Archive

Wild Spirits, Toni and Guy

Escape to where the wild things are. From tending mustangs in California to walking big cats and baboons in Namibia, here’s our pick of the best wildlife volunteering holidays WILD HORSES Lompoc, California, US Return to Freedom provides a safe haven for wild horses. Set in the wine region where Sideways was !lmed outside of Los Angeles, the 300-acre ranch is among a few private preserves that let stallions, mares and foals roam freely and form natural family bands. (Most American mustangs are being rounded up by the thousands and shipped to slaughterhouses or...

Searching for sanctuary, The Observer Magazine

The filmmaker Alex Farrell walked through 10 countries alongside a family of Syrian refugees. His groundbreaking documentary records their perilous journey A few years ago, 29-year-old Alex Farrell was another struggling young actor in Hollywood who had drifted to Los Angeles from London. “I realised it wasn’t what I wanted and LA didn’t afford me the opportunity,” he says. “It’s easy to get lost in the Hollywood bubble. I decided I was more interested in being behind the camera.”...

Snakeman, The Observer Magazine

Sometime in 2006, when my ex-boyfriend failed to show up for dinner, I assumed something was wrong or perhaps he’d forgotten. About a week later, calling to apologise, he told me he’d had an overdose, accidentally injecting a lethal cocktail of venom from three snakes. A lot has been written about Steve Ludwin, widely known as the man who injects snake venom, and lately his life has turned into a non-stop frenzy of international journalists and film crews revelling in the seeming sheer insanity of it. Steve was once my great...

Into The Wild, Which? Travel

On a hazy summer’s day, I stood at the edge of the road, staring at the dark lava cliffs on one side and the silvery sea on the other. Seeing Iceland for the first time, the unearthly landscapes scarcely changed by the centuries, is like discovering a wild, unchartered land. From Reykjavik, I head north along the coastal road that circles the entire country in 830 miles of dreamlike scenery, bound for the Westfjords hoping to glimpse puffins....

Soul Safari

In the mist and the rain, winding across the golden-green savannas toward a secluded hilltop, I felt as if I was returning someplace I’d been before. Hanging high over Kenya’s Great Rift Valley, Angama Mara safari lodge sits in the same setting where the most iconic scenes of Karen Blixen’s Out of Africa were filmed. It’s a soul-stirring dream of a place that seems to float 1,000ft above the Mara Triangle, the densest wildlife habitat in Africa. Way before Richard Branson started colonising Africa with his luxury eco lodges, Steve and...

The Real Marfa

Tucked away in a starkly beautiful landscape in far-west Texas, the sleepy little town of Marfa has blossomed into an international art oasis. Ever since New York artist Donald Judd arrived in 1972 and planted his minimalist sculptures in the desert, it has become an unexpected draw for artists, dreamers and culture seekers. Marfa is having another moment, propelled by the buzz of Californian artist Robert Irwin’s new 10,000-squarefoot installation at Judd’s Chinati Foundation, 17 years in the making and now its star attraction. The desert settlement of less than 2,000...

Nick Fouquet, Billionaire Magazine

Tucked away on a corner off a busy street in Venice, California, in the back of a yellow storefront bungalow, past the cool boutiques and beach cafés, I find Nick Fouquet sweeping the patio behind his studio. “We had a party last night,” he smiles, his sea-blue eyes lined with five o’clock shadows. Long and lanky as a greyhound in a fitted army-green t-shirt and faded Levi’s, sporting one of his signature wide-brimmed felt hats, he takes me inside his warm, soulful atelier, where incense is burning and Nirvana is blasting...

Australia Travel

CHASING THE SUN, SCANNING THE GLITTERING EXPANSE OF SAPPHIRE SEA SURROUNDING THE REMOTE ISLANDS OF THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE, OUR WRITER CRUISES FROM PERTH TO CAIRNS, TAKING IN THE UNRIVALLED BEAUTY OF THE AUSTRALIAN COASTLINE...

Loisaba Lodge, Kenya

The moon is so bright it lights up the pale hills in the distance. Lying under the African stars, snug in bed above the treetops with nothing but a mosquito net, I feel like I’m sleeping on a cloud. In the stillness, I could hear the rasp of a leopard, the howl of a jackal, the sounds of other wild things on the prowl. These sleep-outs on Loisaba camp’s starbeds — rough-hewn four-posters on wheels — are the stuff of the most seductive jet-setting fantasies. In the evenings, the beds...

Haas Brothers