Journey Jar

I had just come back from a full day at Cradle Mountain. Most people would have called it a day. But it was only early evening, my hotel was in the Launceston CBD, and someone had mentioned that Cataract Gorge was walkable from the city centre. I had nothing but time and slightly tired legs, […]

I have visited 43 countries. I have stood on clifftops in Norway, hiked through rainforests in Borneo, and watched the sun rise over the Himalayas. But when I think about the most beautiful places I have ever seen in my life, Cradle Mountain sits near the very top – and I do not say that […]

Most people flying into Tasmania head straight to Hobart. I didn’t. I flew into Launceston instead – and it turned out to be a great decision. Starting in the north put me right at the beginning of a route that took me through Cradle Mountain, the historic village of Ross, and eventually down to Hobart […]

I arrived in Sicily on a cheap flight from Malta. That is the honest version of how this trip started — not a carefully planned grand tour of southern Italy, but a budget airline alert and a two-day window. Malta to Catania, €30 each way, grab a bus to Taormina, figure out the rest later. […]

Twenty kilometres inland from Taormina, a river runs through a canyon that lava made. The Alcantara Gorges — Gole dell’Alcantara in Italian — are what happens when a volcano erupts, lava flows into a riverbed, cools rapidly in the water, and fractures into columns of dark basalt. The Alcantara River then spends the next nine […]

I am Muslim, from Bangladesh, and the Vatican is not my faith’s holy site. That is the honest starting point for this guide. I had no particular religious connection to the place. I was visiting because it is one of the most significant sites on earth — because the art inside is among the greatest […]

I had four days in Melbourne. No rental car, no local knowledge, no group to share the planning with. Just a Myki card, a rough idea of what I wanted to see, and a city that turned out to be far more generous to the car-free visitor than most guides suggest. This is the 4 […]

Melbourne is one of the best cities in the world for food. That is not a controversial take – it is just what the city is. Forty-three countries later, I have eaten in a lot of places. Melbourne still surprised me. What makes it unusual is the range. In a single day you can have […]

The first decision most visitors get wrong about Melbourne is not what to do – it is where to sleep. Pick the wrong area and you spend your entire trip on trams trying to get somewhere. Pick the right one and the city opens up immediately – everything is walkable or a short ride away, […]

I had been looking at photographs of the Colosseum since I was a child. In school textbooks, on television, in the film Gladiator — that image of the great oval amphitheatre was so familiar it had almost become abstract. Just a symbol. A logo for Ancient Rome. Then I stood inside it. The goosebumps were […]