An occasional blog on topics related to my work. For a behind-the-scenes look, subscribe to my Patreon page.
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This is Part Three of my account of travelling by train from the UK across Europe and Turkey to the Caucasus. If you just got here, start with Part One, which details the 72-hour journey from London to Istanbul. The final part of this series is all about how to do it yourself – that is, how to replicate or adapt my 7-day train journey from London to Tbilisi and Yerevan for your own travel purposes. You might want to print this article (or save it as a PDF) for when you’re lying on a moving bunk-bed in the middle…
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Caucasus by Train: UK To Georgia/Armenia In Under A Week (Part Two)
This is Part Two of my account of travelling by train from the UK across Europe and Turkey to the Caucasus. If you just got here, start with Part One, which details the 72-hour journey from London to Istanbul. Otherwise, continue reading to find out how I got from Istanbul to the Georgian capital of Tbilisi by train in three more days, and to Yerevan in a further day, for a total of seven days of rail travel from the UK to Armenia.
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Breaking: Self-Unemployed Explorer Finally Gets Real Job
I recently got the opportunity to do something more risky and terrifying than any of the journeys, expeditions or adventure projects I’ve ever undertaken. That’s right: aged 41, and after nearly two decades as a “self-unemployed creative explorer”, I was offered my first ever real job. And – gasp – I took it! Because in so many ways, it sounded like exactly the kind of step forward I needed. It’s been almost a decade since I embarked on the frankly ludicrous mission to create, from scratch, a Transcaucasian Trail. Yet now, with dozens of dedicated people from across the Caucasus…
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Help Tom Finish What He Started
I’m writing this post from a rural guesthouse near the city of Sisian in southern Armenia, where I’ve just finished a lovely breakfast of freshly-picked raspberries, cheese curds, sour cream, new season honey, and gata (a type of regional sweet pastry). Yum. This guesthouse, run by Mher Azoyan and his family on the site of a former Soviet pig farm, was recommended to me last year by a thru-hiker on the Transcaucasian Trail, which stretches around 850km (530 miles) the length of the country and beyond into Georgia – one of dozens of small businesses on the route. And the…
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Caucasus by Train: UK to Georgia/Armenia In Under A Week (Part One)
Planning a trip to the Caucasus – perhaps to hike some of the Transcaucasian Trail – but concerned about the carbon footprint of flying there and back? I’m with you. Hiking has a small environmental footprint (depending on your shoe size). Air travel has a big one. But the good news is that, if you’re a resident of Europe, you can travel by train to the Caucasus instead. It’s easy, fun, affordable, quicker than you might think, and of course a heck of a lot greener. And how do I know? I did it – twice. There, and back again.…
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Yet Another Defender Camper Conversion: DIY 2-Berth 110 In A Weekend
This post details what I’ve taken to calling YADCC, or Yet Another Defender Camper Conversion. Built in a weekend by two blokes with some power tools on a driveway, it sleeps two on a full-size double bed-board with enough stowage for a weekend away or a transcontinental overland expedition (ask me how I know). We’ll get to the ‘how’ in a minute, but a short version of the base vehicle’s backstory is worth relating first.
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Exactly How Do You Fund Your Adventure Travel Lifestyle?
A reader writes: I would be very interested in how you fund your adventures / lifestyle. I know this is always a bit of an awkward one, but I think there are many people in the community that would be interested in ways to make extra income, source sponsorship and budget for adventures. Thanks so much for what is by far the most interesting question I’ve received for a while. It’s interesting partly because it’s about pulling back the curtain, and partly because I’m not sure I’ve got a simple answer to it! Nevertheless, seeing as it’s the season of…
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Introducing The Armenian National Trail: A New Village-To-Village Hiking Route
On May 16 2023, in the leafy surrounds of Yerevan Botanical Gardens, the Armenian State Tourism Committee and HIKEArmenia announced their intention to create the Armenian National Trail, a new national hiking route across Armenia. In attendance were government officials, tourism development representatives, long-time members of the hiking community… and the small crew of trail enthusiasts who’d been working behind the scenes to bring the project to this point and to reach the level of confidence expressed at the ceremony – myself included. This new, roughly 1,000km-long proposed trail didn’t even have a name until late last year. The route…
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Breaking: Former Traveller Recreates Feeling Of Adventure At Home (Again)
The moment I decided to stop travelling, put down roots, and buy a house (on the pretext that I needed somewhere to store my bikes and camping gear), some deeply buried part of my brain started looking for ways to make it feel like I was actually still travelling. I’m certainly not the first. And I suspect such urges often go unacknowledged, manifesting as a kind of low-level unease; a general malcontent with life in the aftermath of a big adventure. But sometimes, something else happens. The intrepid traveller reacts the only way they know how: by taking a purposeful…
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#FlightFree2020: Well, That Was Easy – Or Was It?
When, on January 1st, I and many others committed to not flying for a year, none of us imagined 2020 would see 90% of air traffic disappear and the biggest reduction in aviation emissions since the invention of flight. Perhaps predictably, smug people on Twitter soon began making sarcastic jokes about how everyone might as well sign the pledge, call the campaign a success, and finally shut up about the whole thing. Campaigners responded with the observation that unless more of us freely choose to quit our flying addiction, we will likely see a post-pandemic aviation boom. In short, #FlightFree2020…