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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Nothing was going to stop me seeing one of Africa’s most colourful festivals — or so I thought.
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A colourful, mountainous, densely populated country in the heart of Africa, Rwanda has made enormous strides since the 1994 genocide.
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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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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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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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How I ended up with a piece of the Czech president’s flag.
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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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Once a year the Wild West saddles up and rides into Waimamaku for a day of highway robbery.
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The fascinating and little-known tale of how Queen Victoria came to have a Māori godson.
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One man has made it his mission to revive knowledge of pre-Christian ways in the Cook Islands.
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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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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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How a ‘New Zealand monument’ designed by eccentric Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser ended up being built in Holland instead.
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The author accidentally finds himself on a ship shuttling Eastern European sex workers to the brothels of Istanbul.
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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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Craters of boiling lava, lush rainforest, bizarre landscapes and charming Ni-Van guides make the walk over Ambrym’s twin volcanoes one of the best overnight hikes in the Pacific.
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Could the Te Paki Coastal Track around New Zealand’s northern tip qualify as a Great Walk? I decided to brave the mosquitoes to find out.
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Rainbow-coloured reefs, sunset tubing, fire dancing, Fijian hospitality and much more put the Yasawa Islands on the map.
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I’m sure my insistence on seeking out walks in Fiji’s Yasawa Islands marked me out as something of an eccentric.
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