From the Editor

ADVENTURE TRAVEL. The definition of it depends on your sensibility. One person’s idea of adventure is flinging themselves off a cliff in a remote area of Bolivia. Another’s is eating street food. I fall somewhere in the middle. I’m no bungee jumper but I’ve been persuaded to abseil down a cliff in the Kimberley and swim with hammerhead sharks in the Galápagos Islands. Still, when I think of adventure, I think less about adrenaline and more about travel itself. Step off a plane anywhere in Asia, feel its great hug of humidity and breathe in air that sings of the tropics. You just know you are on the cusp of something special. Get up early in New York and wander along Fifth Avenue, dodging street cleaners and commuters, to Central Park, the city’s gorgeous green lung. Doesn’t the day hold so many possibilities? Or dive into the iridescent water of the Maldives and try to contain yourself as a giant manta ray arcs towards you, its wing-like fins brushing your skin as it slices through the water. Adrenaline? Not of the intense kind but as I sift through my travel memories, I realise that many of my most wonderful experiences have offered both promise and (a dash of) physical exercise. Years ago, I spent a week cycling in Provence. It was one of those self-guided tours where your bags were picked up and all you had to do was get from A to B, choose your own directions and decide where to stop for lunch. It was an extraordinary, immersive holiday. A leisurely 30 kilometres a day meandering through villages like Lorgues and Saint-Antonin-du-Var. I recall waving to workers picking grapes by hand in the vineyards. Packing baguettes, jamón and a bottle of red in my pannier ready for lunch in a local meadow. Painting the scenes in my mind, trying to remember every shade – the faded yellow stone and azure-blue shutters of the Provenҫal farmhouses, the purple grapes as mottled as a new bruise. Was it an adventure? Bear Grylls wouldn’t have thought so but it sure felt like it to me.