The village of Lulongo has no electricity. To keep his phone business going, Charles has to travel half a day to charge his phone at a significant cost. The village phone program initiated by Solio, a company with a clever tagline – ‘plug into the sun’, is helping African villages without electricity, to have access to phone technology, providing them with a new means of electricity rather than relying on dung, kerosene and crop waste which can cause phenomenal indoor air pollution, resulting in pneumonia, chronic respiratory disease and lung cancer. Solio is available online to everyone who wants to start trading in their electricity plug for solar power. Whenever and wherever you need power, Solio is there for you. Its unique design, which can easily fit in your back pocket, can be used to charge your electrical equipment when you’re travelling. Other great solar powered travel accessories are available from Powermonkey. Power to the people!

I approached this festive season armed with a firm, virtuous, anti-consumer resolution to give experiences as gifts for Christmas. I mostly succeeded. For the parents, my sisters and I pooled our resources and bought tickets to The Outback Spectacular. For my sisters and brother-in-law, in a bid to aid family bonding, I gave vouchers for us all to embark on a tobogganing safari on our annual family holiday at Moreton Island.  Tangalooma Resort is a hive of activity at this time of the year; even with the recent bad weather moving across the coast, inciting rainy, grey days. (more…)

A short stroll from Yoyogi Park in Tokyo, where the Harajuku girls gather in their unique sartorial glory and aspiring rockstars brave winter’s stinging bite to sing their hearts out to anyone who will listen, sits the health-inspired juice bar/cafe known as Forbidden Fruit. But unlike many of the unique characters who frequent Tokyo’s infamous Harajuku neighbourhood, this tiny locale prefers to go relatively unnoticed – except to those in the know. (more…)

Anyone with itchy feet – but especially feet that yearn to make their own way across the world – will appreciate Mirjam Wouters. She is a woman born for the road. Brought up on family cycling and in-line skating trips, Mirjam has independently hiked and biked across much of Europe and is now pedalling from Ireland to Australia. Current location: Tibet. Her blog is a great armchair read for anyone who’d rather be somewhere else. Namely, with two wheels, a tent and a whole lot of kilometres to leave behind. And she’s just about clocked 10,000 of those. Along the way she’s met Tajiki truck drivers, made porridge with milk straight from the cow, been given Easter eggs by strangers, bedded down in an Iranian penthouse and woken up to the above view from her tent. If you need a reminder to live your life, this could be it.

While horse riding schools, horse racing groups and general lovers of the steed throughout
Australia are reeling from the recent bout of equine flu, it’s heartening to know that a string of these gentle giants are happy and healthy in some parts of the state.  With many schools and groups closed down during this time of epidemic, Clip Clop Treks at Lake
Weyba are still operating, albeit not at maximum capacity. Strict regulations have been imposed upon horse businesses by the Department of Primary Industries. When we booked the ride, we were asked to give our guides a call so they could meet us at the gate and spray our car tyres with disinfectant. We weren’t allowed to take our own riding boots to avoid the disease spreading.  

Owner, Lyn tells me (yelling over her shoulder) that business has been slow since the outbreak. (more…)

There’s a place off Australia’s island-littered east coast where it’s possible to lay in a freshwater ‘infinity’ rock pool, your bare legs surrounded by curious jungle perch, and watch the flat blue Pacific expand below you. Welcome to Zoe Bay, Hinchinbrook Island, a quick ferry-ride from Cardwell in Far North Queensland. The best way to see this World Heritage site is via the 32-kilometre Thorsborne Trail, a four-day trek through rainforest, heath, freshwater melaleuca swamp, eucalypt forest, saltpans and some of Australia’s most diverse mangrove communities. The island is a rainbow of life: golden orchids, blue soldier crabs, pink beach stones, green turtles, black sand and the vivid orange spikes of the resurrection plant. Keep your eyes peeled for crocodiles, dugong, dolphins, lace monitors, wallabies, echidnas, bandicoots and native rats. If you go, take a hardy insect repellent and heed this: mud from the riverbeds provides instant relief from bites (and is a great talking point with fellow walkers). Hinchinbrook is the traditional country of the Bandjin Aboriginal people.

Rare red lilies, secret caves, pilgrimages, friendships, and the constant struggle for freedom and space to practice one’s faith – Last Seen in Lhasa is about monumental and minuscule moments in Tibet’s recent history. As her first book, British journalist Claire Scobie – who now works and resides in Australia – has written a very personal tale inspired by a time in her own life when she found her work as a highly respected journalist in London to be unfulfilling. She reflects upon how spiritual aridity stirred her to grasp opportunities she may have otherwise missed, and to follow her heart on seven journeys to Tibet as she invests in a true and deep friendship with her new-found friend, Tibetan nun, Ani. Through Ani, she gently learns the true meaning of compassion, independence, friendship, spirituality, faith, resolve, integrity and about feeling something deeper than the surface glare of things.

But to perfectly sum up this story, look to its three preface quotes:
- We close ourselves off from Eden in order to live the common-sense life and then find ways of escaping from that when it gets too mundane… We fear ecstasy because it is too demanding, requires too much discipline, too much surrender. Occasionally we touch it – through meditation, dance, celebration and ritual and we are lit up, we become truly alive. Then we return to the solid world and die again. - Theolyn Cortens (more…)

Just when you might think time is something you don’t have, along comes a book like 132 Seize the Days by Lonely Planet to blow your shallow musings out of its puddle. Targeted at full-time job holders in the UK, who on average are entitled to 132 non-work days each year (counting weekends, holidays and bank holidays), this snappy 127-page pocket book dreams up big and small ways to take breathers around the world that are relaxing, inspiring, adventurous, hedonistic, charitable, ecologically sensitive or all of the above. With ideas as grand as a 16-day jungle survival course in deepest Guyana, to fossil hunting on Devon’s Jurassic Coast, or nude camping expeditions in Croatia, this book caters to an array of tastes, budgets, sensibilities and fetishes. Written by Amelia Thomas, an intriguing and intelligent British writer, journalist and adventurer who breathes the principles of carpe diem, this book is an inspiring reminder that life is for the living. (Image by Solbeam, a perpetual pilgrim.)

Monitor green sea turtles in the Northern Territory’s remote Cobourg Peninsula, work with local Aboriginal landowners to conserve a nature refuge behind Broome’s Cable Beach, or spend an afternoon restoring remnant bushland around Brisbane. Australia’s largest practical conservation group, Conservation Volunteers Australia, teams volunteers with short and overnight-stay conservation projects nation-wide. With over 10,000 volunteers a year and over 2,000 conservation projects under its tool-belt, there are stacks of unique opportunities to contribute, learn and explore. Connect to a local opportunity, or plan a trip to the other side of the continent.“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.” – Marcel Proust

After inhaling Penelope Green’s first literary offering within 24 hours, I was chuffed to discover that she has written another tale, See Naples and Die. Penelope moved from Sydney to Rome five years ago and her best-selling When in Rome captured her baby-steps in the country beautifully; learning the language, understanding the culture, making friends and fighting bureaucratic visa requirements. In her second story, See Naples and Die, Penelope has been in Italy for three years and has been offered a job in her chosen career as a journalist in Naples, a city famed for its crime and social problems.  

Through her job, she meets a varied and eclectic mix of Neapolitans, in a bid to understand the city she now calls home. As Penelope peppers their stories throughout the second book, a greater historical and social side of Italy is uncovered. Both books were inspirational chronicles of the life and adventures of a tenacious and curious expat working out that perennial question we all sometimes grapple with: Where is my place in the world?  

A simple weekend away can do the world of good. We could not be luckier in Brisbane to have real paradises about an hour away from us in any particular direction. As warm days and cool nights lull us into a spring-time reverie, head to Springbrook, just inland of the Gold Coast, for an opportunity to relax, reflect and respect the amazing natural world that grows high around us.

Accommodation-wise, just a few seconds on their website will tell you The Mouse’s House is one of the best rainforest retreats on the ridge – with cosy wooden chalets, simple yet stylish furnishings, fully equipped kitchen and big bbq, spa (and bathrobes!) all the thinking is done for you and eases you into a relaxing, stress-free weekend. Just don’t forget the champagne, because the closest bubbly can only be found in Nerang.

While listening to the sound of the stream that runs past your deck, lounging in your rainforest surrounds or borrowing the pushbikes available at Mouses House can easily fill in your time, Springbrook offers some other experiences worth investigating. (more…)

The beloved MP3 player has made lonely bus rides bearable, but battery life remains a problem during extended travel – especially when you’re far from luxuries like 240-volt power. Enter the world’s first wind-up MP3 player. This baby begs you to leave power adaptors and spare batteries at home. Designed by the man who invented the wind-up radio, the eco-media player takes mobile music to the next level, providing 40 minutes of music for one minute of winding. Supporting various music file formats, it doubles as a video player with full-colour 1.8 inch LCD screen, torch, phone charger, photo viewer, FM radio and voice recorder. The player comes with 2GB internal memory and a memory card slot, and can also be charged via a USB port, providing up to 20 hours playback. Tops my list of clever gear to hit the road with. Let’s hope the techie designers at Apple are listening.

From the source: Pecha Kucha (which is Japanese for the sound of conversation) has tapped into a demand for a forum in which creative work can be easily and informally shown, without having to rent a gallery or chat up a magazine editor. This is a demand that seems to be global – as Pecha Kucha Night, without any pushing, has spread virally to over 80 cities across the world. Find a location and join the conversation.

Tonight that conversation is taking place at the Powerhouse from 8pm. The key to Pecha Kucha Night is its patented system for avoiding this fate. Each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds each – giving 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up. This keeps presentations concise, the interest level up, and gives more people the chance to show. Go, sip, meet, question, laugh, learn.

Somewhere off the Queensland coast, just shy of the Whitsundays, lies an uninhabited island that is home to a fabled beach shack. The ‘Percy Hilton’ is little more than a pitched tin roof set on the sand, open to the elements, with a table, hammock and ‘loft’ story overlooking the sea. What sets this simple hut apart is its contents: it’s packed to the rafters with memorabilia from visiting yachts. Driftwood, t-shirts, buoys, coconuts, messages in bottles, guitars and even a prosthetic leg cram its shelves and struts. All bearing the names of yachts and crews, declaring ‘I was here’. Round-the-world whippersnapper Jesse Martin’s been here. Several racing maxis recently called in. The less famous but amusingly named ‘Vegemite on Toast’, ‘Tardis’ and ‘Fifty Bucks’ made it too. Visitors are encouraged to contribute thus: “Keep your sign neat and small, so it can be read by all, if it’s pathetic, untidy or vast, there’s no chance it’s going to last”. The mystique of the cruising yachtie’s life is tangible in this living museum, which even includes a book-swap. Worn by sun, salt and rain, these artefacts are preserved by a respect among cruising yachties, strangers but for a shared lifestyle upon the seas.

On the surface, the process of planning a trip to Buenos Aires is a sweet one. The name of the Argentinean capital conjures up a mix of eclectic images: tango, street art, warm and welcoming portenos and Evita Peron. But on closer inspection and a bit of digging, the vibrant exterior of the city dubbed the ‘Paris of the South’, veils a not-so-shiny truth.  In 2001, Argentina declared the largest debt default in modern history, causing a period of unprecedented poverty, crime and unemployment. It doesn’t take much scratching of the surface to discover signs of this still exist today. It’s reported that 40% of the population of Argentina lives below the poverty line. On the streets of Buenos Aires today, a common sight is that of the ‘cartoneros’ or ‘cardboard men’ who scavenge through people’s rubbish for paper, cardboard, glass and plastic to sell for recycling. They’re extremely poor, and often foreign. However, many of these people are formerly skilled workers who have been forced to scour the streets for a living due to the unemployment rate in the country which has been as high as 25%.  The cartoneros earn a meagre living, competing with rubbish-collection companies hired by the Buenos Aires city government, which collect 4,500 to 5,000 tons of rubbish every day and transport it to dumps on the outskirts of the city. (more…)

As far as epic adventures go, this one tops the lot. British ex-paratrooper Karl Bushby is mid-way through a 36,000 mile solo walk round the world – which he justifiably calls ‘Goliath – the expedition‘. Starting at the southern tip of South America in 1998, the feisty 36yo has evaded terrorist factions whilst slashing his way through the Colombian jungle, pulled an unwilling donkey across the Andes, hot-shoed it through the Nevada desert and shivered through Canada’s icy extremes to the edge of Alaska. There he’ll wait for the Bering Strait to freeze over and ‘walk on water’ to Siberia, where he’ll continue his foot-slog across Russia, Asia and Europe, returning to Britain via the Channel Tunnel in 2011. He is undertaking the unbroken journey with his world on his back – or more precisely, in a converted trailer he calls ‘the Beast’. His expedition is supported by a handful of sponsors, a small ground crew (his mum and dad) and propelled by the kindness of strangers who offer food, lodgings and friendship along the way. Giant Steps is his account of his traverse of the American continents. Amazing what can be achieved with a dream, a little planning and your own two feet.

A lottery that shares wealth within postcodes and charities. A foundation to attract and connect creative professionals from around the world. A competition to encourage and aid the invention of great new green products and services. It can only mean one thing…

PICNIC is a seductive, exciting, intangible, unpredictable, cosmopolitan and cheerful annual event for and by the creative industry. PICNIC ’07 will be the year’s leading European event devoted to creativity and innovation. Spanning 5 days, Picnic takes place in Cross Media Week and it seems the city comes out to play, learn, interrogate and create. With music concerts, city wide games and conferences attracting the likes of Blaise Ageura and Jonathan Harris, this is one event I would love to attend. The Picnic Green Challenge extends the appeal of this already riveting week. (more…)

Whitebait fritters with a crisp sav blanc, Wellington. Four-dollar mudcrabs fresh from the drink, Boigu Island. Sangria and paella, Barcelona. Gelato, Rome… mmm! Regional food and drink remain two of the best reasons to leave home. Add a unique setting and a simple repast quickly becomes a travel highlight. One of my most memorable meals was with friends in Osaka, at their favourite restaurant. We left our shoes in little wooden lockers at the door. As we padded past the open kitchen, the chefs erupted into a raucous welcome cheer, greeting us (inexplicably) like movie stars (we’re not). Traditional sunken tables, bamboo, paper lanterns, laughter and cherry blossoms filled the room. We ordered plate after plate of sakana, a Japanese style tapas. Sashimi, uni or sea urchin roe, fresh wasabi – in the DIY style, with ceramic grater – prawn balls, spring rolls and the mysterious Boston Butt, which we ordered on name alone (and which we deduced, on its arrival, to be pork). All accompanied by a jug of local beer, hot sake and flushed cheeks. A meal to savour; our time was short and I wouldn’t see my friends again for another year. So naturally, we kicked on with karaoke…

Then there was the Berber stew – a communal dish eaten with fingers and bread – under a star-dusted sky in the Western Sahara… and the golden spot trevally I hooked while fishing up to my hips off Coconut Island, which we barbecued with fresh limes from my friend’s garden…

What’s been your most memorable meal on the road?

“I will exchange a city for a sunset, the tramp of legions for a wind’s wild cry, and all the braggard thrusts of steel triumphant, for one far summit blue against the sky.” – Monica Blake

Usually guidebooks give us the lowdown on destinations. This one is about journeys to ’the middle of nowhere’. Or more specifically, places that are remote, hard to get to and often greet the weary traveller with inhospitable conditions. From 10,000 metres under the ocean to the roof of the world, from the middle of Kazakhstan to a Polynesian atoll, from windswept Antarctic islands to the inside curl of a Caribbean wave and up to the shimmering North Pole. Why do people seek these places out? Is it the personal satisfaction of undertaking extreme adventure challenges? The rare beauty of the earth unsullied by human occupation? A chance to engage with traditional cultures? Re-connect with nature? Or the space for heightened contemplation of self? This Lonely Planet foot-slog along paths less travelled pairs stunning photographs with bite-sized stories about places you dream of going (or avoiding, depending on the author’s tale), from a loose assembly of nomads who variously ski, surf, boat, trek, run, climb and slash their own paths. Right then, where are my thermals?

As if there aren’t enough challenges already for the modern girl to contend with, I’ve found another: maintaining your dignity (and swimwear) while tumbling through the surf with a kayak on your head. If I hadn’t shaken off the previous night’s wine haze from my friends’ wedding, the cold sea-water rushing up my nostrils sure did the trick. Since I was in Byron I thought I’d join a group of backpackers at yucca-framed Wategoes Beach to paddle with dolphins – the perfect wind-down to a big weekend. But sea-kayaking, it turns out, is a different beast to flat-water paddling, and best attempted with one’s sense of balance intact. Because getting through the breakers is all about angles, and well, geometry and I never got past first impressions. Once out into the even swell, I reasoned, things should improve. They don’t. Feeling ever more the gangling fool, I upturn the kayak, emptying my fellow-paddler in the wet. Woops, must’ve been all that wine. Though we don’t see any dolphins, our very suntanned guide, Cameron, who with arms like the Cape Byron lighthouse could paddle to the horizon and back before breakfast, spots a rare loggerhead turtle. After nearly three hours paddling against swell and current, my arms are ready to drop off. Steering back through the surf, the break whisks us side-on and out we tumble again, gulping sea-water and pushing through exhaustion up onto the hard lovely sand. But not without first checking the location of swimwear. With just a few bruises, I can report I’ve suffered far worse dumpings.