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Kingdom of Character

What is your blood type?” asks Lady Gaga. It’s an odd question, especially one coming from a pop star I’ve only just met. “Um, I don’t know,” I say. She looks like I’ve just said her outfit sucks. “What? But everybody know blood type in Japan – like me. I am ‘A’, like real Gaga I think: patient, intelligent and, how you say? Conservative.” Conservative? She strikes me a pose á la Marilyn Monroe, gives me a wink and lights up her boobs like she’s a Christmas tree. Spiderman runs after her. Followed by two vampires, a pumpkin, a panda, some little green men and another Gaga dressed in lace.

I’m not sure what to expect upon my arrival for a few days in Tokyo, eight months after Japan’s devastating earthquake. But I’ve just discovered two things. 1) When someone asks what your blood group is, it’s like saying ‘what star sign are you?’ 2) I’ve unintentionally landed during Halloween, and everyone in Roppongi, the nightlife nerve centre, has gone a little Gaga.

Halloween festivities in Roppongi.

In fact, since the pop diva urged fans to come back to the city during her visit in June 2011, she has become somewhat of a national hero – and an apt one at that. Out there yet enigmatic, gregarious yet shy, the ‘Poker Face’ singer with the big personality sums up this town to a tee.

After a heavy first night out on the sake, I spend the next couple of days finding out what makes Tokyo tick. It’s a sprawling city with quirks on every street corner. From Akihabara’s cutesy-poo maid cafes and AKB48 shops (a local J-pop group with 48 members) to Harajuku’s cosplay rockabillies and Shibuya’s statue of Hachiko: a dead dog that was so admired for his loyalty, they even made a movie about him. And while all of this is great and good, and blows my boxed-in Western mind, I decide that tomorrow it’s time to do something that’ll give me a different perspective of the city’s character – like get out of it.

About a 90-minute train ride north-west of Tokyo lies Okutama-machi: a vast wilderness of cool rivers, misty mountains, ancient shrines and blossoming pink ginkgo trees. Not that you’d ever think it was there. The fact that 35 million people cram into the greater Tokyo area alone makes it the world’s most populous metropolitan region. So how could there possibly be any room for anything else but chopsticks?

“A guy got mauled by a bear out here,” says Brad, an American who’s been an outdoor guide in Okutama for over 10 years. “It was really bad. But it did put us on the map,” he says, pointing to a little bear motif on a sign post as we exit Kori station. “I mean, the Japanese didn’t actually think there would be any wild animals around.”

I look over at the mint-green hills we’re about to climb. No neon-lit skyscrapers, air-conditioned malls or pimped-up plazas; just spectacular spots for picnicking, camping, bathing, fishing and walking.

Okutama-machi is a pleasant relief with its cool rivers, misty mountains, ancient shrines and blossoming pink ginkgo trees.

Thankfully, Brad’s an expert in the area, so we start our hike a couple of hours down from Okutama town. This way, we can stroll up and finish the day at an onsen (hot spring).

There’s not a cloud around as we wind our way around the pebbly shoreline of the Tama River, up grassy paths and across little wooden bridges. Unfortunately, we’re a bit too early in the season for the brilliant autumn colours that epitomise the area, but the maple leaves are starting to turn from chameleon green into dusty yellow, with slight tinges of orange and cherry red.

Not far from our destination we stop beneath a small shrine that’s on a rock overlooking the almost alpine-clear water. There’s hardly another soul about, just a couple of out-of-towners snacking on sushi rolls and limbering up for what looks like calisthenics.

Hiking, it seems, like any other hobby in Japan, is serious business. Kitted out with Gore-Tex boots and gaiters for a walk that has barely broken a sweat, they bend, flex and squat, hiking poles in hand, as if they’ve been summitting Mt Fuji.

I happily watch the performance while Brad calls the people at the onsen to fix up lunch. I hear hurried whispers, some laughing and a lot of ‘sumimasen’ – a popular Japanese word that means ‘sorry’, but is used to relax tension in a conversation about anything from the weather to washing powder.

Twenty minutes go by and Brad is still on the phone. He smiles, rolls his eyes at me and I wonder if he is also an ‘A’ blood-type character. This guy’s got more patience than a pachinko player. My belly is gurgling and I’m keen to get on.

“Sometimes I think I’m way too Japanese,” he chuckles, hanging up the phone. “Last time I went to the onsen they didn’t have fish, so I called to say that I’ve got my friend from Australia here and I’d really like her to experience our amazing local fish. We discussed why the fish was so great, but I didn’t actually ask for the fish. I just suggested it would be nice.”

I’m confused. Wouldn’t it have been easier just to ask for the fish? This, I am told, is classic Japanese ‘honne’ – a way of expressing your true feelings without actually saying what it is that you want. It is the Western equivalent of ‘beating around the bush’. And it works.

At the onsen I’m treated to grilled river trout that makes my tongue sing. I follow it up outside, bathing in a big Japanese tub that’s positioned high on a cliff looking onto a patch of river. Campers dot one side of the bank, struggling to put up tents. My warm skin soaks up the chilly air, as I close my eyes and relax into the gentle sound of the water rushing below.

It is a very different noise to the one I’m listening to later that evening after a train ride back to the city.

“Ussah, ussah…hi gora, hi gora!” The chanting is set to the beat of mini plastic bats being banged together. It is loud. It is melodic. It is being conducted like an orchestra by a man standing on an upturned milk crate, blowing a whistle through a megaphone. This is the sound of Japan’s national sport, baseball.

I’m at Jingu Stadium, home of the Yakult Swallows, and I’ve been lucky to score tickets to a game that’s on par with a preliminary final. Better yet, it’s a local derby. It’s between age-old rivals the Yomiuri Giants, known as the New York Yankees of Japan, and the local underdogs, the Swallows.

Yakult Swallow baseball fans soaking up the atmosphere between age-old rivals the Yomiuri Giants.

The guy squeezed in next to me at the very back of the bleachers is Wayne, an expat who’s somewhat an authority on Japanese baseball – he’s barely missed a game in 42 years. “This is the best part,” he says, as he opens up a pastel-coloured umbrella. I check the air, but I don’t feel a drop. Then the sea of bodies below us becomes a tide of translucent brollies, swaying in the breeze. “A fan got so worked up once, he started waving his brolly,” says Wayne. “Now, we all do it – even when it’s not raining.”

As Suishu Tobita, Japan’s ‘god of baseball’, once said “Baseball is more than just a game. It has eternal value. Through it one learns the beautiful and noble spirit of Japan.”

Players get sussed out by their blood type, of course. It is, after all, a sport about mental grit as much as physical strength. Yet it’s played in a much more polite and fastidious fashion than its counterpart in America. You’ll never see a mid-game spat – on or off the field – despite the fact ‘beer girls’ come to your seat and serve you full-strength from vacuum-cleaner-like kegs strapped to their backs. Even the cheer squads, known as oendans, are a perfectly executed, orderly procession. The Giants’ fans stand, sing and then sit. Then the Swallows’ fans stand, sing and then sit. Never, ever do they go at the same time.

Beer girls serve full strength cold beer throughout the game.

You Gotta Have Wa, a book by Japan-based American Robert Whiting, is an insightful look into all the nuances of ‘besuboro’ (baseball). According to Whiting, “60 per cent of the country is a Giants fan…their performance has been held responsible for everything from the economic recession to the national suicide rate.” In another bizarre twist, even the owner of the Swallows, Hisami Matsuzono, is a shameless Giants fanatic. Though, not without good reason. If the Swallows defeat the Giants, sales of his Yakult plummet.

I give up my seat in the safety of the bleachers to come and join the action in the Swallows’ onedan. I have no idea what’s happening on the field, I’m too caught up in what now resembles a U2 concert. The air crackles with tension, then the chanting begins. “Ussah, ussah…hi gora, hi gora!” The usually reserved Japanese spill forth their lungs, like volcanoes erupting. It is a resounding, deafening cry that goes on and on until the game finishes four hours later.

Soon after, I’m sinking a beer with ‘OJ de Villager’ – Nigeria’s answer to Bob Marley. He came to Tokyo to be with his Japanese wife, a lady who looks as much fun as a plank of wood in a party hat. We’re downstairs in his bar: a seedy joint inappropriately named ‘Paradise Island’ that’s in the heart of Kabukicho, Tokyo’s red-light district. The room is bathed in a dingy blue glow, the air reeks of stale Asahi and the only other person in here is his mate propped up on a stool, slurping some ramen.

“I am a big star!” OJ announces, pointing to his chest like I may have mistaken him for someone else who isn’t in here. “Let me play something for you.”

He gets behind the DJ booth, starts the turntables rolling and some sort of J-pop/reggae tune, set to the rhythm of a doorbell, kicks in.

OJ picks up the mic: “I went to the airport, yo-o-o-oowah…and it was huge…I ran out of Africa thinking that Tokyo was the best…everybody, everybody, ohhh…”

After he’s finished serenading me, he points to the poster of a bare-chested African man with a glistening 10-pack. “This is me,” he says. I look at him and back at the poster. I look at him again, and once more at the poster. OJ might as well be wearing a gorilla suit. No amount of airbrushing could make that a picture of him.

I don’t want to be the one to put a lid on OJ’s bottle, so I ask him to sign his CD for me, before I make a quick exit.

Tokyo, I’ve discovered, is full of personality and personalities. Here, it doesn’t matter what pop star you’re trying to be, or what your blood type may be. As Lady Gaga once said: “You have to be unique, and different, and shine in your own way.”

Bacchus’s March

Do you know who he is? He’s very famous!” I take another sip of the wine handed to me by this famed mustachioed man and glance at the autographed photo that’s been thrust into my possession. I haven’t the faintest. “Well, we know him now!” I blurt back at the sous-chef, who’s popped out from behind a grapevine.

It just so happens I’ve stumbled upon one of Germany’s most famous TV chefs, the Michelin-starred Johann Lafer, who is entertaining guests on a cliff in the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Rhine Valley. A helicopter has whisked the party up here, soaring above church steeples, treetops and Lafer’s own castle, to a vantage point overlooking the medieval town of Bacharach, where they’ll quaff wine and dine into the early evening.
Oh, and Lafer pilots the chopper himself.

No need for Jesus to turn water into wine with this many vineyards around.

“How else would you get to the top of a cliff than by helicopter?” you might ask. For those of us without €1200 to spare for lunch, we hike. At some point, after slugging up a mountainside and wandering between rows of riesling, we’ve gone off course. It might be the lunchtime wheat beer taking control of my senses, or it could be I simply suck at reading maps – either way, we’re definitely lost.

Decked out in hiking gear, we look a far cry from the beautiful people imbibing vino under a sun umbrella, but the team of chefs preparing the spread seems unperturbed by our arrival.

We’ve caught them somewhere between entrée and main, and as one carves a thigh-sized slab of beef, another creates art with pea-green puree. “I use local produce, everything is grown nearby. And it’s always fresh. That’s very important,” says Lafer, reciting every modern chef’s mantra as he points out the squash assembled on each dish. “But the truffles come from Italy, of course! Would you like to try?” As quick as you can say “danke schön” a cook unfurls a tablecloth over an esky and we’ve joined the party under the chef’s marquee. So much truffle is shaved onto a tasting plate for two I feel I might have to declare my body part fungus when I next go through customs. As far as wrong turns go, this has to be the best.

It’s easy to see why Lafer chose this spot for his high-flying experience. Although the slate-grey Rhine River cuts through 1230 kilometres of Western Europe, bringing glacial waters from Switzerland all the way through to the Netherlands, Germany’s Rhine Gorge is considered its finest stretch.

Picturesque towns dot the riverbanks. One of them is Bacharach, with its cobbled streets, half-timbered houses and rows of vineyards marching up the surrounding slopes to the cherry on top – a twelfth-century castle-turned-youth hostel. It’s just one of the highlights my partner Lachie and I will encounter as we tramp more than 100 kilometres through the valley, from Bingen to Koblenz, on a self-guided hike devised by On Foot Holidays.

The fairytale town of Bacharach.

Germanic tribes settled on these banks back before Jesus gave carpentry the flick and decided to stick it to the Romans, who, of course, later took over the area. Feuding lords in frilly shirts did their best to destroy most of the castles, along with much of Europe, in the Thirty Years’ War, before the Romantic Era waltzed into the late eighteenth century. Poets, composers and painters flocked to the region, enamoured with the Rhine’s wild forests and crumbling forts, telling tales of Lorelei, a golden-haired maiden who lured shipping captains to their deaths upon the rocks.

These days the valley is known less as a destination for enlightenment and more for ferries stuffed with tourists hurtling towards their twilight years. But hiking and cycling trails snake through the same woodlands that charmed the romantics, and most available real estate is crammed with grapevines. I’m not much of a hiker, but vineyards tend to lead to wine, so it’s a path I’m keen to take.

A pack of maps lands in our letterbox before we jet off, with each day’s route planned out by one of On Foot Holidays’s hiking gurus. Directions like…“at a crucifix, turn R and another 200m brings you to Sieben-Burgen-Blick,” make plenty of sense. On the other hand, “buy excellent quality local wine in airline size bottles from local producer (wooden display cabinet with honesty box)” leaves me a tad confused.

As our luggage is to be shipped to our next bed and breakfast, we’ll have plenty of space in our daypacks. Surely a full bottle is far more appropriate in a region awash with plonk? Bacchus, the Roman god of agriculture and wine, sends us a sign at our first hotel – an honesty fridge stocked with the owner’s own label. We snag a proper bottle of riesling for €10. Prost to you, Bacchus!

Wine is never far away in the Rhine Valley.
Click to view gallery

“Most Germans are not interested in wine, they’re more used to beer,” says Justus Bringer, a young wine-shop keep, with a shrug of disappointment, when we ask which local drop sets the national population aflutter. If that’s even Germanically possible. Slurping down about 25 litres of wine per capita sounds like a solid effort, but the figure pales when compared to the 110 litres of beer consumed by the average German every year.

For those who do dabble in wine, white trumps ruby, and in the Rheingau – the celebrated wine-growing region encompassing the valley – riesling accounts for about 80 per cent of the harvest. Despite each family-run vineyard producing just a few thousand bottles each year (making the Rhine wine-snob heaven), it’s not the valley’s major drawcard. “Most Germans come here for burgs – castles. We have lots of castles around the country, but even more in the Rhine Valley,” explains Justus. “They were very lucrative.”

He’s not wrong. Old dames hold their ground around every twist, their stony walls often just out of reach of a well-aimed arrow from the next stately structure. Most sprang to life between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries after an emperor in Koblenz devised the bonny idea to slug an iron chain across the river and extort coin from ship captains wishing to pass – with the blessing of the Holy Roman Emperor, of course. So lucrative were these ‘tariffs’ that 40 castles – just half of the former stations built by nobility and robber barons – remain in the Middle Rhine today. Many were destroyed at the hands of the French and lay neglected over the centuries.

Cruising the famous river.

“Das ist so schön!” heaves a young couple, pausing to eat up views of Burg Rheinstein sprouting from a jagged rock up ahead. They’re right: it is so beautiful. Heavenly rays illuminate a turret tacked on by Prince Frederick of Prussia in the 1800s and a burgundy vine creeps out of the courtyard, its roots sucking nutrients from the soil for the past 500 years.

I can almost hear Sleeping Beauty’s snores rumbling from the crypts containing the moulding bones of the prince. This burg is just one of many that locals have spruced into guest houses and restaurants, often complete with suits of armour standing guard.

Within the hour we’re lounging on Rheinstein’s patio, feeling a bit unfaithful to the god of wine as we slurp ale and watch a farmer tend to the grapes. But sometimes needs must be met, and when you’re in Germany sometimes that need is beer.

Free from the pitfalls of group tours, we ignore the time suggestions on our maps and stop for castles, designer benches and to sluice off the afternoon’s warmth in the clear, cool waters of a brook. The smell of decomposing leaves infuses the air and streams trickle across the way, vanishing into chasms that have collapsed from heavy rain.

We pass fields of wheat that crackle in the heat and are laced with royal-blue cornflowers, and stamp through soaring pines with mossy undergrowth and a plethora of mushrooms.

There’s everything you’d expect to find in a place dubbed the Romantic Rhine – except for the crowds. Aside from a couple of locals walking dogs and a old chap reading a newspaper in the middle of the woods, just a handful of German explorers pass us on the trails, dropping “hallos” as they stride on. It’s not exactly a summer crush.

Burg Rheinstein serves beer, wine and a ‘prince feast’ on its patio.

“That’s the ugly side,” announces Edgar Kirdorf, cocking his head at the west bank, which we’ve just left behind. His bed and breakfast, Hotel Deutsches Haus, in Kaub, is planted on the pretty side, danke very much. It’s a proven fact, Edgar explains, tongue firmly in cheek, because back before engines could haul ships upstream, horses did the heavy lifting while sporting blinkers that blocked the unsightly bank from view. The eye shades might have also had something to do with the glaring sun, he concedes.

With light beating down on the eastern side, the grapevines extend almost to the water, and the locals are said to possess a sunnier disposition, although I’m not quite sure I can tell. Travellers tend to stick to the sunny side, too, missing out on the charm of the other ‘ugly’ bank. With no bridges for 65 kilometres, little ferries chug passengers across the drink for €1.80 a piece, allowing our adventure to take in the best of both sides.

Curiosity reaches peak force on day four and we can’t resist flagging down one of the passenger ferries we’ve seen from afar. The Köln-Düsseldorfer vessel doesn’t boast the mini-golf courses and day beds present on the luxury cruise liners, but it does contain passengers squished onto benches, chewing servings of Subway. “Call off the search parties,” Lachie mutters. “The missing crowds have been found!” They remain glued to their seats when we walk the gangplank alone at Oberwesel, grasping their iPhones to record the disappearing view while a loudspeaker narrates sound bites about the town in English, then French, then Japanese.

Open hunting hides make great lookouts.

Scroggin on a hike usually vanishes as fast as popcorn at the flicks, but our stash sits forgotten at the bottom of our bags. Instead we gorge on plump cherries plucked from trees dangling over the path and eye off unripe walnuts that promise the supply of fresh trail mix extends into autumn. Blackberry and raspberry bushes grow in abundance, establishing their own toll stations by draping thick barbed chains across lesser used tracks and collecting payment in flesh and fabric. We start a war of our own, thwacking through with walking sticks and plundering fistfuls of sweet harvest as our reward.

“Boar!” yells Lachie, pointing at a stocky behind hightailing away from our intrusion. Hunting is serious business here, done quietly and from wooden hides – essentially tree houses with guns. Not a single hunter seems to be out on the prowl, but their prey has made it onto the menu at Hotel Roter Ochse, in the walled town of Rhens. “I’ve caught 40 pigs, 30 small deer and two roe deer in the past three months,” says the father of the owner and chef as he sets down a hulking portion of boar. Spearing a hunk on my fork I can’t help but picture the creature we spied frolicking in the hills, but the moment’s forgotten with the second bite of dark and delicious meat.

Johann Lafer’s cliff-side cook-up. Click to view gallery

Rhens is the type of place where a cloaked guy brandishing a wand wouldn’t look out of place, with higgledy half-timbered buildings sitting at odd angles and Latin inscriptions scrawled above the occasional door. We’re not the only ones to notice the vibe – back in the seventeenth century ten witches were captured, tortured and beheaded in the town’s toll tower. When those in power weren’t flaying randomly selected women, Rhens was considered neutral ground, and kings and emperors were elected upon a giant throne built nearby. The sorcerers got the last laugh, though, and as this throne fell into disuse, they held Sabbaths on the decaying erection.

On our final day we sit in the woods on the ruins of a Roman-Gallic temple, sharing a bottle of Boppard wine and our stolen berries. Constructed more than two millennia ago, the stone structure honoured the Roman god Mercury and Rosmerta, the Gallic goddess of fire, warmth and abundance.

We’ve followed in the footsteps of Romantics searching for higher truths, hunters foraging for a feed, and even gods of wine. People have been drawn to the powerful Rhine River and celebrated its bountiful forests for thousands of years and we’re no exception. We raise a glass to Rosmerta and decide to polish off the bottle.

Hiking is thirsty work. Click to view gallery

Scorching Nights and Cheetah Bites

She latched onto me before I knew what was happening,” wildlife photographer and cinematographer Shannon Wild says of the moment a cheetah went in for the kill.

Shannon had been working with the habituated cheetah on a video shoot all morning and had, in her own words, become “complacent”, missing the signs that the animal was getting flustered. She crouched down to set up her next shot and, like a flash, the cheetah had her pinned down, its jaws clamping hard on her left arm, which it mistook for her neck.

Had Shannon’s head not been tilted to the side, that bite could well have been fatal. As it turned out, she suffered serious nerve and tendon damage, the effects of which she still feels two years later.

“I wasn’t able to shoot for two months after that as it healed, and I still have daily nerve pain and not complete flexibility in my left arm, but it could have been so much worse,” she says of the eye-opening incident. “Instinct told me to relax and not fight it, which was the best thing to do in the situation, as fighting her would have led to worse injuries.”

Shannon is naturally calm and positive when in the presence of animals.

It served as an important lesson for the South African-based freelancer from Australia. She gained a newfound respect for the cheetah and has learned to pay closer attention to the body language of the animals she films.

“The very reason we, and certainly I, love wildlife is because they run on instinct,” Shannon says. “She was simply doing what she was designed to do.”

Despite her increased vigilance, getting up close and personal with some of the world’s most exotic wild animals is bound to result in the odd painful moment. The knuckle on her shutter finger will never be the same after a particularly nasty nip from a monitor lizard, a nice accompaniment to her collection of snakebites. She has found herself in the crosshairs of charging lions and elephants, has fought off burrowing worms and stomach-eating bacteria, and has even been chomped on the face by, of all things, a pet dog.

Shannon gets close to a rhino and her calf.

Shannon’s best advice for interacting with the potentially dangerous creatures (and dogs) she films is to remain composed and exude positivity.

“Energy has a huge role to play, and I am naturally calm and positive when in the presence of animals,” she explains. “Negative energy such as frustration, impatience and fear are readily sensed by most animals, which in turn can have a negative effect on their behaviour.”

For someone with Shannon’s passion for wildlife, these battle wounds serve as wake-up calls rather than deterrents.

Having worked as a graphic designer and art consultant before slowly shifting her focus toward photography, Shannon made the fairly rapid decision to move to South Africa and start afresh as a freelancer specialising in wildlife. Building a profile and learning to live without a regular salary was difficult at first, and still presents its challenges. However, more than a decade later, the gutsy move has paid massive dividends, with Shannon having established herself as a leading wildlife photographer before transitioning into cinematography. She has now worked with producers including National Geographic and Disney Nature, with plenty more projects on the boil.

This inquisitive lemur has found the perfect lookout.

“Freelancing allows me the variety I crave,” she says. “I love travelling to new places and photographing new species. I couldn’t imagine having to only work in the one place any more.”

Shannon estimates that, to this point, her freelance work has taken her to around 25 different countries. One of her most recent trips, an expedition to the Arctic, saw her filming polar bears, whales and walruses in such extreme cold that she lost feeling in her hands mid-shoot. Just a few months earlier she’d been baking under the Botswanan sun, unable to find respite from the heat, which ranged from 45ºC during the day to a comparatively chilly 38ºC at night.

“It feels like your brain is cooking in your head and it can be hard to concentrate for long periods,” she recalls. “Constantly wetting my clothes and hair helps, but it’s one of those situations I have to suck up and remember how lucky I am to get to do this.”

The reward for all this hardship? For an animal lover and conservation crusader like Shannon, the payoff is intangible.

She fondly recalls “seeing a baby elephant learn to drink through its trunk for the first time instead of kneeling down and drinking with its mouth. It was amazing to see and so precious when I saw that ‘ah ha’ moment for him. He was incredibly proud.” Equally rewarding was the time a family of baboons in Zimbabwe accepted her into their circle, allowing their young to climb over her.

But, fittingly, Shannon’s all-time career highlight came courtesy of the king of the jungle.

“Hearing a male lion roar for the first time with him standing only a metre or two from me is something I’ll never forget. I teared up, and it’s still my absolute favourite sound to this day. It literally vibrates through your chest.”

In a moment like that, all the dehydration, flesh-eating bacteria and cheetah maulings in the world pale into insignificance.

Finding Myself Lost

It is said there are three simple steps to happiness: find something to do, someone to love and something to look forward to. I might add to this list, find yourself a bike. One day, on my way to the office, an unlicensed driver ignored a stop sign, drove through an intersection and crashed into me and my bicycle. I hobbled away with a broken kneecap, a $20,000 insurance settlement and the powerful reminder that life is precious, time is limited and I’ll really miss my knees when they’re gone. I quit my job and went travelling around the world on a quixotic quest to tick 
off the items on my bucket list.

All of which brings me to the dusty Chilean town of San Pedro de Atacama. For an outpost on the edge of the world’s driest non-polar desert, the town offers fine hotels, gourmet restaurants and excursions into a truly remarkable slice of South America. One such activity is to rent a bike and pedal 13 kilometres west into the Valley of the Moon, a protected nature sanctuary famous for its stark lunar landscape. I arrive at the park gates with my front tyre wobbling with all the stability of a Central African government. Parched for oil, my chain clatters in desperation. I make a note that from now on I will check the condition of any bike before I rent it. Sound advice, and I could have used some more. For example: under no circumstances should you leave your bike on the side of the road to hike around looking for better views of volcanoes. Soon enough, I am lost in the desert with no form of communication, directions, food or warmth. It is late afternoon in March, and the baking day will soon transform into a chilly night. My last update to my family was the previous week when I was in Bolivia. Not a single person on the planet knows where I am.

Before I set out on my journey, a friend asked what I hoped to achieve. My mates were settling down, building careers and starting families, so why would I choose to be that one older guy you typically meet in backpacker hostels? You know, the one who looks a little out of joint, has great stories, and often smells like Marmite. My reply? At some point during my adventure I will stumble into a transcendent moment of pure isolation, a challenge that can only be surmounted with deep soul-searching and personal inner strength. My friend looked at me askew, so I also explained there would be copious amounts of beer and beautiful women.

Just a few months after that conversation, there is neither beer nor babe for miles as I desperately scan the sprawling Atacama Desert for my rickety rentabike. Panic begins to tickle my throat. It appears my Moment of Zen has arrived. I sit down on a slab of rock, and breathe in. The dusky sun casts a pink glow over perfect pyramid-shaped volcanoes. Early evening stars begin to glitter. A cool breeze rouses goosebumps on the back of my neck, along with my long-awaited epiphany. I am here for a reason. Everything happens for a reason. The bike accident, the decision to travel, the dodgy rental 
bike, the walk into the desert…wherever I am is where I am supposed to be. Slowly, I relax into the fear and excitement, slipping into the moment the way one cautiously eases into a too-hot bubble bath. Then I hear a voice. A Japanese backpacker had seen my bike on the side of the road and figured there must be something to see. Soon enough, he got lost too, but somehow he found me just as I was busy finding myself.

As the night sky vanquished the peach-fuzz sunset, we see headlights in the distance. Relieved, we find our way to the road, recover our bikes, and pedal in darkness back to San Pedro. That night we get blindingly drunk to celebrate our good fortune, and I have my second epiphany: it is the people we meet who create the paradise we find.

Ten years and a hundred countries later, there have been several other moments of life-affirming clarity. As for those three simple steps, they sorted themselves out beyond my wildest dreams. Whenever I find myself lost, at home or on the road, I simply remind myself: wherever you are is where you’re supposed to be.

The Temptation of Tentacles

For the life of me I can’t imagine why she wants me to put my face in the water. We’ve just struggled into the mother lode of neoprene gear – a double layer of wetsuits, plus a hood, gloves and boots – on the shoreline and have waded into the bay. My mask and fins are still looped over my arm, and since Swantje has already done this hundreds of times, I’m not going to argue.

“Oh, shit,” I splutter-yelp seconds later. All those layers of rubber have shielded me from the reality of the water temperature, which is only about 10ºC, but my bare visage feels as though it has been flash frozen.

“You need to get used to it before we go in,” Swantje – pronounced Swanny – tells me, and makes me go face first again. Then I do it with my mask on and at my feet I can see them. We’re only in about 150 centimetres of water, but on the rocky bottom they are dancing and displaying. Thank goodness, because I’ve just spent three days in Whyalla waiting for the wind to change so I can make the acquaintance of the giant Australian cuttlefish (Sepia apama).

A diver gets close to a giant Australian cuttlefish off the coast near Whyalla. Photo by Ron Hardman
Click to view gallery

On the edge of town, there’s a huge sign that reads: “Where the outback meets the sea.” The coastline where the Southern Ocean ducks into the Spencer Gulf between Port Lincoln and Marion Bay is unlike anywhere else in the country. The shore at Fitzgerald Bay, just out of town, is covered in ridges of ochre-red shingles – it’s a one-off in South Australia. North of the bay, the Freycinet Peninsula Circuit starts at Douglas Point and hugs the waterline. Join it at Fitzgerald Bay and you can 4WD, hike or cycle to Point Lowly, where there’s a lighthouse. But as we stare out over the sea, buffeted by wild winds, there’s not another soul to be seen.

Generally, Whyalla is known for two things: its steel industry and the problems it’s having at the moment, with employment decimated over the past two decades. When you’ve got some time to kill, a tour of the steelworks is an interesting diversion and gives you a taste of life in an industrial town. Our minibus pulls up beside a huge construction and Marge, who’s hosting the tour, tells us to look for plumes of steam that give away things are happening in this part of the complex. We see an automated carriage moving, high up on its rails. When it stops, glowing molten rock is poured into the car. This is the coke oven push and it’s one of the most spectacular processes in the transformation of ore to steel.

After a quick trip to the adjacent HMAS Whyalla, the first ship to come off the line when the town became a major player for the Broken Hill Pty Co Ltd, I find a pamphlet advertising the local Elvis Museum.

The town bought HMAS Whyalla for $5000, but it cost another $560,000 to transport it to higher ground.

Peter Bleeze lives on the outskirts of Whyalla and he’s not just a fan of the King, he’s a super fan. His entire house is emblazoned with memorabilia, from rare posters to life-size statues. “A young police cadet lived down the street and used to babysit me,” Peter tells me in his front room, where Aloha from Hawaii plays on the television. “He had a little record player and used to play me Elvis records. I thought he was god’s gift to singing.

“I got my first t-shirt when I was about 10, then started collecting seriously when I began working.”

He wanders around his house wearing a Graceland hoodie, telling stories of people who’ve visited, before opening the back door so I can check out his piece de resistance. Out in the backyard, beneath the Hills Hoist, is a gold Cadillac, a replica of Elvis’s own. Peter’s quite happy for visitors to don the Elvis sunglasses in the glove compartment and pose in the front seat for photographs.

By this stage, having seen pretty much everything Whyalla has to offer, I decide to check in with Tony Bramley, owner of the local dive shop. Perhaps there’s a chance he’ll green light a quick dive.

“When it’s rough and windy, the cuttles go deeper and hide in the algae,” he tells me in a room lined with racks of wetsuits and diving gear. “They just won’t be doing anything.” That’ll be a no then.

The Elvis Museum. Click to view gallery

Just a few days before, Tony tells me, they’d had about 600 people visit the congregation over the course of four days for an Experiencing Marine Sanctuaries event. Exact numbers of swimmers are hard to pin down, since the site is easily accessible by anyone with a wetsuit and snorkel. Now there’s a BBC documentary crew in town also waiting for the wind to subside.

It’s not just me, Tony and the BBC dudes excited about Whyalla’s giant cuttlefish. Divers from around the world come here between May and August to witness the only known congregation – not just in Australia, but anywhere – of the underwater creatures.

So far, this has been a good year. “We haven’t seen an aggregation like this since 1998,” Tony tells me. The South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI) has estimated the biomass this year to be up to 200,000 kilograms. In 2013 it had been as low as 16,500 kilograms and there were grave fears for the future of the species.

Apart from that, the Spencer Gulf cuttlefish remain something of a mystery. Bronwyn Gillanders of Flinders University has been studying them since the early 2000s and has established the Point Lowly cuttlefish are a subspecies – it’s probably their genetic material that brings them back each year. Female cuttles need a rock ledge to lay their eggs – each is like a large white teardrop hanging beneath a protective shelf – and this is one of the few places offering multiple natural shelters. “The rest of the gulf is mud and mangroves,” says Tony.

He then gets a call. There’s a dolphin in the fenced-off swimming area in the marina, and whoever’s on the other end wants Tony to coax it back out to sea. “There are 30 or so in the Whyalla-Edithburgh pod,” Tony explains. “About five of them are habituated and interact with people.” This is one of them, and he often makes a nuisance of himself. I head down to the shore and, sure enough, there’s a dolphin bobbing about, but the wind is so strong I almost get blown off the pontoon trying to get a better look.

Finally, at the beginning of day three, we’ve come up trumps. The wind has dropped off completely and the sun is shining. Swantje and I load up the ute and head out of town. About 20 kilometres outside of Whyalla is the Santos LPG plant, and this is where anyone who wants to commune with cuttlefish needs to be. A dirt track leads down to a park bench and rocky shoreline. It’s an easy spot for anyone to find, but this hasn’t affected the cuttlefish population.

Depending on how people adjust to the temperature, Swantje tells me, dives here can last anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. The maximum depth is about six metres.

They are everywhere, hundreds of them. The males outnumber the females, and because they pair off to mate, there’s fierce competition between the boys in the bay. This is where you’ll see them displaying their colours – versions of purple, brown and cream – patterns rippling through their bodies as they do an underwater mating dance. Some of the smaller males will change their patterns to mimic a female then, when they have the big boys’ attention, move in for a bit of action with the actual females. Cheeky buggers!

As we fin around the shallow bay, we see nothing but cuttlefish. Oh, and one lone squid who pulses through the water, possibly wondering where its friends have gone. Occasionally a curious creature swims close, observing us with its big eyes. They seem to be completely unawed by our presence.

It doesn’t seem like long, despite the fact I’ve lost all feeling in my hands and feet, before Swantje’s pointing us back towards shore. “Fifty-eight minutes,” she tells me when I enquire as to how long we’ve been below the surface. “Don’t worry, you should be able to feel your fingers again some time after lunch.”

After we’ve stripped off our gear and are sitting in the cab of the ute blowing on our hands and watching a couple of blokes getting ready to jump in, it hits me: all those amazing creatures are going to be gone in a month. And not just gone back out to sea, but gone completely. Once they breed, the giant Australian cuttlefish dies. Dolphins, Port Jackson sharks and other sea creatures come in and feed on the bodies until there’s nothing left. Not until next year, when the next generation of cuttlefish returns to breed again.

Wong’s World

Benjamin Von Wong travels the world for six months of the year but he doesn’t really do holidays. His last “family vacation” (spent in Bali at his parents’ behest) morphed into an epic underwater photo shoot. The result was a surreal series of images featuring free-diver models, ethereal white gowns and the haunting backdrop of the USAT Liberty shipwreck.

The shots became an internet sensation (the behind-the-scenes video attracted more than one million views on YouTube) and set 
a new benchmark for the photographer, who has carved a niche dabbling in all things whimsical, fantastical and reality bending.

When he’s not chasing fish out of the frame 25 metres under the sea in Bali, or shooting zombies in a Game of Thrones fan-fiction in the snow in Quebec, Benjamin, 27, can be found leading photographic workshops around the world and teaming up with like-minded kooky creatives on mind-boggling projects.

The Montreal-based photographer, who prefers the title ‘visual engineer’, has shot extreme stunts on the walls of Jerusalem in Israel, captured capoeira martial artists fighting in the ruins of Villers-la-Ville abbey in Belgium and brought a city square to a standstill with a mammoth 450-person Where is Waldo (Wally) panoramic in Traunstein, Germany.

Benjamin at work in Jerusalem. Photo by Benjamin Von Wong

He’s also hijacked the world’s largest monastic library – the Admont Abbey in Austria – for a magical, Disney-inspired after-hours shoot.

There have been decapitated zombies, elaborate feathered costumes, mediaeval gowns, Slovakian ballerinas, armoured warriors, the odd stinky octopus and fire. Lots of fire. Pyrotechnics are a big part of the Chinese Canadian’s creative repertoire. In one shoot, at an English mansion in Manchester, UK, Benjamin had models posing with AU$5.8 million worth of sports cars while flames licked at their heels. The project is symbolic of his craft: bold, exciting and always pushing the boundaries.

Much of Benjamin’s work is for the love of his art and is more about feeding his creative thirst rather than making money. His is a career built on social media; the exposure brings in client commissions and speaking gigs to supplement his creative escapades.

“The idea behind these shoots is no one’s ever going to pay you to do it, so you may as well go ahead and do what you love and hopefully down the line people notice the shoot and hire you to do what you love,” Benjamin says.

“The purpose is to create amazing work. At the end of the day what I want to do is get paid to create more things. I don’t want to become a desk jockey and manage print sales and manage a storefront and all that bullshit – it’s not really exciting. I’d much rather be out there shooting and getting new challenges and new experiences.”

Behind-the-scenes videos are a signature of the Von Wong brand and a valuable social media tool. Without his online community of supporters (70,000 Facebook followers and counting), Benjamin says he wouldn’t be seeing the world behind the lens. It has enabled him to tap into sponsors and gear, build contacts and showcase his talent. A 2012 month-long photographic tour of Europe was made possible through a crowdfunding campaign, and every shoot relies on an army of ‘Vonwonglings’ rallied on Facebook – from models, hair and make-up artists and costume designers, to production crew and pyrotechnicians. In exchange, Benjamin shares his tricks of the trade with his followers, and some get the chance to work with the wizard himself.

Underwater in Bali on the wreck of USAT Liberty. Photo by Benjamin Von Wong
Click to view gallery

When we speak, Benjamin is at home in Montreal (although he’s loath to call it home because he’s so infrequently there). In a few days he’ll jet off to Cambodia, followed by China and Brisbane. Life is frenetic. He never knows where the next inspiration will come from or who will hit him up with a proposal that is too awesome to refuse (an admirer once succeeded in getting him to Florida on a whim to collaborate on a fantastical fallen angel shoot).

Then there are the projects that touch the heart. Last year Benjamin produced a video that helped raise AU$2.8 million to save a four-year-old girl battling a degenerative brain disease. Earlier in the year, he paid a surprise visit to a young Australian fan in Albury, Victoria, wrapping himself in a box as a 21st birthday surprise for the emerging photographer, who suffers from a medley of chronic illnesses.

Benjamin seeks inspiration in the people he meets and the places he visits. His motto is you should wake up in the morning and “grasp life by the balls” because you never know where an opportunity might lead. And he walks the talk.

It’s a far cry from a few years ago when, as a qualified engineer, Benjamin was working in the goldmines in the Nevada Desert, USA. In the doldrums after a relationship bust-up, he picked up a cheap point-and-shoot camera at Walmart and started experimenting. A few years later he was shooting events, then something snapped… He quit his day job in January 2012 with no plan and no regrets, and has been travelling the world, inspiring followers with his unique brand of photography, ever since.

Benjamin puts his success down to hard work and dedication, not talent. Although his on-camera charisma and daredevil persona sure help.

“Being a photographer is easy, right? You just press a button,” he laughs.

“The camera is a tool, you understand the basic mechanics of it and you’re set to go. If you know what you want to achieve then you just need to figure out which of the buttons to push. It’s like driving a car.”

View more of Benjamin’s work at vonwong.com

Lava Caves and Icy Adventures in Iceland

Our little inflatable bounces across the choppy waters of Eyjafjörður, just 
80 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle. At the helm is modern-day Viking Erlendur Bogason, who not only discovered the subaquatic volcanic cones we are going to dive on, but, like a figure from Norse mythology, is their designated protector. Nobody dives on the vents known as Arnarnesstrytan, or the nearby Strytan formations, without Bogason’s say-so.

Save for yesterday’s foray into the Nesgjá chasm, a four-metre deep, three-metre wide coastal fissure, I’m a cold-water diving virgin. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared.

Trepidation courses through my veins as I contemplate plunging into the inky fjord. The Icelandic weather, mostly chilly and drizzly over the past 10 days, has brightened, and the dark swell and surrounding snow-topped ridges sparkle in the afternoon sun. Still, the water looks frigid.

Bogason pulls the inflatable to a halt. I fumble with my equipment and squeeze a rubber balaclava over my head, readying myself to dive on these hydrothermal vents.

The spectacular Goðafoss falls in Iceland’s north.
Click to view gallery

We roll backwards into the arctic water, leaving my old mate Phil, who is along for the ride, to captain the boat.

I locate the descending line and begin removing the air from my buoyancy control device and from inside my dry suit. Within a minute I’m 15 metres down, beside Bogason, on a sand patch. I sink to my knees to steady myself and switch on my torch. A dozen cod swirl into view. Then my beam picks out a monster, about a metre long, swimming straight at me.

I gulp air. As it gets closer to me I feel as though I’ve come face to face with a creature from the imagination of Hieronymus Bosch – or hell. Its eyes bulge, pronounced lips and rubbery jowls merge, and razor-sharp fangs gleam from its mouth. It’s Stephanie, a wolffish, come to welcome us to her patch. She’s the weirdest living thing I’ve ever seen.

A thermal lake near Myvatn.

Bogason uses the beam from his torch to indicate where we’re going next. I try to follow but can barely move for my own weight. I add some air and start finning after him, toward several conical outcrops emerging from the murk.

But as I swim I begin to ascend. I’ve made a rookie error and pumped in too much air. I push hard on the void button on my dry suit but rise uncontrollably. Bogason lunges for my leg to try to anchor me but can’t hold on, so off I go, up and away like Mary Poppins.

I hit the surface and gulp seawater from waves buffeting my face. Bogason bubbles up beside me, asking if I want to give it another shot. I’m trembling and disorientated, but I may never have this chance again.

Stephanie the wolffish welcomes divers at Arnarnesstrytan.

Finally, I’m kneeling at the edge of a volcanic cone. As Bogason illuminates the vent, I watch hot, saltless water, estimated to be 11,000 years old, belching out. It’s a sight divers travel thousands of kilometres to see; scientists believe, through study of the bacteria and microbes living in its hot springs, that this unique cavity provides clues to life’s origins on earth.

I run my hand through the 78°C water, rendered touchable by the cold fjord. Bogason fills a flask – he’ll use it to make hot chocolate back on land.

As one of the planet’s youngest landmasses, rising up a mere 20 million years ago from submarine explosions in the mid-Atlantic ridge, the island feels like a work in geological progress. Over 12 days I’m road-tripping around this explosive and ever-changing land in the company of Phil.

Some destinations, like Egypt and Italy, lead you into the past; others, like Dubai and Shanghai, make you ponder the future. None, in my experience, plunges you into the present so forcefully or gives you such a sense of the Earth’s elemental power as Iceland.

On a drizzly August morning we roll out of Reykjavík and head west along the country’s ring road, intent on venturing beyond the tourist radar and camping in the wild, which is permitted throughout Iceland. Given this is one of Europe’s least populated nations, with just 330,000 inhabitants, it is rarely hard to find space.

Day one delivers several firsts, beginning with a 35-metre descent into a cave inside a lava flow. Formed 8000 years ago on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula, it’s close to where Jules Verne’s Journey 
to the Centre of the Earth was set.

That night, after driving through the contorted black rocks of the Berserkjahraun (Berserkers’ lava field), we pull into a farm to sample hákarl, the Icelandic ‘delicacy’ of rotten shark meat. Each year the farm processes up to 80 Greenland sharks – they grow larger than great whites and live at depths of up to 2190 metres – putrefying their toxic flesh over six months to make it edible. It’s a tradition that stretches back more than 400 years. To us, the small cubes of meat taste like old cheese infused with petrol.

During another sunny spell, we pitch our tent in the Westfjords, Iceland’s least visited and populated region. Our campground is an empty field behind a fine sandy beach, with a backdrop of three waterfalls rumbling down a hillside. Once we’ve set up, we huddle by the fire until midnight, the summer light barely dwindling.

The next morning we hike the 300-metre-high cliffs at Látrabjarg, Iceland’s westernmost point, pausing occasionally to watch tiny puffins return to their nests from the snarling Atlantic. Following a mountain pass, we disappear into the clouds before descending to a road curling through glacial valleys and around several fjords.

Walking through the unique landscape of Thingvellir National Park. Click to view gallery

To reach Ísafjörður, our base for the next few days, we drive into a tunnel that burrows down, almost vertically, more than six kilometres and delivers us onto a spit protruding into a fjord, surrounded by snow-dusted mountains.

It doesn’t take long to walk the length of Ísafjörður. We end up at Tjöruhúsið (the Tar House), where we dip into the seafood buffet to sample cod cheeks and, rather reluctantly, meaty minke whale. It isn’t an endangered species, but eating it still doesn’t sit well.

“This is all stuff Dad used to cook us when we were small,” says the owner’s son Magnus Hauksson, “and when he offered it to visitors it got so popular we had to open a restaurant.”

A boat carries us to the Hornstrandir Nature Reserve for a 14-kilometre trek guided by Vesteinn Runarsson, a young local man with snow-white eyebrows. He takes us up a mountainside covered in streams and wildflowers to a snowy ridge, and down again to a long beach backed by ice-packed dunes.

“We’re nearer here to Greenland,” says Runarsson, as we scramble around a headland, “than we are to Reykjavík.”

Perhaps not surprisingly for such a remote part of an island isolated by weather, winter darkness and geography, witchcraft flourished in the north. We discover this en route to Akureyri, the country’s second largest city, at Hólmavík’s Museum of Icelandic Sorcery & Witchcraft. We also learn that in the nineteenth century most convicted witches were men and wince at a replica pair of necromancy pants. Reputedly made from human skin, they assured the wearer instant wealth.

In Akureyri, we join guide Marino Svensson for a super Jeep tour. The vehicle’s an elevated 4WD with giant tyres that can forge through deep snow. Svensson takes us further east to the Myvatn region, seething with explosive geysers and pseudo-volcanoes, and pock-marked with spirals of solidified black magma.

From the Goðafoss waterfall, rushing down a lava field like a set of billowing curtains, to Hverir, where we walk in a lunar landscape that broils and bubbles with mud pots, to Krafla, an active volcano, where we drive through clouds of steam…it’s an unforgettable journey.

For the next three nights home is a wooden cabin at Ytri-Vik farm, 23 kilometres north of Akureyri, at the edge of Eyjafjörður. Like most Icelandic homes, it has geothermal heating (including the floor) and an outdoor hot tub, fed by a bore. The view across the fjord at sunset, when bloodied clouds cling to the glowering snowy peaks, is entrancing.

On our final night we attempt to camp again beside Iceland’s largest lake, but the tent is buffeted by overnight wind and rain and, at 3am, collapses. We retreat to the car and, at nearby Thingvellir National Park, the site of Iceland’s Viking parliament, dry everything out under the rising sun.

Established in 930AD, this was the world’s first democratic parliament. It saw the adoption of Christianity in 1000AD and the foundation of the Republic of Iceland, after centuries of Danish rule, in 1944. Sitting at the junction of the American and European tectonic plates that run across Iceland, which are cleaving apart at a rate of two centimetres a year, this World Heritage site is a moving setting for the final morning of our trip.

Once a gathering place for peddlers, sword-sharpeners, tanners, brewers and clowns, who performed at extravagant banquets, all is quiet now save for the grumble of shallow falls rushing between high basalt walls in the Oxara River. But, like so much we’ve seen, the site is imbued with a palpable, planet-building energy.

Mississippi Mayhem

A wise cab driver by the name of Quantel once told me, “Memphis is made up of three words: Graceland, blues and barbecue.” For the most part, he was absolutely right. Now, someone please hand me a coconut water and a Panadol because Quantel definitely forgot the fourth and most important word: hangover.

Flooding has started in Memphis as a massive rainstorm hits the lively southern city right on schedule for the weekend’s festivities. The consensus, on my United Airlines flight from New York, is that this is by no means an unusual occurrence. For the past four years, a conveniently timed and almost predictable deluge has graced Graceland directly preceding the festival. This has happened so often, the locals now lovingly refer to the Beale Street Music Festival as Memphis’s Music Mud Fest.

The 40-year-old Beale Street Music Festival (BSMF) is the three-day, kick-off event of the annual Memphis in May celebration, a month-long line-up of special events, competitions and shows to honour the city and its rich history. Every year the festival attracts more than 100,000 people from all over the country for a musical smorgasbord of big-name stars and local legends who play side by side at the humble waterfront venue, Tom Lee Park.

Originally a festival exclusively celebrating the blues, BSMF has, over the years, opened its offerings to rock, hip-hop and pop to accommodate the ever-expanding interests of music fans. This time around, a total of 69 performers, of both national and local acclaim, are here to be a part of the fun. Headliners include household names – Beck, Paul Simon, Neil Young, Cypress Hill – alongside a swathe of up-and-comers like Grace Potter, Courtney Barnett and Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats. Regardless of whether your musical druthers span country or rap, there’s guaranteed a little something for you here.

Joe the Show at Tin Roof.

Music rumbles in the distance as I approach the gates to find a long motley queue of loyal festival-goers patiently awaiting entry. Hippie and hillbilly, black and white, young and old – this diverse crowd stands united with their ponchos and gumboots, having travelled from far and wide to fulfill their love of music.

Inside, three gigantic stages run parallel to the majestic Mississippi River, as an envious Arkansas watches all the fun from across the water. As I walk further into the grounds, the footpath transforms from cement to dirt and finally to mud. The heavy, wet air of the Mississippi mixes with the lingering scent of Black & Milds, light weed smokeage and the distinct aroma of fried food. That smell wafts from tents near the stages, where vendors are serving up local delicacies like gator on a stick, bourbon chicken and medieval-sized drumsticks.

The energy is playful and fun. Children chase one another past elderly couples wandering hand in hand. Mothers and daughters bond on blankets at the back, listening to Paul Simon as they clink with cold Bud Lights. Mud is flung through the sky as teenagers jump around the pit while Meghan Trainor belts out their favourite tunes. Everyone seems to be there for their own reasons, and yet somehow they all seem connected. While at one stage you see three generations swaying back and forth to Neil Young, you can walk one stage over to catch Yo Gotti, a hometown hero back for a big performance on his old stomping ground, performing to an eclectic crowd of booty-shakers throwing up their hands to the beat.

Not in the mood for a big crowd? You’re covered. Stop by the Blues Shack, hidden between towering stages, for a more intimate experience. Here you might see local blues veteran Leo Bud Welch sitting alone on a stool with a guitar and harmonica. He’ll destroy you with his painfully brilliant music.

Yo Gotti pulls a crowd.

Variety of performances aside, another home run for the organisers of this unique spring festival is its affordability. For seasoned festival-goers, a weekend of music can be upwards of a thousand dollars (sorry, did someone say Coachella?). Yet at BSMF, even music aficionados working hard just to rub two coins together can gather the funds to join friends and family for a truly enjoyable three days of memory making. Food is affordable, beer is comparatively cheap, and sponsors like Rockstar, Fireball and Marlboro hand out free products all weekend. Vices? Check.

Another huge bonus is the fact you can come and go as you wish, a privilege seldom found at other festivals of this size. The boisterous, dangerous (in a good way) bedlam of Beale Street is no more than a short jaunt away.

Speaking of which, it’s time to jump into the fray.

Tuning in to the Violent Femmes.

The final act of the night has played its encore, and an ocean of smiling strangers begins its exodus to chapter two of the night’s festivities: the after party. As I trudge up a small hill with my fellow carousers, the dreamlike neon playground of debauchery that is Memphis’s Beale Street shows its seductive face on the not-so-distant horizon.

Armed with my press pass, I embark on the noble mission of exploring all 42 music-filled drinking establishments they’ve managed to cram into these three bacchanalian blocks. I do this for you, and your benefit alone. Yes, I know, you’re welcome.

To give a full rundown of this street would take a lifetime, and three extra kidneys. But here’s the skinny: relatively new but notably fun, the Tin Roof boasts two levels that open up to a main stage. With two separate bars on each level and twerk music videos playing on all screens, it attracts a young crowd there for one thing and one thing only: the inevitable hangover.

Terry ‘Harmonica’ Bean jams at the Blues Shack.

The historic, two-storey Jerry Lee Lewis has something for everyone. Veer right at the entrance and visit Keith downstairs for a drink and some history. This bartender has witnessed 20 years of music and drunkenness behind his bar, which serves the stage where stars are born. This is a real local spot where, until 5am, the drinks flow constantly and live music from aspiring artists plays. What is special about this place is its dynamic. Where there’s an unexpected amount of culture in this particular room, I walk across the hall to the other ground-floor bar where I proceed to meet a young man named Neebs, who wastes no time sharing his newly tattooed shoulder bearing a monkey fingering its own arsehole. I take my beer upstairs to where the music thumps faster than my heart rate and from where I can watch the chaos below.

If you’re feeling bluesy, Daisyland is the place to go. Converted from Beale Street’s old movie theatre, it’s here you can see one of the world’s top 100 DJs every month – it’s your one-stop shop for the Dirty South club scene. VIP areas with bottle service and plenty of wiggle room rest in the middle of a gigantic dance floor with a good view of the stage no matter where you stand. The mezzanine is still intact upstairs, and it happens to be the place to go if you want some privacy from prying eyes. Remember though, what has been witnessed cannot be unseen.

The 901 Heavy Hitters play at Alfred’s on Beale.

You also have to go to Coyote Ugly Saloon, if only to relive your favourite movie of the twenty-first century. This delightfully trashy late-night jam brings a backyard-party feel and blends it with strip-club fanfare. Beer is served by scantily clad waitresses from fully iced eskies resting atop empty whiskey barrels. From here there’s a perfect view of the variety of alcohol-fuelled amateur dance performances on top of the long wooden bar. The signed lingerie of past patrons hangs overhead like trophies of a battle won.

The highlight of the night is Purple Haze. I help light a local’s cigarette on the street, and the next thing I know I’m being guided past wait lines, behind velvet ropes and into the VIP section of Memphis nightlife’s not-so-hidden gem. It’s a block from Beale Street, which tends to deter a majority of wide-eyed tourists, who are drawn toward the energy of the main drag like flies to a bug zapper. Stacked with two huge bars, a pool table, an enormous dance floor and hula-hoopers extraordinaire on stage for your visual distraction, this place has it all. Open till 5am with a great variety of music, it’s the perfect location to find your sixth wind of the night and party till the sun comes up.

Memphis in May knocked it out of the park – Tom Lee Park to be precise – with a unique celebration of American music and culture. If you come prepared with your rain gear, an appetite and a bottle of aspirin, you’ll have an amazing time no matter who you are. Speaking of which, can I borrow one of those aspirin? Remember, I did it all for you.

Click to view gallery

 

Shifting Sands

In the High Atlas Mountains, Cheikh is handling the switchbacks like a Formula One racer, negotiating trucks, cars, bikes and donkeys along winding one-way roads. We give way at each unguarded hairpin bend, swerving into the gravel perilously close to the cliff edge.

In just two hours since leaving Marrakesh, we’ve climbed nearly 2000 metres. Daylight reveals the iron hues of the High Atlas and the enormous scope of the mountain range. For the next three nights I will be camping on Morocco’s biggest and wildest dune, Erg Chigaga, about 500 kilometres southeast of Marrakesh. Getting there is a rugged 10-hour journey across inhospitable terrain.

We pass clusters of Berber villages camouflaged by the mountains. At times the buildings are hard to distinguish from abandoned ruins. Hunched elderly women piggyback bulging loads, seemingly en route to nowhere, and children lead donkeys laden with cargo along dangerous passes.

Mid-morning we turn off at Telouet, a decrepit kasbah built in the late 1800s for the ruling Glaoui family. It’s positioned along the ancient trade route between the Sahara and Marrakesh, and its crumbling facade conceals protected spoils inside. In room after room, every centimetre is covered in ornate mosaics and carvings. It seems an eager designer was given carte blanche and adopted every material and technique in the artists’ handbook. It’s incredible this deserted time capsule is so well preserved and open for visitors to freely explore. I wish our visit lasted longer than a leg stretch.

Stopping for a stretch on the camel trek across never-ending dunes. Click to view gallery

We next stop at the fortified city of Aït Benhaddou, now a UNESCO World Heritage site. Located beside the dry Ounila River, its imposing defensive walls conceal a labyrinth of packed-earth buildings. Decaying alleys are filled with shops catering to the hordes of tourists drawn here by its Hollywood fame. You have to use your imagination, but Lawrence of Arabia, The Mummy and Gladiator were all filmed here. More recently, the city also formed the backdrop for Yunkai and Pentos in TV juggernaut Game of Thrones. After I channel my best Russell Crowe impression in the gladiatorial arena, we are swiftly back on the road.

We travel through the Anti-Atlas range then on to Agdz at the start of the Draa Valley. A lush oasis of three million date palms accompanies us on the two-hour journey to Zagora. There’s an occasional roadside dune, and Cheikh explains just how far the sand has blown beyond the Sahara – it has a crippling impact, burying roads and clogging village water systems. Braided palm-leaf mats are scattered across the dunes, evidence of an international aid project to try and smother the encroaching sand.

By late afternoon we leave civilisation behind, heading off road at M’Hamid. For two hours we drive, blindly it would seem, with no signposts or markers to guide our way. As we are thrown around undulating dunes and Cheikh wrestles with the steering wheel, it becomes clear why the camp is only accessible by four-wheel drive. Few drivers know the desert well enough to locate the camp, which lies 20 kilometres from the Algerian border and remains hidden until we clear the last rise.

The city of Aït Benhaddou blends into the hillside from afar.
Click to view gallery

The Erg Chigaga Luxury Desert Camp is as remote as you’ll find. I’m greeted by Bobo, a beaming Moroccan partner of the camp who was born and raised in the desert with his nomad family. I’m in safe hands. Carpet pathways intersecting a central fire pit lead to 10 guest tents, a dining tent and lounge shelters all blending into the dunes.

My Berber tent is authentically decorated yet pimped out with western comforts. Within the circus-like striped walls, filigree lamps flank a bejewelled queen-size bed and carpet softens my step. Robes and slippers await. Most impressive is the adjoining bathroom annex. Decked out in Moroccan pewter, it features a portable toilet tucked behind a modesty screen, an elegant wash stand, dressing table and a charming bathing station. At any time I can request a hot pail of water for hand-bathing, Queen of Sheba style.

With sunset looming, Bobo suggests I ditch my shoes and join the other guests high in the dunes. It’s an exhausting climb as the scalding sand collapses beneath every step. My efforts are duly rewarded with a glass of chilled wine at the top, just as the sun slinks behind the horizon.

Racetrack roads weave through the High Atlas Mountains.

Hours later, back in my tent, I wake to winds violently shaking the canvas walls. I scramble to fashion a barricade to block the desert from blasting its way in, with little success. By morning the tent walls are still rippling like a wobble board and inside is blanketed with sand. My bed is gritty, my throat parched and my teeth crunch. A peek outside reveals a blur of sand – there’s no one to be seen. It is a taste of how inhospitable the desert can be. In the late afternoon the winds finally recede and everyone emerges.

Sandboarding and sundowners at the big dunes are the perfect release from a bout of cabin fever. As the name suggests, these formations are epic. We scale the largest one, displacing perfectly formed corrugated waves of sand to reach the top, which gives way to a huge skate bowl – the perfect launch site. I tuck my feet under straps and shuffle to the edge. Going straight down is terrifying, but moving in any other direction is like sliding through sludge. When the board continues to bog and toss, I plant my behind and careen down the dune toboggan-style.

Aside from the occasional nomad camp, we are totally isolated in a sea of golden dunes. The setting sun accentuates each contour. The camp staff has arranged pouffes and tables at the top of the dunes, creating a delightful open-air bar. As the sun retreats we are reduced to tiny specks silhouetted against a vast landscape.

The Erg Chigaga camp.

Evenings in the camp among the many flickering lanterns are quite magical. After a communal feast of tagine, couscous and vegetables, we gather around the fire with wine in hand as the staff serenades us, their chanting melodies hypnotic against the drumming and clanging castanets. The star-riddled sky is an astronomer’s dream, with shooting stars regularly streaking overhead.

The camels have been saddled for a morning ride and mine lets out an impressive gurgling yodel before dropping to its haunches so I can climb on board. At first the pace resembles that of a rhythmic rocking horse, but as we hit the dunes it builds into a hold-on-tight bucking bronco ride. These Berber beasts are built for the sand with their splayed hoofs, but their lanky legs are clumsy on descent.

With the advantage of height, I witness the rapidly changing character of the desert. Carved ridges resemble the spine of a basking stegosaurus one moment, then morph into a valley of smooth feminine curves the next. Later they transform into a sculpted wave, appearing motionless and posed as though for our photographic pleasure. Just as the cramps in my groin become unbearable, we break for lunch.

A perfect place for sundowners perched high on the dune. Click to view gallery

A set table and lounge area await under a shaded canopy, the provisions having made the journey by 4WD. Lazing in this cool sanctuary with a fully stocked esky, I can’t believe my luck: the setting is close to perfect. Suddenly an approaching quad bike disturbs the peace and I glimpse Bobo behind the handlebars. He is en route to a smaller private camp and offers me the chance to hitch a ride.

Bobo understands the dunes, and it’s a thrilling, slightly terrifying, rollercoaster ride. Many times we are halfway up one of the steepest dunes when he aborts, only to return, heavy on the throttle, packing more speed. I squeeze Bobo tightly as we rocket up, then quickly lean far back as we pitch down. He chuckles each time I shriek as we come close to toppling.

On my final morning I set out in the dark and head into the dunes with a thermos of coffee. The sand is freezing and I’m shivering despite wearing a scarf and beanie. It feels really good to be cold. This simple desert life offers true escapism, and I savour these final views in the early-morning light. I love that there is no posh back-up hotel nearby, yet I cannot wait for the shower and dust-free towels that await in Marrakesh. A piece of the Sahara is leaving with me – engrained in my memories and my suitcase.

Losing the Herd on Thailand’s Elephant Island Ko Chang

Mai mee pun hah!” The chirpy phrase, meaning ‘no problem’, is the most commonly heard sound on Ko Chang.

I wake early for a run before the tropical heat kicks in. The sun is throwing its first saffron-coloured rays over the humpbacked forest slopes of Ko Chang and I’ve heard the phrase twice already. The first time was from my landlady when I stumbled out of my beach shack bleary-eyed and knocked my barbecue over. Now I hear it again from my new friend, Adi.

Klong Prao, on Koh Chang’s west coast is a picture perfect stretch of arching white sand. Click to view gallery

Thailand’s laid-back island attitude has almost become a travellers’ cliché, but for good reason. Life in fast-lane Bangkok has a way of taking its toll and I have come to Ko Chang for a month or two to let the warm waters of the Gulf of Thailand wash away the inevitable stress of big-city life.

Adi clearly knows little of those problems. He, with his dog Mah at his side, operates a little pontoon boat across the narrow tidal inlet to the beach at Klong Prao. His workplace is prime beachfront real estate – the type that postcard publishers drool over. It is almost too perfect, with its turquoise waters and a white arc of sand that is dotted here and there with just the right amount of shade from towering palms.

Klong Prao offers more than enough temptation for me to rip off my trainers and wade across the shallow lagoon. Stupidly, I have come out without any baht and with a sheepish shrug to Adi I pull out my empty pockets.

Macaques are a common sight on much of Ko Chang. Click to view gallery

“Mai mee pun hah!” my new friend laughs as he punts over to me. Mah stands on the bow, tail wagging, waiting to greet the first ‘customer’ of the day. During the day, Adi makes his money shuttling tourists to and from the little beach-bar here. At night, he ferries honeymooners on romantic ‘firefly safaris’ deep into the mangroves, where cicadas chirp, frogs croak and there are fairy-light flashes from a million fireflies.

I promise to return that night to take a gentle cruise with a frosted bottle of Chang beer in hand. The thought is enough to put a renewed spring in my step as I start the long run back up the sand towards my bungalow.

Ko Chang (Elephant Island) is so-called because it is said to resemble a sleeping elephant. For much of the last month I have been living happily tucked away in the elephant’s armpit.

Facilities in my simple shack are limited. Ten dollars a night buys me a bamboo bed, a bare light bulb, a barbecue, an electric fan and a cold-water shower. I share the shower with a giant spotted gecko that is known throughout South-East Asia as ‘tokay’ for its loud territorial call. Even in the jungle the call would carry for half a mile, but amplified by the acoustics in my bathroom and the still of the night it is nothing short of terrifying. Someone once told me that it is good luck if the tokay repeats its call exactly seven times, and since then I have been obsessively counting.

One of the best ways to experience the interior of ‘Elephant Island’. Click to view gallery

However, the saving grace of my humble abode is the small verandah on which I am able to put some distance between my roommate and I, and doze in my hammock just a few feet from the small waves.

Ko Chang, an easy five-hour drive east of Bangkok, has remained a sleepy backwater place, while more isolated islands like Ko Samui and Ko Pha-Ngan have been frantically over-developed. Pioneering backpackers in search of ‘secret spots’ rushed to the outlying islands in the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea. Yet, thankfully, Ko Chang, one of Thailand’s biggest islands, was almost completely overlooked – saved by its size and its proximity to the country’s capital.

Just a decade ago, when Phuket (the country’s largest island) was exploding as a world-famous tourist destination, the Chang islanders were yet to receive electricity or telephones.

Things have changed in recent years and there is now a string of tourist resorts down the west coast of the island, and bars are spreading like a neon rash down busier sections of the coast road. Ko Chang even has its own little backpacker-ghetto party scene at the inappropriately named Lonely Beach.

Ko Chang (along with over 40 other islands) is part of the Mu Koh Chang Marine National Park, which means that development is more controlled here than anywhere else.

Take a little time to explore and you’ll easily find old-time Thailand in Ko Chang. Few tourists visit the remote hill villages, where farmers and rubber-tappers answer almost every question with a chirpy “mai mee pun hah!”

In the past month, I had travelled much of Ko Chang’s west coast by motorbike, and had explored the east by pickup truck. I found a wilderness of tangled mangrove swamps and deeply rutted sand-tracks. At almost every turn in the roller-coaster road I found beautiful bays with curvy strips of deserted talcum-powder sand.

I had even taken time to explore the outlying islands by boat. Some say that there are roughly 365 islands in the Gulf of Thailand, but nobody knows for sure. Some islands, like Ko Mak, have become tourist havens and dive resorts, but even here most islanders still make their living from fishing, rubber-tapping and harvesting copra oil. In larger fishing villages, jetties and rickety boardwalks jut out over sparkling reefs and rows of fishing boats. The boats are decked with fishbowl-sized light bulbs, used to lure fish. On good fishing nights, when the moon’s glow is dim, the ocean horizon can sparkle as strongly as the stars in the tropical sky.

The centre of the island – the elephant’s back – is still hard to access independently without mounting a full-scale jungle expedition. This area is almost completely covered with jungle that is home to stump-tailed macaques, civets, giant monitor lizards, hornbills and occasional herds of ‘free range’ elephants, enjoying R&R from their tourist-ferrying duties.

I had been on an elephant trek in Thailand before, and once I even joined an elephant-back tiger safari in India.

I hadn’t enjoyed either experience much. I had trouble coming to terms with the concept of chaining and domesticating an animal that most experts admit have a level of intelligence that we are never likely to fully comprehend. But I was on Elephant Island and, although I was still reticent, I finally convinced myself to give elephant trekking its last opportunity to convert me.

My new travelling companion is called Nam Pet. She weighs four tonnes, has rough, dry skin and a head of extremely harsh bristles that’s soon causing quite serious chaffing on my inner thighs. Nam Pet’s huge bulk sways as we shuffle through the rubber plantation and up into the jungle-clad lower slopes. The pace is slow and relaxed, like the rest of Ko Chang. To me it seems that Nam Pet and her colleagues are even enjoying their patrol, as they happily browse along the edge of the trail and nudge each other affectionately.

We trek for a couple of hours and enjoy sightings of macaques and hornbills that are unconcerned of our presence. On the way back down to Chutiman elephant camp a little bird flits happily between the elephants’ feet. It appears to be hunting for insects stirred up by the monstrous pads and it chirps a pretty little staccato call that seems to be repeating one phrase over and over.

“Mai mee pun hah!” No problem.