Even the 5:30am call to prayer by the muezzin at the nearby mosque didn’t ruin the wonderful feeling of waking up in an exotic location a mere 2½ hour flight from the UK. Grabbing a coffee, I climbed to the rooftop and watched the sun rise over Tangier and the Strait of Gibraltar, where the inky Mediterranean Sea and the azure Atlantic Ocean meet.
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The Two Giants of Turkey
Istanbul and Cappadocia. One a buzzing multicultural city, the other hard to pinpoint on a map but, known for its iconic moonlike landscapes. Each amazing in their own right and also great combined into a perfect week’s holiday.
My trip started in Istanbul, which is easily one of my favourite cities in the world. The Bosphorus Strait separates Asia from Europe within the city itself, but this is not a division, it is where East meets West and there are few places on earth where so many cultural contrasts live in such unison.
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Hiking the Himalayas
The scene is hypnotic with rhododendron trees in early bloom, their vibrant red flowers contrasting against the snow-capped Himalayan peaks, whilst neon green terraces dotted with tiny villages cascade down vertigo inducing valleys.
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Madagascar - A land of lemurs, landscapes and long roads
Ask someone to pin Madagascar on a map and there’s a slim chance they’ll manage to locate it. But, lying some 400km off the east coast of Africa, it is the Indian Ocean’s largest island. Having broken free from the Continent many millions of years ago, it evolved in its own individual way and is one of the most biodiverse countries with, astonishingly, around 80% of its flora and fauna (of which there are around 250,000 species) found nowhere else on earth.
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