Wish we were there: our pick of the best FT travel pieces

A man at the head of the line hacked his way through the rainforest with a machete. Huge flying beetles aimed for the beam of my headtorch and smacked me in the face. That same beam found giant spider webs and, in their middle, giant spiders. It was 30 degrees, with 95 per cent humidity, and I was as wet as if I’d had a bath fully clothed.

Word came down the line to be quiet. Nobody had given the forest the memo. It sounded like an old dial-up modem, the cicadas pulsing like static; unseen, in the blackness, a hornbill flew past, its vast wings going whump, whump, like a giant’s heartbeat.

It felt like a commando raid but it was nothing of the sort. We were here on the island of Misool, eastern Indonesia, to see a bird. Not just any bird, but a bird of paradise and its dawn courtship rituals.

Extract from An Indonesian adventure in the wake of Alfred Russel WallaceJanuary 15, 2019

That night, I lodged with Furkat Kasimov, a soft-spoken father of five, in his homestay on the outskirts of Bokhtar. I was his first foreign guest in a country where the hotel infrastructure is negligible. Together with his family, I ate a hearty meat shurbo broth at a low table laden with dried mulberries, Russian fudge and tiny Chinese clementines. The room was adorned with felt-embossed wallpaper and a flatscreen television on which classical Tajik music played, including a lute-like, fretless rubab. Our host cupped a pomegranate in his palm, and with his other hand, used a stubby kitchen knife to score a line around the fruit’s crown.

Furkat eased off the scalp and pith, then made eight vertical scores, from the pomegranate’s head to its base, until the sections fell open. Without the knife shedding a single drop of juice, the pomegranate spilled its ruby seeds. When I admired their taste, Furkat put his right hand to his heart. As I watched his pride swell — he had grown this fruit in his orchard outside — the unpeeling of the pomegranate began to feel like a parable for Tajikistan: something precious hidden inside a tough, bruised skin.

Extract from Wish I were there: off the beaten track in TajikistanAugust 7 2020

Nothing about Socotra is predictable and I love the constant surprises. The famous dragon’s blood trees silhouetted on hillsides look like giant old-fashioned darning mushrooms; seriously obese bottle trees in improbable human shapes are tactfully called “desert roses”; and ever-hungry Egyptian vultures with punk hairstyles swoop down to act as refuse collectors.

Around the coast, springs of fresh water flow out between giant sand dunes. A natural swimming pool with 180-degree views perches on a clifftop, a grey patch on a tree trunk turns out to be a mass of a thousand snails, bold pink land crabs emerge to explore our toes as we cool our feet in a wadi stream.

And in every direction and at every time of day, the island is stunningly, unbelievably beautiful; its shapes, colours, sounds and unexpected sense of space blend into something I am longing to revisit, even in my mind.

Extract from Wish I were there: the treasures of SocotraNovember 19 2020

Pageantry, the staff’s and your own, is part of the deal. Them: royal-blue livery trimmed in gold braid, jaunty leather-brimmed caps, white gloves, welcoming smiles. You: holiday wardrobe game upped several notches (even if your game is already fairly A), because that’s the brief. Or at least it’s the steer (“You can never be overdressed aboard the Venice-Simplon Orient Express,” offers the booking confirmation’s paragraph on dress codes).

Black tie is not expressly required at dinner, you understand; but it is definitely more fun. Perhaps more importantly, it honours the spirit of the enterprise. The train and staff bring the exquisite settings, the history, the fine food and rivers of really good drink. But for that old razzle-dazzle to manifest convincingly, everyone needs, as the song goes, to give it some.

Extract from The Roaring Twenties recaptured on the Orient ExpressSeptember 6 2021

The packages keep coming, all containing puzzles or messages that whet the appetite for the next day’s activities and sustain the narrative of a mysterious uncle with the initials “GH” who has discovered a way to the centre of the Earth and is now on the run; it’s a kind of treasure hunt, borrowing from the 1959 and 2008 films as well as from the book.

Before long any concerns my wife and I had that our kids, aged 12 and nine, might find the activities too young have been firmly dispelled. After a year and a half in which they have often been left to their own devices — specifically, a tablet, a smartphone and a Nintendo Switch — the appeal feels symbolic as much as anything else, with each artfully aged parchment and runic riddle another way of saying that this time, it really is all about them.

Extract from A journey to the centre of a Jules Verne classic, August 25 2021