Welcome to TravelWriterLife
Welcome to TravelWriterLife, where the art of storytelling meets the thrill of travel. My journey as a travel writer and … Continue reading Welcome to TravelWriterLife
Life in the Tea Hills
A story of hills, tea, and the distance between here and home. I am in my friend Lydia’s village. Sānyàng. … Continue reading Life in the Tea Hills
A Walk in the Hills
The city sprawls up every gully, every riverside, every flat piece of land that can hold a foundation. Towering apartment … Continue reading A Walk in the Hills
On a Rainy Morning in Quanzhou
Quanxiu Liu is shining like a strip cut from a plate of sheet metal. The rain falls in torrents from … Continue reading On a Rainy Morning in Quanzhou
The Sacred and Profane
The divining tablets hit the concrete like scattered bones: sharp, random, definitive. A young woman in designer trainers scoops them … Continue reading The Sacred and Profane
WHERE THE PRAIRIES MEET THE MOUNTAINS
At Waterton Lakes National Park–a landscape of perpendicular mountains and deep, glacial lakes on the eastern edge of the Canadian … Continue reading WHERE THE PRAIRIES MEET THE MOUNTAINS
Heat and Dust
On the overpasses, cars crawl through the mirage, each one a sealed bubble of air-conditioned defiance. But the city doesn’t care. The heat is indifferent, eternal. It radiates from the concrete, rises in waves from the road, presses down from above: a three-dimensional sauna of light and dust. Somewhere behind all that sun-glare, the desert waits, unchanged and unimpressed. Continue reading Heat and Dust
Sim City
The Burj Khalifa points into the sky like a Qibla compass, its needle turned upwards towards Allah (Subḥānahu wa taʿālā). … Continue reading Sim City
The Liberty Timbers
But it’s not one that a Jack Tar would recognise. Instead of oakham, gunpowder smoke, tobacco and rum, I can smell oak polish, high-end perfume, old wood, and new money. It’s a curious blend, like Chanel No.5 dabbed behind the ears of Admiral Nelson. Continue reading The Liberty Timbers
The Riddle of the Stones
The hills rise behind Abergavenny like a wall built by giants, steep, green, and unyielding. They are the town’s backdrop … Continue reading The Riddle of the Stones
The Shard
The glass blade of The Shard glitters above me, slicing into a flawless July sky. From street level, its steel ribs and glass facets look impossibly steep, tapering into a vanishing point so sharp it could pierce flesh. I pause beneath its mirrored flank, framed by the leaves of a London plane tree, and feel the familiar Southwark hum: the rattle of trains, the cries from Borough Market, the old bones of the city pressed up against this gleaming newcomer. Continue reading The Shard
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