So there’s this job… travel writer for the New York Times. I don’t think I can imagine a cooler assignment than travelling the globe for a year and writing about the places and people I encounter. 

But first you have to get selected, right? And with 2,500 or so applications in the first 24 hours, it won’t be easy. The brief is to write 500 words each on “What themes would you like to explore during your travels?” and “What’s the most interesting place you’ve been and why?”. I figured it was an interesting challenge in itself to answer those questions comprehensively and clearly, and since they are both themes in keeping with this blog anyway, here are my attempts – do let me know what you think!

What themes would you like to explore during your travels?

I started writing about my journeys as a way of leaving a legacy for my children – this is my small contribution to making the world a better place. And so the themes I would like to explore during my year of travels are the ones I habitually look for on my own journeys: pristine nature, exotic culture, physical challenges and unlikely encounters. 

I am a nature lover by nature. In fact I believe we all are. Nothing mankind has created can compete with the breath-taking grandiosity of the Himalayas, the intricate beauty of a coral reef, or the sheer complexity of an ordinary autumn leaf. I’m not a religious person, but natural wonders bring a sense of awe to me that naught else can. 

That’s not to say that humanity’s endeavours do not mesmerise me; expressions of human ingenuity regularly have me humbled and baffled, particularly examples dating back thousands of years. The Stone Age temples on Gozo, the Incan grass bridges, and the hand-hewn Guoliang tunnel are all astonishing feats of fearless engineering carried out in an age we tend to think of as unsophisticated – to encounter such proof of our species coming together for the greater good never fails to inspire me. 

Pushing my body to its limits is for me a way of feeling even more alive. I train to be fit, in order to live long and healthily, but in doing so I have found a new way of exploring my world: whether it be by running the length of Hadrian’s Wall in a day or travelling by dog sled across the frozen wastes of Lapland, whether kayaking in the mangrove swamps of the Dominican Republic, climbing the Alps or hiking the Appalachian Trail, I have found that overcoming your own perceived limitations not only brings a sense of achievement and a heightened awareness of our surroundings, it is also a fantastic way of meeting people. 

That last piece in the puzzle is the most elusive one: you obviously cannot plan chance encounters, but you can put yourself in situations where they are more likely to occur. And so I favour travelling alone and to places outside of the more well-trodden paths, as I find people to be more willing to interact with strangers that way. Outside of our comfort zones we are sometimes, paradoxically, more open to others than we would otherwise be. Would I have met a telenovela actress in her native Argentina, or a Latvian porn star in Tallinn? Unlikely. But on a tropical island off the coast of Africa, and in a beer hall in Bavaria those meetings happened effortlessly. I learnt that the former wanted to be a psychiatrist and the latter an author of children’s books. That, too, is the wonder of discovery.

They say travelling broadens the mind. Not all people can have that experience first hand, unfortunately, but I want to take my readers on a trip every time I put pen to paper. 
What’s the most interesting place you’ve been and why?

My latest trip was to Amsterdam last weekend to run the marathon. It didn’t require a passport. Pemba did. To me it was the perfect trip, embodying everything I want when travelling: pristine nature, exotic culture, physical challenges and unlikely encounters.

Unlike its famous neighbour Zanzibar, Pemba is devoid of tourism; its obscurity one of the reasons why it’s home to the best diving in the world. 

As you descend into the blue, you arrive in a different universe. There are fire corals, like glowing lava, cream-coloured porcelain corals, orange staghorn corals, corals shaped like trees and pink fans and black chimneys and yellow bubble baths and sponges and a hundred other different shapes and sizes and hues, nearly every one of them favoured by different species of fish. Never have I dived in such perfect waters, in such a rich flora and fauna. I surface with an enormous grin on my face. 

In the mornings we go diving, after lunch we go exploring. We traverse the jungle and see silk monkeys and crested hornbills (think Rowan Atkinson in The Lion King) and flying foxes, we paddle along the coast and in mangrove forests – the trees look like giant spiders, and the volcanic rock walls are alive with hundreds of crabs, clambering along the razor-edged volcanic overhangs.

When I go running I have a continuous chorus of children calling me. They shout “bye bye” by way of greeting, and laugh and stare, obviously thinking me a very strange sight. Once we pass a group of serious-looking young girls in beautiful scarves and dresses, and I blew them a kiss. The fact that child marriage and polygamy are allowed is difficult to comprehend for a westerner, and for a moment I was worried that I might have committed a serious faux-pas, but it resulted in an explosion of giggles. Even the adults seemed pleased, much like I expect they would have if a monkey had performed a particularly good trick. It’s a strange feeling to find yourself part of a tiny minority, and quite the eye-opener.

We spend one last day on Zanzibar, in Stonetown, a place that will forever live in infamy as the biggest slave market in the world.

Having been taken across the sound to Zanzibar the traders would cull their stock, throwing the weak ones off the ships to drown rather than having to pay duties for them. The cargo would then be incarcerated in tiny, overcrowded cellars underground for a couple of days to weed out all but the strongest, who would finally be taken to the market to be inspected, bought and sold like so much cattle that their new masters could then take to all the corners of the world, for – lest we forget – this was a global commercial endeavour. It beggars belief. 

And with that sobering reentry into civilisation, plus a parting gift of torrential rain and ditto diarrhoea, Zanzibar speeds us on our long way home.