Travel stories, quotes and fun facts

There are no foreign lands

There are no foreign lands. It is the traveller only who is foreign.

Banaue's rice terraces are 2,000 years old

Carved into the Cordillera by hand, the Ifugao terraces are still farmed by the descendants of their builders.

The lighthouse keeper's cat

The lighthouse is automatic now, but the cat still patrols as though it has responsibilities. The keeper's grandson runs a cafe next door and tells the story eleven times a day.

Kazakhstan is the largest landlocked country

Kazakhstan covers 2.7 million square kilometres without a coastline, larger than all of Western Europe.

Baikonur launches from a steppe

The world's oldest and largest operational spaceport sits on Kazakh steppe and is leased to Russia.

To awaken alone

To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.

Cold water swim club

Six people in dressing gowns at eight in the morning in February. They swim for four minutes and drink tea for forty. We were invited on the first morning and did not miss a day.

Uzbekistan is double landlocked

Uzbekistan is one of only two countries surrounded entirely by other landlocked countries, the other being Liechtenstein.

Samarkand sat on the Silk Road

Samarkand's Registan square was the commercial and intellectual heart of Timur's empire in the 15th century.

The tram driver's tour

The tram was nearly empty so the driver pointed things out as we passed, in three languages, without slowing down. At the terminus he apologised for talking too much.

The beckoning counts

The beckoning counts, and not the clicking latch behind you.

Turkmenistan has a burning crater

A gas field collapse near Darvaza was set alight decades ago and the Door to Hell has been burning ever since.

Fog on the Camino

We walked in fog for two days and saw the same twelve metres of path. Then it lifted on the last morning and Santiago's towers were exactly where they were meant to be.

Kyrgyzstan is nearly all mountain

Over 90 percent of Kyrgyzstan lies above 1,500 metres, and summer pastures are still reached on horseback.

Tajikistan's highway climbs to 4,600 m

The Pamir Highway crosses the Ak-Baital pass at 4,655 metres, one of the highest paved roads on Earth.

Solitude of travel

Solitude, I have discovered, is not a lack of company but a different kind of it.

One key, five hundred years

The guesthouse key was iron and the size of a forearm. The owner said it had opened the same door since the eighteenth century and asked us not to lose it, understandably.

Afghanistan hides blue lakes

Band-e Amir's six lakes are dammed by natural travertine walls and glow a deep mineral blue.

Iran has wind towers older than air conditioning

Yazd's badgir wind catchers funnel breeze down into homes and over underground water, cooling rooms without electricity.

Christmas market discipline

There is a correct order: sausage, then gingerbread, then gluhwein, then a second gluhwein. A local corrected our sequence firmly and then bought the second round.

We shall not cease

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

Persepolis was burned by Alexander

The ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire was destroyed by fire in 330 BC, which ironically baked and preserved its clay archives.

Iraq holds the first cities

Uruk and Ur in southern Iraq were among the first true cities, and the world's earliest writing appears there around 3200 BC.

The gondolier's shortcut

He avoided the Grand Canal entirely and took us through back canals where the water was green and the walls were close enough to touch. He sang exactly nothing and it was better.