DIGITAL ISSUE 25 08/2026
ITINERARY
SLOVENIA
Trading Google Maps for a paper map and compass, our writer treks six days from Ljubljana to Trieste — and learns that presence, not convenience, is what actually changes you.
SLOVENIA
Trading Google Maps for a paper map and compass, our writer treks six days from Ljubljana to Trieste — and learns that presence, not convenience, is what actually changes you.
What's your wildest travel experience?
Kate Gazzard @kate_gazzard
Let me preface this by saying I’m not a hardcore, adrenaline-junkie style traveller, so ‘wild’ for me can sometimes include not having Wi-Fi (when I was promised there would be) or eating outside of my comfort zone.
Having said that, my wildest travel experience involved voluntarily disappearing into the Bornean jungle for a few days last year with almost no phone reception (the horror), no air-conditioning, no hot showers and the realisation that just about everything in the rainforest could bite, sting or crawl across me.
I spent my days trekking through thick jungle and travelling by longboat to remote lodges where the walls didn't quite keep nature out. One night, a giant fruit bat swooped around my room. Another, I fell asleep to a deafening chorus of insects that made me long for the city traffic I'm used to.
And I never did find the wild orangutan I'd gone looking for.
Justin Jamieson @jamo_gets_lost
We’re in a canoe. We cannot see land. There’s eight people - six mates, the boatman Hendrix and his sidekick who has been cowering under a tarpaulin since we left the Arnavon Islands (Solomon Islands) an hour earlier.
The journey was supposed to take 3 hours.
Seven hours later we see the looming Kolombangara volcano through the storm clouds, guiding us finally towards Gizo. There’s a collective sigh of relief.
It’s only later that evening when we’re told our life jackets were built for waterskiing and we wouldn’t have stayed afloat and our emergency position-indicating radio beacon (EPIRB) was dead, we realised just how close to death we were.
We tipped Hendrix appropriately (I hugged him), and now every year we celebrate Hendrix Day in honour of the boatman who once saved our lives.
Roberto Serrini @serrini
Oh brother. Wildest travel experience could be tough to define without narrowing it down.
I have a few experiences that stretch the spectrum of "wild". From getting tattooed in a Shanghai bar at 3am after eating a bag of boozed soaked ants to being shot at by jealous mafia boyfriends in Leysin, Switzerland, "wild" certainly runs the gamut.
There is also "wild" as in "wilderness", which would be 3 days down the Malinowski River in the Peruvian Amazon to help scientists hang Macaw parrot habitats in between jungle Ayahuasca ceremonies at the Tambopata Research Center.
There was also that wild olive-oil tantric retreat in Costa Rica with my 4 flight attendant roommates (Delta), or that wild 14-hour-straight-electro-dance session locked inside Berghain in Berlin where I lost most of my clothes and all my inhibitions.
I've also been to Chattanooga, which was cool.
get in the know Uzbekistan is one of only two double-landlocked countries on Earth, meaning you have to cross at least two countries to reach the open ocean. Geography really said no beach for you.
