A selection of tales from Michael's journeys. Choose a random highlight to delve into a trip or select a journey from the dropdown to view some choice moments from around the world.
A few hours to kill in Venice before leaving by boat for Greece, Crete and Egypt. The director thinks it would be nice for me to see the city from the back of a rubbish barge, and very soon, perhap...
My Arab Gazette tells me it's the start of Fifth National Cleaning Week. For me it's the end of Second Travelling Week and nothing is getting easier. The word is that Achmed has been up all night a...
Somewhere a long way away it's my wife's birthday and A Fish Called Wanda is being shown to the British public for the first time. Here in the Gulf of Oman my chief preoccupation is avoiding seasic...
Up at 6.15. Misty half-light over the Pearl River. To Guangzhou station for the 8.30 train to Shanghai. Through the cycle rush-hour. Only older men still favour Mao jackets. Otherwise it's Western ...
It's 3.45 on a Saturday afternoon and I'm seventeen miles from the North Pole. Somewhere, a long way away, people are doing sensible things like watching cricket or digging gardens or pushing prams...
Today we are going close to Chernobyl to visit towns and villages that have been, or are about to be, evacuated as a result of the disaster. We shall not be entering the thirty-mile exclusion zone ...
The crew are up early to shoot the sunrise from the top of the 600-year-old Galata Tower, where in May 1453 the Genoese Christians handed over control of the city to the Ottoman Muslims, a key mome...
An early start to catch the sunrise over the ruins of the Temple of Karnak. The name is taken from the town of Carnac in Brittany and is a reminder that it was the French who, in 1798, rediscovered...
Woken by alarm at 4.15 a.m. Strike head on door to bathroom. The only vaguely encouraging thought as I climb into my shorts and trainers is that this will probably be the earliest I've ever run in ...
Seven-thirty in the morning. From my window in the Ping-Hu Hotel in Yichang I enjoy a view of urban desolation - a featureless cityscape of dull, dirty blocks, unalleviated by any living colour, sp...
A loud thwack shakes the roof of the guesthouse where we sleep. Then another, closer to, followed by a third directly above my head. It's like an aerial bombardment in which none of the shells expl...
It doesn't take much to wake me as I've been kept on the edge of consciousness by bone-numbing coldness. The surroundings are unfamiliar. A timber cabin. And the smell. Not since we left the northe...
Today I’m going to try to recreate his journey to the trenches and back (without the getting blown up bit) to see what, if anything, is as it was. A good start. The farmhouse at which he was billet...
Once Hemingway had been in a place where he was happy and had worked well, he regarded it in some sense as his property. So, in August 1944, not long after he’d suffered another mangling car accide...
'At noon of Sunday July 6th the festival exploded, there is no other way to describe it.' Hemingway's description in The Sun Also Rises (published as Fiesta in Europe), captures the moment but hard...
Woken, with tea, at twenty past five. Dawn comes like an old television set warming up. Every time I look outside there’s a little more light in the darkness.
To an ear disoriented by deep sleep it sounds like bagpipes warming up or a very ancient siren being cranked into life. Then, after a moment of struggling wakefulness, it coalesces into a rough app...
The children are getting bolder now, especially Sidi, the more hyperactive of the five-year-old twins. In between fetching water and preparing breakfast, Bachir tries to call him to order, but the ...
Of all the cities on the edge of the Sahara Djenné is the one I'm most excited about. Ever since I first saw pictures of the mud-made Great Mosque with its distinctive conical towers, pierced by wo...
The Sahara is officially said to begin north of latitude 16. The Pays de Dogon (it sounds so much better in French) is around 14 degrees north, but the cool night, which had me scrambling into my s...
A sign greets the traveller who makes the long walk across no-man's land and through the easternmost archway. 'India, the Largest Democracy in the World, Welcomes You'. As if to emphasize what a di...
It's not just dried mud I was sleeping on last night. As I made my way to the makeshift toilet, my torch picked out evidence that a menagerie of beasts had been easing themselves on our campsite fo...
At breakfast Wongchu asks me how I am. I give him quite a detailed progress report on cold, cough, sandpaper-like throat and general collapse of system.
Post-Annapurna elation will be short-lived. Higher mountains and tougher conditions are forecast for the crossing into Tibet, but for now we have breathing space in one of the most intriguing citie...
Most means a bridge, and though four or five bridges cross the Neretva River in Mostar, there is only one that really matters. It's the Stari Most, the Old Bridge. Though it connected the east and ...
Moving deeper now into the south-east corner of Europe, along the fast four-lane autoroute that connects Sofia and Bulgaria's second city, Plovdiv, across the Plain of Thrace. The landscape of heat...
Every Monday morning a train filled with lumberjacks leaves Viseu de Sus for the high forest of the Maramures Mountains. At eight o'clock, with clear skies making for a bitterly cold morning, but h...
It's mid-morning and a procession is making its way slowly through the riverside town of Visegrád, five miles and two bends downstream from Esztergom. Drums and trumpets are sounding, flags and pen...
The dogs are the first to welcome us. As the pilot, Francisco, eases our plane to a halt at the end of the bumpy grass runway, they race towards us, roused to a frenzy of barking and capering by th...
It is mid-winter in Brazil and the temperatures are down around 30 degrees Celsius. Which makes a very pleasant climate for the festivities that take place all over the country at this time under t...
The Vale das Pedrinhas, the 'Valley of Small Stones', is an appropriate name, perhaps, for one of the poorer neighbourhoods of Salvador. It's an untidy mess of buildings in various stages of constr...
Fábio Sombra is a man who lives, breathes and encapsulates Rio de Janeiro. He's a writer, artist, magician, musician and gourmet. And he still lives with his mother. A day in Fábio's company is a d...
A low resonating vibration. A long-drawn-out chord that seems to be coming from everywhere around me. It’s an eerie, ethereal, synthesised sound – like something Brian Eno might have created. I che...
It's May Day in the DPRK - International Workers' Day – and the country is on holiday. Sadly the sunshine that has softened our surroundings since we arrived has been replaced by an un-festive grey...
Today is my seventy-fifth birthday. And would have been Karl Marx’s two hundredth. So where more appropriate to be than somewhere where socialism is still taken seriously? It’s also one of the busi...
A bright dawn. The weather looks set fair for our last full day in the DPRK. The phone rings as I’m dressing. It’s So Hyang. For a moment I think she might be calling to say that the time differenc...
A bright morning. We're gathered outside the Rixos hotel in the town of Duhok. 'Candle in the Wind' was playing in the lifts as I checked in last night, and 'Hey Jude' as I rode down to breakfast. ...
The only place where true Kurds celebrate Nowruz, the New Year festival, is in the town of Akre, in the mountains seventy miles north of Erbil. Though the most spectacular part of the ceremony will...
All being well, we shall be in Baghdad by tonight. And for some romantic reason that thought makes me smile. I think it's the prospect of seeing for real the city at the heart of so many stories.
As we pack up to leave the Al-Zaitoon, I walk across the road to pay my respects to the Euphrates. It flows out of a city rebuilding itself, repairing the damage it sustained. It's frustrating that...
Michael explores this exotic country that is now a global superpower, and takes a closer look at a remarkable new force on the world scene.
Michael follows in the footsteps of Phileas Fogg as he takes on the famous challenge to circumnavigate the globe in less than 80 days.
Facing altitudes as high as 17,500 feet as well as some of the world’s deepest gorges, Michael tackles the full length of the Himalaya.
In intimate conversation, and using his personal archive, Michael's reflects on how he got hooked on travel, and reveals the challenges he faced making the
Travelling by train, truck, raft, Ski-Doo, barge, balloon and bicycle, Michael experiences every extreme the world has to offer. From the cold grip of the
Read Michael’s account of his epic journey through 18 countries bordering the Pacific Ocean. A spectacular journey of contrasts, drama and beauty.
In this wonderful blend of adventure and travel writing, Michael follows in the footsteps of one of the great literary figures of the century.
Breathing in Eastern Europe's rich history, exquisite sights and talking to its diverse peoples, Michael fills what has been a void in his own experience
Michael shares his day-by-day diary of his visit to North Korea a land wholly unlike any other he has ever visited.
A fascinating and rare insight into the history and culture of Iraq. Michael shares the impressions he formed of a country that few outsiders now
As the journey unfolds, the Sahara reveals not the emptiness of endless sand dunes, but a huge and diverse range of cultures and landscapes and