There’s something exhilarating about a tropical storm. Blown across from China, this particular storm slammed into camp with no warning. One second it was dry. The next second it was pouring. Then the trees started creaking in the wind. And It wasn’t long before they started cracking. The buildings at […]
Do you remember running full tilt down a hill as a toddler and it feeling like your legs were moving faster than the rest of your body? The closest I’ve come to reliving that sensation is running down Europe’s tallest sand dune. The Dune du Pilat near Bordeaux in France has […]
So after being hospitalised with food poisoning, several collapsed bridges, a series of broken machetes and nearly two months of waiting, we’re finally in Malua. We actually arrived almost two weeks ago but it’s been a pretty hectic time trying to cram three months of fieldwork into forty days. I’m […]
We were two kilometres away from camp and several hundred metres into the rainforest when we heard the howling. At first, I thought it was gibbons but it sounded nothing their distinctive calls, nor like anything else I’d ever heard in the forest. Redly, one of the local guys leading […]
I’ve always wanted to sleep in a hammock on my own in the rainforest—it looks so cool in that “Filmmaker Diaries” bit at the end of nature documentaries. Last night I came the closest I’ve ever come to fulfilling that dream. But then it all went wrong. The day before, […]
As a general rule, climbing tall things is fun. When those tall things happen to be slap bang in the middle of a rainforest…well these are the best things to climb. Today, Paddy and I headed to a tower we’ve been to many times before to watch the sun rise. […]
Are you on the wrong continent for your graduation and worried that you will forever be upstaged on your mum’s living room shelf by a glowing photo of your preferred sibling, who graduated from Warwick University with dual honours in French with Italian? Then this could well be the blog […]
Bored? Go and feed some cows. Wherever you are, chances are there are some nearby. There are around 1.5 billion of them on our planet and they’re mostly pretty friendly creatures. The grass usually is greener on the other side so you can normally find big tufts of the stuff […]
Ten days ago my machete snapped clean in half trying to cut through a fallen tree trunk on a jungle trail. The week before, Paddy broke two others. He bent the blade of the first one chopping through some branches on the logging track which were blocking the car. He […]
The best thing about being a student at the University of Sheffield is the small piece of plastic you get given when you enrol. On this piece of plastic, you might look like a 9-year-old fluff head. But it doesn’t matter because with this humble piece of plastic, you can […]