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As I fly over the Indian Ocean, from the sky, I see granite boulders rising like standing stones out of a pristine tropical jungle. Below me, the alluring turquoise Indian ocean and shades of unknown creatures.
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On a map, Sicily is right in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula from which the narrow Strait of Messina separates it. Surrounded by three seas – Tyrrhenian, Mediterranean, and Ionian – it’s not too distant from mainland Italy, and its southernmost Island is astonishingly just a 113 km stretch from Tunisia. Laying between the civilizations of Africa and Europe, Sicily is a world apart. No wonder. A region separated from the rest of Italy not only by the sea but also by centuries of history and cultural experience. Yet, by traveling there, I discover, Sicily is also a vital part of the country.
It has been a long European winter—the coldest in a few years. Add to that the second wave of a pandemic and a strict lockdown insisting on taking away much of the season’s joy. Then, the so expected spring doesn’t show. It’s already early April, I’m in south Germany, and the cold doesn’t let up. I wish for a dreamscape, ideally by the sound of waves, under sublime sunshine.
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On the edge of North Africa’s desert, I watch nomads shelter from the sun in a camel-hair tent. A man herds his camels with curved daggers hanging down his back, and a long colorful scarf wraps around his head and neck. Mules swing their heads and stare. In the distance, the great stone and snowy caps fold of the Atlas Mountains behind the man, the animals, the tent.
It’s the end of March in southeast Iran, and I am setting up camp where the shifting sands of the Lut Desert, or Dasht-e Lut, forge a living work of art. Over sunset, my eyes get wider. Like in nowhere else, I’m entranced, the golden light unfolding the magnetism of a mystic wilderness. Max, my husband, and I assemble the tends under a gentle desert breeze. I look around and see nothing but infinity and silence in giant dunes framed by alien rock formations. “Lut is my favorite place in the world,” says Hooman, our Iranian fixer in the desert. “It’s the only place where I can have a glimpse of what freedom feels like.”
It’s late October when I am picked up at home in Singapore on an early Friday morning. Unlike most of my travels, this time, I’m loving the idea of a resort holding my hands from the moment I step out of my door until I reach its final destination. Yet I am quite intrigued by the place I’m headed. I can barely find it on a map. My husband points at the waters between peninsular Malaysia and Borneo on Google Maps. I have to zoom it in hard to realize those little dots are actual islands.
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On June 11, I drove to Venice from home. For the first weekend, a few museums and restaurants would reopen since March 9, when Italy closed its borders due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
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It’s the first morning of our expedition in Papua New Guinea. We trek through a dense jungle punctuated with waterfalls and scored by deep gorges, which in turn are crisscrossed by thickly knotted vine bridges. In the distance, the music of rare species of birds, and that feeling of life being as close to perfect as it could ever possibly be. We hike up alongside dozens of types of wildflowers until Thomas, our local fixer in the Highlands, Max – a photographer -and I reach the first tribal village. “This is a fortune-teller tribe,” says Thomas, “The men here use their ancestor’s skulls as instruments to foretell the future.” I look around and find a bunch of red and yellow-painted skulls lined up in a hut. There is nothing more bizarre.
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I’m hooked as I lay my eyes on the beautiful Aeolian archipelago rising out of the cobalt-blue waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea on the north of Sicily and west of mainland Italy. Locals call them the “shape-shifting” or “floating” islands as they have been continuously sculpted by volcanic activity over millions of years. As a result, its exotic black-sand beaches, craters, and splintered, rocky coastlines are something utterly unique in the Mediterranean. No wonder it was designated a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2000.
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When I take a taxi ride to Changi airport in Singapore, on a warm evening in late December, I’m aware I’m headed to New Zealand – a country I’ve been longing to go to. I have a brief idea of the itinerary: a few hikes to pursue, beach towns, wineries, restaurants to visit. But I’m not on full control of the program. I notice there are a bit more than the usual blanks in the plan. “We might give room for serendipity to take hold,” I’m told.
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