It’s your first day or exploring the open-air markets of Delhi, and you’re sniffing the air like a bloodhound. India is the home of some of the tastiest and most aromatic food in the whole world, you learned that when you researched this whole incredible trip, but it’s another thing entirely to breathe it in.
“Um – shouldn’t this be in the fridge?” My partner looks at what I’m pointing at: a roughly 2kg hunk of ham, still on the bone and propped up by some kind of wooden frame, resting on her kitchen sideboard. “No, it’s fine.” It certainly doesn’t look fine. There’s visible mold on the outside of
As any Omani bedouin will tell you, life in the desert is hard – but it’s where everything makes the most sense. For these nomadic tribes of Arab people eking out a pastoral living across North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, the habits of the modern globalized world can look strange. How could anyone put
It’s official: the best way to make your travel memories stick is writing them down by hand. When I first started writing for Wheel & Anchor, I was fresh from being a professional travel writer – and I felt like I knew the danger that cameras face to our travel memories, as I wrote here:
Discovering the Allure of Turkish Tea Culture When you picture a hot day in Turkey, you might imagine cooling off with a refreshing drink. But as you stroll through bustling streets or relax in a serene tea garden, you’ll notice something intriguing—everyone around you is sipping on Turkish tea. The process of making this tea
It’s that special Khmer magic. The moment you land in Cambodia, a sense of ease, lightness, and joy should descend upon you. Surprisingly, this isn’t marketing hyperbole, as most of the country’s visitors seem to feel this way – in 2021, a poll by the Rough Guides travel company voted it the “world’s friendliest country”.
It’s 5:30 am as the sun rises over the Caribbean coast (as it does at this time pretty much all year round, being so close to the equator). A soft golden light shines over the tranquil sea, creeping up the tree trunks in search of their tops, and slides its way up the sides of
A big part of the fun of travel is those local restaurants, so excitingly different from everything you’re used to back home. But when the main course of your meal is over, and everyone is eyeing the dessert list, do you ever feel a lingering sense of disappointment that you have to leave soon – that *this* meal in *these* surroundings will soon be over?
If you’re looking for a way to make your morning coffee a bit more exciting, try the following: – take one egg yolk – add two teaspoonfuls of condensed milk – sprinkle on some sugar, according to how much of a sweet tooth you have – whisk it like crazy until it’s as thick as
Meet seasoned British traveller Hilary, tackling life with an enthusiasm that seems to border on recklessness: ‘‘No one hitchhikes any more, do they?” I often hear people saying this and am proud to reply that I’ve hitchhiked every decade of my life, except the first. And I don’t intend to stop just because I’m now
It’s horribly early in the morning, and I really shouldn’t be awake right now. I have a long day tomorrow, travelling from Athens to Crete on a ferry that’ll take me all day. The weather will be good, and the views magnificent, and I won’t want to miss any of them due to exhaustedly napping
I first encountered a Highland Cow in a lonely field in Orkney – and my first thought was, “Oh, hello. What are YOU doing here?” He wasn’t the only cow in sight, but Doug (a name I gave him after a guy I knew at school with very long hair) was the only cow who
Around this time of year, there’s an article that reappears in a certain type of British tabloid newspaper with a regularity you could set your watch by. It is, of course, a ridiculously sensationalist headline, riddled with what journalists call ‘FOMO’ (Fear Of Missing Out) – the anxious, shame-inducing fear of being so out-of-touch with
In my second term at University, I was a little desperate to make some new friends, so I started cooking Cypriot food. I did this for three reasons: I didn’t know any other students who were from Cyprus, so that was my best shot at creating a meal so unusual and “exotic” that it was
A week before Christmas, I stepped outside on a cold, grey, windy day and walked to the train station. It’s a route I’ve now taken well over a hundred times since moving to this seaside town in Western Scotland – and so I saw none of it. My thoughts were elsewhere: worries about squeezing work
Imagine, if you will, that you’re a 40-foot tall goat in Sweden, desperately just trying to survive Christmas without something really terrible happening to you. I know, this isn’t one of my most coherent opening lines of anything I’ve written. You may be extremely confused, and rightly so – what follows is something that attracts
If you’ve lived in Scotland for a while as I have, it’ll become a familiar sight: seeing a first-time visitor to this part of the world, often identifiable by the shiny newness of their waterproof outdoors gear, talking to an impressively grizzled-looking local about wild haggis. Oh, the things you’d learn, if you were this
Here’s an easy geography question that anyone should be able to ace: hey, what’s the capital city of Egypt? You’d think that after 4,000 years, the ancient and modern city of Cairo’s status as the unchanging centre of the country would be settled. There’#s just nowhere else that could possibly get close: it’s where the
My first experience of crème brûlée was born of desperation. I was working in a kitchen at the time (my side-job, when I was a student) and because of an emergency with a dishwashing machine, I was last to reach the food laid out for the staff. All the nicest stuff was gone – all
Have you ever been driven through London in the back of a black cab? If you’re attending the world-famous Chelsea Flower Show with us next year, it’s an opportunity to flag one of these four-wheeled legends down and let it take you for a spin… But hold on – “legends? Seriously? Isn’t that the kind
In May or September 2026, some of you will be stepping off a plane, taking enormous lungfuls of fresh, pure Austrian air, and exclaiming “oh wow, I just love the mountains!” You’re far from alone. It’s not just about the winter sports – although you could obviously point towards all the mountainous tourist destinations in
“Look! Are those buildings?” It’s getting choppy out here in one of Europe’s fastest waterways, and the ferry from John O’Groats is bouncing around in a way the pit of my stomach is not enjoying at all – but the conditions aren’t so bad that they spoil the view. Away off to our left, on
Oh no. Oh no. Oh NO. It’s always after you’ve been pickpocketed that you realise you did everything wrong. In my case, I put my travel wallet in my rucksack, then put the rucksack out of my sight in a public place – then lost myself and my awareness of my surroundings by writing a
Ow. Ow. OW. I lean over carefully, almost but not quite reaching over the bramble thicket’s angry thorns. OW! It’s always this way: by September, the easy-to-pick wild berries have vanished, snatched by the people out for an evening stroll with their dog or cycling to & from work along countryside paths like these, or
