When the man bringing your meal to the table is missing most of his fingers and the main ingredient is not only still alive but also long and writhing and – hang on, is that a cobra? Well, that’s when you know this is no ordinary dining experience. Eating at one of Hanoi’s snake restaurants…
Enjoy a more eco-friendly stay in Mumbai with our green guide to the city, taken from travel bible Great Escapes. Visit a handicraft centre India is home to over a billion people, more than a thousand distinct languages and countless different arts and handicrafts. Travelling across the country, you’ll no doubt encounter some of these…
Get up close to nature with our pick of the ten best wildlife sites across the UK, and let us know your own top British wildlife experiences below. Starling work on the Somerset Levels An eerie sight greets visitors to the Somerset Levels in late autumn and winter. At dusk between November and January a…
Home to over a million plants and more than five thousand different species from around the world, the iconic “biomes” (gigantic greenhouses) at the Eden Project are the focus of the UK’s premier green attraction. Built on the site of a former clay quarry, the Rainforest Biome houses plants from tropical islands, Malaysia, West Africa…
Deep in the Swedish birch forest your mind can begin to play tricks. As the shadows lengthen and a chill creeps into the pine-scented air you’re reminded of the folk tales that originated here, from gnomes and trolls to the siren call of the Tallemaja or “Lady of the Woods”. But there is one much-mythologized creature very much…
Gerald Durrell likened Madagascar to “a badly presented omelette”, observing that “like all the best omelettes, well or badly presented, it is stuffed with goodies”. He wasn’t wrong. The world’s fourth-largest island packs a huge ecological punch: 80 per cent of its flora and fauna is endemic, from lumbering, goggle-eyed chameleons to giant jumping rats…
With all manner of bungee jumps, white-water rafting trips and tandem skydives, New Zealand has a well deserved reputation for adventure activities set against a magnificent backdrop. But there’s considerably more to this curious geologically-young land where birds have occupied the ecological niches normally occupied by mammals. Getting intimate with New Zealand’s birds and sea…
Sandwiched between the raging Bohorok River and the deep, silent, steaming jungle, the Bukit Lawang Orang-utan Sanctuary, on the vast Indonesian island of Sumatra, offers the unique opportunity of witnessing one of our closest and most charming relatives in their own backyard. Having crossed the Bohorok on a precarious, makeshift canoe, your first sight of these kings of the…
Signs warning “Polar Bear Alert – Stop, don’t walk in this area” dot the city limits of Churchill, Manitoba. Beyond them lie wide expanses of the bleak and often frozen Hudson Bay or the treeless, endlessly flat tundra. It’s this location on the threshold of two forbidding environments that makes the town the unchallenged “polar…
The fact that in Icelandic the word for beached whale is the same as that for jackpot or windfall may give you some clue as to how these seaborne beasts are seen by the locals. Yes, you may well find whale on the menu in Iceland’s restaurants – but thanks to a temporary moratorium on…