Those who know me well often groan when I subject them to my frequent ramblings about orangutans. As I’ve remarked on this blog before, I’ve long had a fascination with the human like tendencies of these great apes. Back in October 2019, I embarked on a two-week volunteering experience in Borneo. It was an action-packed trip, so brace yourself, this post is a long one….
The final destination on our road-trip was further up the Californian coast in the serene region of Big Sur. The Pacific Coast Highway was closed due to a major landslide in 2017 which buried part of the road, so the satnav suggested we stick to Highway 101 North for 100 miles which I wasn’t particularly excited about. After a brief visual inspection on Google maps,…
We set off from Stovepipe Wells early, bound for San Diego at the very southern tip of California near the Mexican border. We anticipated taking the same spectacular hillside road that originally brought us to Death Valley from Bakersfield, but instead the navigation system took us through the heart of the sister Panamint Valley. For 50 miles we drove without seeing the faintest sight of…
We started our descent from the Sierra Nevada mountains in desperate need of fuel. A combination of our Mustang’s thirsty engine and the constant hilly terrain meant we were achieving truly horrendous fuel economy. We’d almost run the tank dry but luckily found a fuel station just in time. Reaching Death Valley involved a long ‘U’ route around the Sierra Nevada mountains, as the Tioga…
I was immediately thrown into the deep-end as we departed SF airport. The early afternoon traffic was pilling up on Highway 101 as we slowly made our way south east through the Bay Area. Driving on the wrong side of the road wasn’t the challenge; I last drove in Iceland a few weeks prior which was also on the left side. The challenge on the…
Last month I was fortunate to cross the pond on a fortnight log road-trip across California, with my younger brother Nishay. Our trip would begin from one of the USA’s most iconic cities, San Francisco, where we would then head eastwards towards the wilderness of Yosemite National Park. A long desert drive would send us into the fiery warmth of Death Valley, followed by a…
I’ll admit it initially took a fair bit of convincing myself to travel to the freezing cold country of Iceland in the middle of winter. But when I weighed up the chance to cross out a few things on my bucket list, like seeing the northern lights and glacier trekking, it seemed like a no-brainer. Or, so I thought! Planning the week long solo trip…
One of the resolutions I made this year was to explore more of the UK. It occurred to me as I jetted off abroad last year that perhaps I’ve overlooked some of the amazing sites in my own country, many of which are barely a few hours drive away from home. While it does take a fair bit of convincing myself to get outdoors in…
Well, it only took a year, but this week I uploaded the final video instalment covering my 2016 overland adventure from Milton Keynes to Singapore. I didn’t initially set out to create a travel film but figured I’d assemble all the various clips and images together into an 80 minute documentary of my experience. All the video was shot on an iPhone 6S (which yielded…