in the deserts of New Mexico.

It’s 5:30am in Albuquerque, New Mexico and I’m wide-awake. The remains of last night’s burrito are still on my breath. I forage for clothes in the darkness and the silence. A shower is in order but there’s only one hour until sunrise and some things are more important than personal hygiene. Like hot air. . more....

Yangshuo surprise: Guilin, China

Tanya Perdikou heads to a little heralded backwater in southern China where the subtleties of everyday life keep her curiosity afloat.

The horizon is dominated by hulking lumps of limestone, karsts the shape of camel humps, inverse turnips, shapely breasts; silhouetted against the sky thick with humidity. The road is dominated by Chinese drivers, horn happy, screeching past old men with tanned skin stretched over sinewy calves as they cycle home on bicycles piled high with rice sacks.. more....

A taste of Dogon country: Tabaski, Mali

Over a five-day trek, Ben Willis samples some of the colourful rituals and unusual delicacies on offer in Mali's Dogon Country.

It was hard not to look at the goat’s testicles hanging limply from a beam sticking out of our host’s hut like a bag of marbles. “What are you going to do with those?” I asked. . more....

Travel Feature Stories - writing highlights