The journey from Manali in Himachal Pradesh to Spiti Valley - the cold desert mountain near Tibetan border is one of the most beautiful road trips in India. Let's take this amazing journey.
The journey from Manali in Himachal Pradesh to Spiti Valley - the cold desert mountain near Tibetan border is one of the most beautiful road trips in India. Let's take this amazing journey.
Sydney hands you the Opera House for free from a dozen different angles. I wrote a whole guide to the best Sydney Opera House viewpoints around the harbour, and every one of those views is real and worth doing. But none of them are the thing itself. You can photograph those sails from Mrs Macquarie’s Chair at sunset for the rest of your life and still never...
Wherever you go in Sydney, they’re there. Cross a random street, glance between two buildings, and the Sydney Opera House’s white sails and the Sydney Harbour Bridge’s grey arch are somehow back in frame, as if the whole city were built to keep circling past them. Twelve nights across two stays, and somewhere in the middle of that I stopped counting...
Thirty-one days, thirty nights, six regions, one country I gave a full month for the first time. Every hotel and every tour below is one I actually booked and actually did.
Seven days, six real day trips, and the reef, laid out so you can build your own version of Cairns itinerary. I flew into Cairns from Melbourne on 17 January, a motel on Sheridan Street booked, Skyrail and a waterfall day already locked in before I’d even landed. Cairns was the fourth stop on a month-long Australia trip, and by the time I got there I’d...
Cairns punches above its weight for a city its size. Harbourside boardwalks are lined with fine dining, the marina is thick with seafood, and the Esplanade alone covers everything from a French bistro to a night market that never shuts. Here’s how I’d split it, by the kind of night you’re actually after. A full infographic summary of where to eat in...
âïž Flight time~3 hours (clock shows 4) đ Distance~1,966km đ« Direct airlinesJetstar, Qantas, Virgin Australia đ Time difference+1hr Sydney, Oct-Apr only Five nights in Cairns, and I’d stopped noticing how quiet the streets went after dark, how the mountains sat right behind the Esplanade, how nothing about the place looked like the Australia I’d started...
I heard the jet a full second before the trees opened up enough to see it. I hadn’t gone looking for a plane-spotting trail. I’d searched for an easy hike in Cairns with good views, and the Red Arrow Track came up as one option among many. What the search results didn’t quite prepare me for was that the trail starts inside the Cairns Botanic...
Cape Tribulation is the one place on this whole Australia trip, Sydney to Tasmania to Melbourne to Cairns and back, where two World Heritage sites meet: the Daintree, widely considered the world’s oldest rainforest at somewhere between 135 and 180 million years old depending on the estimate, running straight down to the edge of the Great Barrier Reef. If...
I’d already seen this beach before I ever set foot on it. A jetty reaching out into a bay, recognisable enough from 30,000 feet that I named it in a caption weeks before I could confirm it, on the flight from Melbourne into Cairns. Palm Cove, on the descent into Cairns. Turns out I was right, and the only way to actually check was to go. The jetty, from 30,000...
Twenty-eight nights, every flight and every day I actually spent, across a country I'd tell anyone to give real time to.