Looking back at a year of globetrotting

So, you’re a travel writer,” someone says. “What a great job!”

Last year, I clocked up 50 destinations, 60 flights and 70,000 photos. Yes, I do take a lot of photos, but then there’s an awful lot to see.

And an awful lot I’d rather not see too – another double but on a different floor, another bathroom but with dual basins, another conference room with a partition, so “look, it can be divided into two”.

And it goes on: another bar (no, not for a drink, silly, just so you can comment on the cocktails – yours is a glass of house wine later), another kitchen with another freaky, isn’t-it-all-squeaky-clean, chef (who’s spent the last hour trying to hide all evidence that anything’s ever been cooked there) and another spa where you’re invited not to relax, but to pop plastic shower caps over your shoes and discuss, with disproportionate interest, the dimensions of the pool.

And don’t get me started on Michelin star restaurants: the ultimate dining experience with the ultimate reminder there really is no such thing as a free lunch. A tip, for any wannabe travel writers: a restaurant manager/general manager/chef/ tourist board/PR ‘on message’ is the most exhausting person you can meet. Worth forfeiting the chocolate torte for. But, and it’s a big but, it’s a fantastic job. Joking aside, I have little to complain about. And at the end of each year, I have a lot of incredible (and sometimes incredibly odd) memories too.

Summer. At home, there’s talk of a heatwave, here, off the northernmost tip of Canada, it’s below freezing.

I’m on the Akademik Ioffe, an expedition ship run by One Oceans Expeditions in the Arctic. We’re trying to cross the North West Passage, one of the most treacherous sea journeys in the world.

Last night, as we entered Baffin Bay, 40ft waves crashed over the bow, smashing against portholes six decks above. I rolled around my bunk for hours.

At 3am, I gave up on sleep and watched the show. The ship reared; the horizon vanished and we plunged into a pounding sea.

Now, eight hours later, we’ve encountered pack ice. We shunt through floes at the edge of it then inch forwards. The ship groans like a woman about to give birth.

We gather in the chart room for a briefing; the captain warns it could be the end of the journey. I head out on deck to take it all in. The wind’s so fierce it feels as if it’s ripping the skin off my face, layer by icy layer. But then I notice the sky.

It’s such a pearlescent pink, and the ocean such a pale, oily blue, it’s as if we’ve sailed into a sci-fi set where lights on the sea bed are burning through the waves, making everything shine. It’s nature at its most spectacular, and only we, in the whole world, are there to see it. To be honest, it’s rare to have such an incredible assignment. But sometimes even everyday events lead you to something or someone extraordinary.

I was working in northern Cyprus and, staying in a hotel where sofas in the lobby were cordoned off with ropes as if museum exhibits, and the pool resembled a petri dish where assorted algae fought for survival.

Karaoglanoglu monument in Northern Cyprus

I’d been researching the events of the seventies, when conflict between Greek and Turkish Cypriots ended up dividing the island in two, and the north lost out to tourists.

I’d seen the beach where Turkish troops landed, listened to accounts of the invasion/rescue operation, (depending on whom I spoke to) and had photographed memorials, monuments and graveyards. On my last evening, I visited a small taverna where the owner, Cemal Boransel, suggested I join him for supper. I was his only guest.

Cemal had a fabulous moustache, a sunburnt face, combats, boots and a beret. He was a huge fan of Montgomery and, as it turned out, had been a fighter for the Turkish Cypriot cause.

He explained how his business worked: I was to pay him whatever I fancied and eat whatever his wife was cooking. That night it was stifado (beef stew) and rice served with gallons of homemade wine. Cemal scooped it out of a pitharia (a large earthenware pot) with a plastic jug.

“Isn't it fermenting?” I asked. “Maybe – but it’s free!”

The meal took all night. Cemal went to check on a pregnant mare. His wife saw no need to rush. I sat in their grubby taverna and smiled at the sound of the sea.

At midnight, half way through the meal, my host jumped up. He turned on a gramophone that seemed to crackle more than sing. Then he grabbed my hand and demanded we dance.

There was no point resisting. Arms open wide, I bobbed about to basouka music with my Turkish Zorba the Greek.

A survival course in Lapland

“We must celebrate life!” Cemal shouted, to stacks of empty chairs.

Through the hatch leading to the kitchen his fat, bronzed wife shook her head and smiled.

I was smiling again, at the end of the year, in Lapland, where I went on a survival course in the wilderness – a description I’d use incredibly loosely.

We took snowmobiles (to abandon ourselves there) and as I discovered later, a miscellaneous length of canvas which served exceptionally well as a wigwam. Our guide happened to be travelling with a kettle too. Don’t you?

It was survival, luxury-style, but it was fun all the same, and given it was -20 degrees, the cynic in me was happy to turn a blind eye to the odd shortcut.

Sometimes, assignments are a bit like life. You can’t engineer the outcome, you just have to go with the flow.

ESSENTIALS

* Sail the North West Passage: oneoceansexpeditions.com bookings are being taken from August 2015
* For more information on Northern Cyprus, go to welcometonorthcyprus.co.uk
* For Finnish Lapland: go to onlyinlapland.com. Besides trying to survive, you can go husky mushing in Enontekio (hettahuskies.com), go on a reindeer safari at Torassieppi winter village (torassieppi.fi) or stay in a wilderness hut at Harriniva Holiday Centre (harriniva.fi)

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