Buenaventura Bravo’s main job during the Spanish Civil War was getting his goats out of the village and into the mountains. This was no top-secret mission, entrusted upon young ’Ventura by the besieged Republican government in Madrid, just something that had to be done; this was the day-to-day life that continued to unfold regardless of…
I have no other choice. Since the war ended, my life has been miserable. The communists have confiscated our house, our money, our belongings, everything. The 10 of us live in what used to be our kitchen, which is now our only space. Every time any of us leave the house, we’re body searched in…
There is a kind of sexual urgency in the air since human touch became a scarcity. The prospect of a complete lockdown will see single people cooped up with nothing but Netflix and toys purchased from the kind of store you wouldn’t window shop with your grandparents. I can feel it. A glance at the…
Last night, we heard screaming. Tucked away in our apartment during quarantine, we wondered what people were doing outside clapping and yelling. Upon looking out the window, we could hear our neighbours across the alley – they were sitting on window ledges, hollering and cheering. Shouts from blocks away could be heard echoing through the…
The driver reaches out a hand to steady me as I stand up. I’m on a tiny boat that’s just left the beach of a tiny Malaysian island. We’ve come out into the ocean to meet a group of jet ski riders. We’ve come so a bunch of tourists can step out of our comfort…
It’s 2pm on a Sunday in March and I’m sitting by the windowsill having my morning coffee. Ordinarily, my morning wouldn’t have started at 2pm, but time is different now and there is little ‘ordinary’ left about our world today.
The sunlight streaming through the window that gently kisses my face tells me spring has…
I was prepared for one of them to die.
Before I left the UK to go travelling, I made a list of family members I would come home for if they died. In a single week in October 2016, I lost not one, but two of the most influential men in my life: my granddads.…
I power up the dirt track on a rickety contraption of metal and gears. The path is bright orange in the dense jungle, a groove forged by other cyclists trying to reach the same goal – the hotel pool. The sun beats down, encompassing me in a thick blanket of heat. I am metres away…
The groggy fog of your afternoon nap begins to dissipate. The thundery rumble of an ignored stomach calls you to action, and when the gnawing reaches fever pitch, you know it’s time to go. Of course, because you’re not a local, you don’t know where. The suggestions of a previous traveller, a close friend, ring…
Bundarra is a tiny little village about an hour from Armidale, which is an hour and a half from Tamworth, or nearly three from Coffs Harbour. By this point if you can’t get an idea of where it is, I usually just give up. Inland New South Wales, I’ll say. Drive to the Sapphire City,…
I am not a religious person. I consider the existence of god with an agnostic shrug and struggle to understand the conservatism of my church-going acquaintances. Yet on a warm evening in late June, I stood in the mountainous Le Marche region of Italy, knocking on a Benedictine Monastery door.
“Are you sure they know…
Jason*, our Hugh-Grant-lookalike Airbnb host, was prone to wild sporadic fits of weeping. It was the kind of animal uncontrollable wailing that you often hear in new wave Indie films or in a final year art student’s all-immersive video installation piece.
Raw, carnal and generally pretty distressing.
We would find out later why. And the…