I am a travel writer, editor, photographer and co-director of & Publishing, a contract publishing company that I co-founded with Amy Sohanpaul, editor of Traveller Magazine. I am the deputy editor of Traveller, which our company produces for WEXAS, the Traveller’s Club. We are also involved in organising the Travellers' Tales Festival, an annual celebration of travel writing and photography held at the prestigious headquarters of the Royal Geographical Society in London.

My Travels

I’ve always loved learning about places, finding them on maps and admiring wonderful photographs of landscapes and landmarks – something that still holds me in good stead in pub quizzes!

But I guess this interest really grew when, in 1995, I was fortunate enough to take part in an aid project in Tanzania, which was run by my secondary school in Kent.

Every couple of years the school would take a group of students out to the Tabora region of the country, visiting remote villages and supplying them with school books, medical equipment and helping to construct community buildings and clinics. To get to the villages we spent three days travelling across the country from Dar es Salaam, in the back of a rickety old truck piled high with supplies, with dust in our faces and hair, and the large African sun high in the sky overhead, as we held on tight over every bump in the road. I saw my first ‘Big Five’ animal when an elephant appeared out of the scrub beside the road at dusk as we passed through the Mikumi park on the way. In the villages we met wonderful people, friendly and hospitable despite the privations that many of them had to contend with. It opened my eyes to a fascinating, wider world.

We travelled back on a 24-hour sleeper train, not that we got much sleep – the passing landscapes and buzz of the journey keeping us awake. I remember eating hot samosas and sweet honey that we’d bought off trackside vendors, and haggling for wood carvings, goatskin drums, kangas and other souvenirs.

We took a ferry trip over to Zanzibar, where we got lost in the roaming alleyways and played football at sunset with local boys on a scruff of grass beneath Africa House, leaping off the harbour wall and into the sea to retrieve the ball every time we scuffed a shot.

It was a wonderful introduction to Africa and to the pleasures of travel more generally. Needless to say, I loved it. And I was hooked.

I’ve since travelled overland through the Andes, from Santiago to Quito, backpacked around Europe and followed the popular trail through Southeast Asia and Australasia, amongst others. I’ve particularly enjoyed visiting some less obvious places, my favourite passport stamp being the one for Bhutan – signed by a moustachioed official called Captain Chet Vanna. I’m up to almost 60 countries now… and counting.

I have worked at Traveller magazine since 2004 and as deputy editor am able to travel abroad several times a year for features – recent trips include Chengdu in China and the Atlantic provinces of Canada. These articles are usually illustrated with my own photos, a few of which are shown here.

I still enjoy finding out about the world – and am lucky to be able to do this most days, through the words and pictures of contributing journalists, authors and photographers.