The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
REGGIE YATES MY LIFE IN TRAVEL
The documentary-maker recalls nights spent in unusual spots, from a wooden box in Ghana to underwater in Florida
I’VE HAD SOME OF THE WEIRDEST ENCOUNTERS of my life while filming documentaries abroad. An especially bizarre one was during the making of Extreme Russia, when I found myself in front of a nationalist group of quite dim-witted racists who simply didn’t want me there. I visited the house of a guy who, having already expressed how much he disliked minorities in his country, decided to show me his knife collection.
I’M NOT FROM THE WEALTHIEST OF FAMILIES so holidays weren’t on the agenda when I was a kid. I’d visited relatives in Ghana once or twice, but it wasn’t until I was 17 years old that I took my first proper “holiday” abroad. At that time, Ayia Napa in Cyprus was the UK’s garage capital of the world. The music had exploded in London so pretty much everyone connected to the garage scene went out there, and we recreated London in the sun.
GHANA HAS BECOME INCREDIBLY COSMOPOLITAN in the years since I first visited as a child. My parents are from there so I’ve visited a couple of times for big family reunions. Everywhere you go now, there’s a new restaurant, bar or hotel. It’s changed a lot in my lifetime and I couldn’t be prouder.
I’VE SPENT TIME IN THE ARIZONA, MOROCCAN AND SAUDI DESERTS filming documentaries – more time than I’d like. But this summer I actively chose to take a holiday in one and booked tickets to Palm Springs. I stayed in the Ace Hotel. Its place in downtown
Los Angeles is incredible, as is the Shoreditch branch, so it was cool to also see a desert hotel through the Ace lens.
IT TOOK ME
FOUR DAYS TO
REACH THE SOLOMON ISLANDS. There are around 1,000 of them in total, and the only way to get there is by hopping on various boats and planes. The indigenous people had an unbelievable relationship with the environment; they were so careful to protect their local biosphere. A tribe there housed us in beautiful little huts on stilts. There was a rainstorm at one point and we were convinced that the huts were going to collapse, but they didn’t.
I’VE SLEPT IN SOME PRETTY UNUSUAL PLACES over the years – a wooden box in Ghana, a jail cell in Texas and an underwater hotel in Florida called the Jules Undersea Lodge, which required scuba-diving down to the lobby. I stayed in the box while making a documentary about young men living in a slum. It was exactly as it sounds, a wooden box – about 8ft in length, five across – that the guys would sleep in each night.
U.S. BORDER POLICE AMBUSHED ME when I was filming in Arizona about 15 years ago. We were innocently driving through the desert, with no intention of crossing the Mexican border, when suddenly these border patrol guys jumped us on the suspicion that we were people smugglers. Somehow we got out of that one. And, just to be clear, we definitely weren’t smuggling anyone!
THE MOST INTERESTING PERSON I’VE EVER MET was an old cowboy on a ranch in Middle America. After 50 years spent working on farms, he had hands like sandpaper and so many stories to tell. I remember him as “Jim with the hat”. He was an old-school cowboy – with a 10-gallon topper to prove it – and made me feel like a big softie in comparison.
I CAN’T WAIT TO GO BACK TO KOH SAMUI in Thailand. I recently stayed at the W and saw possibly the most beautiful sunsets of my life there. Literally every time the sun set, the sky was painted a different colour. I stay in so many hotels for work that often they all tend to blur into one another, but this one really stood out.
LEATHER SHIRT
I have this leather shirt from Belstaff which I get asked about every time I wear it. It comes with me everywhere; I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love the compliments!
£725, belstaff.co.uk
TRAVEL IS A HUGE PART OF MY LATEST PODCAST, titled The Road Less Travelled. In each episode, I sit down with a different guest and talk to them about challenging expectations and doing what people would never have told them to do. To me, that kind of rebellious spirit is the essence of travel.
GUATEMALA IS THE MOST UNDERRATED PLACE I’ve ever visited. The kids there do incredible things with old school buses where they paint them fluorescent colours and then repurpose them for public transport. I met some gorgeous, amazing people there, plus some really funny and lively kids.
The kids in Guatemala paint old school buses in fluorescent colours and repurpose them
THE PLACE WHERE PEOPLE GO TO DIE, formally known as Varanasi in India, is next on my list of places to visit. It’s on the banks of the Ganges. Hindus believe that by dying there, you can break the cycle of rebirth and attain salvation, which I find totally fascinating.
Reggie’s current podcast series,
is sponsored by Belstaff and available to download from Apple Podcasts and Spotify.