Latest News: June 2018
Posted by Tom | Filed under Travel, News
My third book, Shadow Trails, a collection of travel stories and photography based around the theme of 'dark tourism', is now available.
Unlike my other books, it will only be available in a hardback large format print version.
For more details, click here.
I have a new feature in Wanderlust Magazine about Dark Tourism, and a new travel story in Perceptive Travel about the Troubles Tours in Northern Ireland. Also, check out the reviews of Shadow Trails in Perceptive Travel, Senior Travel Expert and Hackwriters.
Another project that I recently helped with, is a documentary on Micronations. The team contacted me, after reading an article I wrote on the 2015 Micronations Conference for The Telegraph, coming over from California to interview me and a number of other participants.
Photography: Ecuador and Colombia
Posted by Tom | Filed under Travel, Photography
I've recently returned from a trip to Ecuador & Colombia, visiting many of the highlights of both countries.
On the way across to South America from the UK, I also stopped over in New York for three days, immediately preceding the snow storms.
At the moment I am planning new articles on both the underground graffiti and street art scene in Bogota, and also on on the controversial exploitation of Pablo Escobar's notorious crimes, as a mainstream tourist attraction.
Chernobyl: Mutate and Survive
Posted by Tom | Filed under Travel, Writing
Nearly thirty years after the nuclear power plant disaster at Chernobyl, both tourism and wildlife are thriving within the exclusion zone.
'It's good, isn't it?' said our driver, pointing to a battered children's tricycle 'abandoned' next to the shell of a vandalized, grey Soviet building. 'I brought it over yesterday.' We looked up from our viewfinders for a second before returning to the process of capturing such a photogenic image, while sweating in our long sleeved shirts... Read More
The World through Graphic Novels
Posted by Tom | Filed under Travel, Writing
Some of the best travel writing of the 21st century has taken the form of the graphic novel.
It wasn't really until 1986, when Art Spiegelman's Maus was published - a tale inspired by Speigelman's Holocaust surviving father, in which Nazis are depicted as Cats, and Jews as mice - that graphic novels first began to be taken seriously as a medium for depicting historical and non-fiction events. This hugely successful work of art went on to win a Pulitzer Prize... Read More
Desert Search
As we clattered through the Kyzylkum desert in the battered shared taxi, the driver reached across and offered me some pills. When I asked him what they were, he shrugged. Sometimes the drivers would take nicotine pills rather than smoking, but chewing tobacco had already been passed around. When it was time to spit out the dregs, they would push open their doors and gob out huge streams of brown spittle into the passing desert. If the timing were wrong and the wind in the wrong direction, then the back seat passengers would be splattered with the chewed out remains. I was wary of accepting an unknown quantity of...
Last Chance
The two young Aussie guys in their bright white shirts couldn't hide their disappointment. As the various day trippers had trudged back on to the Fraser Explorer four wheel drive bus, several had looked over to them quizzically. They looked a bit too smart to be on our bus. "We're custom officials" they said, cheerfully. They weren't really. They were trying to flog fifteen minute flights over Fraser Island for seventy five Australian dollars a head. Apparently this was great value, we'd see all the highlights from a bird's eye view - maybe even some dolphins and sting rays - and we wouldn't miss any of the...
A 100,000 word travelogue detailing a journey from China to Istanbul, through Central Asia, Iran and the Caucasus.
