Travel Special

Nicholas Shakespeare on Tasmania

The Quiet Peninsula

By Nicholas Shakespeare

Joan Masterman’s matchless four-day walk, the Freycinet Experience, turns 20 this year. For her traditional end-of-season party, she has invited the guides, lodge co-ordinators and office staff, plus Gil the bus driver and Shep the skipper, to fit into clothes they might have worn back in 1992. But unknown to Joan, her guests are hatching a surprise counter plan – one that may involve les

Rodney Hall on Mali

To Timbuktu and Back

By Rodney Hall

The greatest ancient library in the world is being unearthed and reassembled at Timbuktu – an astonishing archeological discovery – so I set out to see for myself, travelling with my daughter Cressida. Mali is poor – very, very poor. Countless catastrophes have struck since Mansa Musa, Emperor of Mali, made his famous pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324 attended by an army of 500 slaves loaded

Janette Turner Hospital on Central Park, New York

Wanted for Loitering

By Janette Turner Hospital

From the NASA space shuttle, Central Park is visible to the naked eye as a bright emerald bar on the fat knuckle of Manhattan – index finger of New York, principal of the five boroughs that make up the city, indisputably the dominant digit as it pokes the soft underbelly of the Bronx while giving the finger casually, insouciantly, to everything west of the Hudson. If an astronaut were to plunge by re-entry capsule into the heart of th

Letter to a Bulgarian Friend

By Alex Miller

Dear Boris, You tell me you are living in Chirpan again, the town where you were born. That you have returned there after 35 years away. I still see Chirpan, low to the horizon and far to the west across the plain as we drove on our roundabout route through Dimitrovgrad to Stara Zagora – finding our way back to Sofia by a route no Bulgarian would ever have

Linda Jaivin on Harbin, China

Holiday on Ice

By Linda Jaivin

“Five bus tickets, one turkey and one lamb, please.” My friend then turns to the rest of us: “Karmically speaking, we’re going to hell.” That may well be so. In the short run, we are cramming into a small armoured bus along with a crowd of palpably e

Drusilla Modjeska on Tufi, Papua New Guinea

In the Fjords

By Drusilla Modjeska

Back from Tufi for less than a month, I find myself thinking I should cancel this article, keep the place a secret and let those who think Papua New Guinea is a dangerous place of dark spirits continue in their ignorance. On the first morning of this most rece

Robyn Davidson on Health Retreats

Tide of Improvement

By Robyn Davidson

Sometimes fortune gifts you things you did not know you needed. Tyringham Clinic was one of those. Out in the luminous green, motorway-laced flatlands behind Milton Keynes, England, it was a Palladian pile that had known better times. At the front was a gravel drive cir

Craig Sherborne on Hiking the Milford Track, New Zealand

The Sound of Silence

By Craig Sherborne

Bliss can never happen of its own accord. When it has been years-long away it needs some outside intervention. Narcotic versions were never for me – look at those grey-faced zombies stumbling down Fitzroy Street in Melbourne. That’s not bliss, that’s bla