“No, they probably won’t confiscate your shoes. That only happens with some of our more curious visitors…”. Yaroslav, our Chernobyl Exclusion Zone tour guide, was attempting to alleviate my fears about the military-controlled contamination checkpoints whilst simultaneously recalibrating the Geiger counter attached to my belt. Its shrill alarm warning of potentially dangerous radiation levels kept drowning him out with irritating regularity unless he reset the device to recogn

“The last time I went kayaking in a canyon, I had to be choppered out. If there’s any sign of rain, get the Hell out of there!”. My friend’s words echo through my mind as I look out past the neon-coloured, flash flood warning signs that line our launch site at Willow Beach Marina, Arizona. In the near distance dark clouds start to gather above the 600-foot terracotta walls of the threateningly named Black Canyon where soon I would be paddling, water level, in a tiny, fragile

“ Alhamdulillah”.  Fatima smiles, a broad, genuine grin, in sharp contrast to the story she has just told. I am in Fatima’s small front room halfway down the fortified hill at Ait Benhaddou in Morocco. The sun is murderous and I’m exhausted. Outside, donkeys stand in the heat, motionless, obedient, eyes half shut. I was feeling the same. This morning it rained. Hard. So hard, it turned all the tiny streams that wind their way down the hill into gushing rivers of coffee-colour