Author: Keith Drew

Following the Greatest Show on Earth, Tanzania

Imagine squinting into the shimmering Serengeti horizon and seeing a herd of wildebeest trundle into view. They’re moving slowly, stopping every now and then to graze on what’s left of the parched savannah. At first, they number a couple of dozen, but as you watch, tens become hundreds, and hundreds become thousands. And still they…

How to find an alternative Morocco

Think of Morocco and you’ll invariably picture the souks of Marrakesh, the whitewashed walls of oceanside Essaouira, the High Atlas trails of the dramatic Toubkal Massif. Trouble is, so does everybody else. This well-trodden triangle is Morocco’s most popular tourist route – for good reason – but in a country that welcomes nearly ten million visitors…

Hiking the Besseggen Ridge

As trekking goes, the beginning of the Besseggen Ridge is a breeze. Sitting on the bow of a little tug as it chugs along picturesque Lake Gjende in central Norway’s Jotunheimen Nasjonalpark, you’d be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss is about – this is, after all, Norway’s best-known day hike, in the country’s…

The road to ruins: Machu Picchu, Peru

There’s a point on the Inca Trail when you suddenly forget the accumulated aches and pains of four days’ hard slog across the Andes. You’re standing at Inti Punku, the Sun Gate, the first golden rays of dawn slowly bringing the jungle to life. Down below, revealing itself in tantalizing glimpses as the early-morning mist…

Skiing the Streif, Austria

It never looked this icy on TV. And it certainly never looked this steep. But then cameras have a way of warping reality: they make people look ever so slightly bigger; and they make downhill-skiing runs look a lot, lot tamer. And Kitzbühel’s “Streif” is far from tame. A legendary downhill course that makes up…

A river runs to it: Pacuare Jungle Lodge, Costa Rica

Standing outside your palm-thatched river-view suite, its wooden doors opened on to the terrace to reveal a vast canopy, king-size, Egyptian-cotton sheets ruffling in the breeze, Pacuare Jungle Lodge seems like the archetypal luxury hideaway. But there’s one big difference: you’re dripping wet and are kitted out in a life jacket and helmet. At some…

Schloss Neuschwanstein – the fairy-tale castle

If you could only visit one castle in the world, then Schloss Neuschwanstein must be it. Boldly perched on a rocky outcrop high above the Bavarian village of Hohenschwangau, the schloss lords it over some of the most spectacular countryside in the country. It looks every bit the storybook castle, a forest of capped grey…

Traversing the salt flats of the Salar de Uyuni

Driving across the immaculate white expanse of the Salar de Uyuni, you’d think you were on another planet, so alien and inhospitable is the terrain. Some 3650m above sea level in the remote Andes of southwest Bolivia, the Salar is the largest salt flat in the world, a brilliantly white and perfectly flat desert that stretches over 10,000 square…

Cairo through the ages

As visitors slowly return to Egypt after years of political instability and unrest, Keith Drew traces the history of Cairo, the largest city in the Arab world.  Midan Tahrir was strangely peaceful. A handful of tourists milled around waiting for the Egyptian Museum to open its doors for the day. Taxis, trucks and donkey carts…

Nile be back: why it’s time to return to Upper Egypt

On a cruise from Luxor to Aswan, along a stretch of the Nile lined by some of the world’s most impressive ancient monuments, Keith Drew makes the most of Egypt’s greatest sights while they’re still crowd free.  “Come closer, my dear family,” says Addy, our Orbital guide, “you need to see this.” We gather round like wide-eyed school…

Somerset: a British road trip to rival the world’s great highways

Keith Drew sees Britain’s Somerset in a different light from behind the wheel of a six-man motorhome. Cotton-budded wisps of mist hung lazily above the water, the early morning sunlight glinting off the pools. Freshly brewed tea in hand, we settled down in chairs outside our motorhome to survey the reedbeds in front of us,…

7 things every family must do in the Scottish Highlands

Wild landscapes and deserted beaches. Fine food and outdoor adventure. Deer, dolphins and mythical monsters. As Rough Guides contributor Keith Drew discovered, the Scottish Highlands have all the ingredients for a family holiday to remember. Read on to discover his top things to do in the Highlands. Things to do in the highlands 1. Row, row, row your boat Where…