So you want to be a travel writer?

"So what do you want to be when you grow up?" Ah, the million dollar question. Hindsight is such a wonderful thing.

Chances are, what you envisaged yourself doing from when you were a child, is far from what your job now entails. For example, growing up, I really thought I would end up being a vet. If you were to mention this to my friends now, they would laugh in your face at the sheer thought of this.

I never thought in a million years, I would end up writing about travel. Let alone having anything published. But it wasn't until I returned from a trip in South America a few years back, that I thought I would try and put pen to paper. What was essentially a throw away excuse for me to relive my experiences in Peru, turned out to be a winning entry for a Lonely Planet writing competition that I entered at the end of 2007.

And then from there I guess it snowballed. I realised I actually quite liked writing, but knew I had a long way to go in terms of fine-tuning my style and adapting it to different audiences. Rather than it being "oh, this is what I did on my holidays".

Every day is still a learning curb and I am no way near in the same league as the many great travel writers who work so hard in this testing industry. And yes, 'travel writing' is not always the dream job everybody thinks it to be, even more so with publishing houses crumbling every day under the pressures of the economic melt down.

One particular person who I am indebted and forever grateful to, is the award-winning travel writer and Lonely Planet author, David Atkinson who writes an insightful blog Hit the North, and has been a fantastic mentor and a great inspiration to me. If perhaps, as a result of my constant badgering and nagging for advice. David, your efforts will be rewarded in heaven. I can assure you of this.

Over the course of the last two years, one publication that I worked with to varying degrees is the monthly UK based magazine Real Travel. I first started off with submitting selections of my travel images to their Reader's Gallery, and then from there I got the opportunity to review Tim Butcher's Blood River . And now, nearly two years on and several more book reviews and contributions later, I finally will have my first full-length feature published next month in their October issue.

The article will look at my time spent in Sumatra earlier this year. This is such a great achievement for me, even if I have to say so myself, and I am very excited.

So you can imagine how privileged I felt when Hfu Reisenhofer, Real Travel's newly appointed Chief Editor, asked me to contribute a few words towards an article he was writing about breaking into the industry, as I am a 'reader turned writer'...

If you would like to get a better insight into this and fancy reading my ''words of wisdom', then take a sneaky peak here: So you want to be a travel writer?

Hope you enjoy!

Real Travel Magazine - November 2008: book review of 'Blood River' by Tim Butcher

Book review for the monthly travel magazine Real Travel :

For as long as he can remember, the Congo has been Daily Telegraph correspondent, Tim Butcher’s zahir.
Eager to trace his mother’s footsteps through the deepest part of the Dark Continent and to re-live the same experiences as fellow Telegraph correspondent Henry Morton Stanley, in 2004 Tim embarked upon the journey of a life time crossing the Congo, the heart of tropical Africa.

Over the course of 44 days, he covered hundreds of kilometres over land and via any form of water vessels available, including a dug out canoe!

Every detail is described so vividly, from his encounters with the UN aid workers and locals along the way, to his fears and doubts as he discovers more of the history of a country that has suffered at the hands of outsiders. As Tim so simply states “the Congo represents the quintessence of the entire continent’s colonial experience”.
Interestingly he comments that this is one rare place that fails the coca-cola test – something quite rare, as even in some of the remotest parts I visited in Zimbabawe, I still managed to find Coca-cola.

Butcher’s impulse to follow his dream, against all advice, is something that I truly admired. The more I carried on reading, the more jealous I became, as I yearned to experience once again the excitement and inquisitiveness of challenging the un-known.

Blood River is an extraordinary and gripping account of a one man’s journey across a country plagued by years of atrocities. A must read for anyone wanting to read a first hand account of modern day Congo.