Best and worst hotels
My pick of best and worst accommodation ranging from a flash eco-resort to a chicken coop.
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Author: pdg
Phone booths of the world
The phone booth has, tragically, become an endangered species — hence my mission to preserve these once ubiquitous features of our urban landscape through photography.
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Best Mideast stopover: Dubai or Oman?
Your long-haul flight is touching down in Dubai and you want a stopover – but do you stay in the United Arab Emirates or head to nearby Oman? Here’s my verdict.
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A walk in another world
Most Pacific islands lure visitors with promises of sun-soaked beaches — but on Atiu one of the biggest attractions is a place where the sun never shines.
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Ethiopia’s Meskel festival in pictures
Once a year Ethiopia’s Christians celebrate what they say was the discovery of Christ’s cross more than 1600 years ago. All over the country they dress in brightly coloured robes, dance, sing, pray and build towering bonfires.
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Meskel: Ethiopia’s festival of fire
Nothing was going to stop me seeing one of Africa’s most colourful festivals — or so I thought.
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Rwanda in pictures
A colourful, mountainous, densely populated country in the heart of Africa, Rwanda has made enormous strides since the 1994 genocide.
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Ethiopia in pictures
A photographic journey through one of the most fascinating countries on the planet, including the 12th century rock-hewn churches of Lalibela, the colourful eastern city of Harar, and the spiritual epicentre of Axum — legendary home of the Ark of the Covenant.
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Samoa on two wheels
A guide to cycling around Savai’i, the bigger, less developed and more chilled-out of Samoa’s two main islands.
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The far-reaching wake of the waka
What makes a group of Dutch students so passionate about Māori culture that they travel halfway around the world each year to take part in Waitangi Day festivities?
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The strange case of the giant underpants
How I ended up with a piece of the Czech president’s flag.
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A pilgrimage to the birthplace of beer
A 19th century uprising against bad beer, in what is now the Czech Republic, led to the invention of the golden lager we know and love today.
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The highwaymen of Hokianga
Once a year the Wild West saddles up and rides into Waimamaku for a day of highway robbery.
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Godson to the Queen
The fascinating and little-known tale of how Queen Victoria came to have a Māori godson.
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Uncovering Aitutaki’s hidden past
One man has made it his mission to revive knowledge of pre-Christian ways in the Cook Islands.
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God’s brewers
Belgium’s Trappist monks make some of the best beer in the world – but forget trying to watch these pious brewers at work.
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A toast to the Walking Dead
On Atiu, in the Cook Islands, resourceful locals brew their own beer from oranges and socialise in bars hidden in the bush.
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Hundertwasser in Holland: ‘Your loss is our gain’
How a ‘New Zealand monument’ designed by eccentric Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser ended up being built in Holland instead.
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The love boat
The author accidentally finds himself on a ship shuttling Eastern European sex workers to the brothels of Istanbul.
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One foot in paradise
I’d only been on Aitutaki, a series of atolls sprinkled around a picture-postcard lagoon in the Cook Islands, for a few minutes when Captain Terrible ruined my plans for this story.
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