The Thoughtful Travel Podcast

With high tourist numbers in some popular places making travel less enjoyable, it only makes sense that there's an increased interest in off season travel. Choosing a shoulder or off peak time to  travel makes sense for so many reasons to me, and it's often when you'll have the much better experiences all round! Last year, my son and I enjoyed an off season trip to Seoul, South Korea so thoro...

Ireland and the Irish - we all have a story to tell, right? In this episode I get the insider stories from Ireland - both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland - from three brilliant guests who all agreed to answer questions about why they love living there, their favourite traditions, what surprises visitors and what we as travellers need to know before we go. What I loved most about speak...

About one in ten jobs across the globe are in the travel industry, but from the hundreds of conversations I've had over the years, I've learnt that the paths to working in tourism and travel are many and varied! In this episode I chat with four people who've found their way into this industry through very different ways. First up, Russell True describes how he ended up having a lifetime career in...

Episode 400 ... what?! Back in 2016, I certainly didn't imagine I'd reach Episode 400, and yet, here we are. It seemed something to celebrate so I asked my dear friend Sasha Wasley along to ask me 40 questions for 400 episodes (aren't you all lucky I didn't opt for 400 questions?!). Some of the topics I especially enjoyed discussing with Sasha were my long trip across Russia on the Trans-Siberian...

For those of us with the great fortune of being taken travelling in our childhood, I'm certain that there are many ways this impacts our lives - changing our mindset and exposing us to so many new ideas, cultures, languages and people. In this episode, three guests concur: starting with James Wild, who tells the story of his first safari in Africa as a teenager. Tim Geisler then shares the experie...

This special episode is the audio of the livestream of the July 2026 meeting of the Thoughtful Travellers Book Club, chatting about book "Travels with Charley" by John Steinbeck - https://amzn.to/4sGQFOu   If you'd like to join the Thoughtful Travellers Book Club, sign up for our updates at https://thoughtfultravellersbookclub.substack.com/ You can also read more about it at  https://not...

We all want the places we visit to exist for longer than our lifetime (and hopefully MUCH longer) - right? Conservation in the travel space can mean a bunch of things, and the three guests in this episode each have a story to share about their own connections between conservation and tourism. First up, I chat with James Ward of Rewild Safaris, who has had many years of experiencing planning and ru...

Things inevitably go wrong when we travel - some big, some small, occasionally some trip-ending, but most travel dramas seem to end up being great stories we tell later and moments that also teach us something - about how we travel, about our personalities, about the world! First up in this episode I speak with Lindsey Danis, who explains what happened on a spontaneous hiking trip in Florida when...

If you have the opportunity to spend an extended time travelling - like an entire year - I say, grab it! In this episode I chat with three people who’ve had the good fortune to stay away from home for a year, for very different reasons and in many varied parts of the world - what they have in common is that these experiences were very impactful and meaningful. I chat first with Riana Ann-Can...

Learning more about a place when we travel there is something that always gives me a thrill, and in this episode we take a cultural deep dive into three very different aspects of culture across the world. I first chat with Silvia Gentile Polese who shares a story from her first trip to Bali, which started with a simple question about yoga but led to an unforgettable cultural experience. Next, I sp...

Where do you sleep when a trip takes you away from a standard hotel room? This episode features some of the more unusual kinds of places we can stay on our travels - some brilliant, but some pretty uncomfortable! I chat first with Tim Geisler, a bit of a master of unconventional accommodation, who shares some tales of sleeping in rough spots as well as beautiful ones. Next, James Ward, who leads c...

Taiwan is starting to gain more attention as a fascinating place to visit: it's a great blend of delicious food, interesting history and culture, beautiful landscapes and above all, welcoming people! In this Chats with Locals episode, I talk with three people who live in Taiwan and ask them what they like about living there, what Taiwanese people are really like, and their favourite traditions in...

If you could go back in time and tap on the shoulder of your younger self as you backpack around the world, what would you say? I've been pondering this question and asked several other experienced travellers to tell me their thoughts on it too, and the results are pretty interesting!  In this episode I start off chatting with Josh Zukas, a travel writer now based in Vietnam, who had advice f...

This special episode is the audio of the live-streamed May 2026 meeting of the Thoughtful Travellers Book Club, chatting about "The Venice Hotel", a novel with very thoughtful travel themes, with author Tess Woods -  https://amzn.to/4ug8Cou    If you'd like to join the Thoughtful Travellers Book Club, sign up for our updates at https://thoughtfultravellersbookclub.substack.com/ You...

It's easy to be a little envious of anyone who gets to travel to interesting places as part of their work, but when the work itself is also truly fascinating, then I think it's fair that we can all be rather jealous! Nonetheless I loved chatting with these four guests about the experiences their careers have afforded them around the globe. First up, Tudor Morgan explains how his lifelong love of t...

The world of volunteer tourism is a tricky one. Getting the balance right between enabling people to volunteer in another country, and meeting the needs of the places they volunteer at, isn't easy, and the guests in this episode have many thoughts about what can go wrong and what are better ways to go about volunteering abroad. I first chat with Kim Krowne and Edward Lyimo, who in fact first met w...

The more I travel (and the older I get!), the more I realise how little I know, and how wrong I've been about so many things! In this episode, I chat with three guests about various ways their travel experiences have transformed their thinking and perspective, and the general consensus is that everything's more complicated than we first think. I speak with Nikki Padilla Rivera about her experience...

Iceland is a place many travellers dream of visiting; if, like me, you've been lucky enough to see Iceland, you probably desperately want to return. In this Chats with Locals episode, I talk with three Icelanders about their country: why they like living there, what Icelanders are really like, and all about their favourite Icelandic traditions. I also ask them what surprises visitors to Iceland, w...

A decade ago to the day - 25th March 2016 - I launched the first episodes of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast. Somehow, I have just kept interviewing great people about their thoughts on travel, put together episodes almost every week, and magically, I've now been running this podcast for a full ten years! To celebrate, I've compiled some of my very favourite snippets of stories my guests have told m...

Some travellers have a much keener sense of adventure and embracing physical risk on their travels, and others just stumble into a travel drama they didn't anticipate; we have all kinds on this episode about things going wrong! First up, Tudor Morgan, a veteran of many Antarctic stays and current Antarctic Ambassador for HX Expeditions, calmly explains a near-disaster he experienced some years bac...

It's International Women's Day again and I've got a different focus this year: some of the ways history and travel is not the same for women! When we travel, especially on our own, we can be confronted with cultural differences and people's opinions in a starker way than others, and I loved hearing more about this from listeners who contributed to a chat on this in the Thoughtful Travellers Facebo...

This special episode is the audio of the live-streamed February 2026 meeting of the Thoughtful Travellers Book Club, chatting with author Hannah Kent about her book "Always Home, Always Homesick" - https://amzn.to/3Kxcb7M    If you'd like to join the Thoughtful Travellers Book Club, sign up for our updates at https://thoughtfultravellersbookclub.substack.com/ You can also read more about...

We often focus on the visual when we travel ... after all, travellers go sightseeing, not "sound-hearing" or "taste-tasting"! But when we look back on our travel memories, it's often a smell, taste, sound or feel that actually has the most long-lasting impact.  In this episode we hear from three travellers about their own experiences with non-visual senses, starting off with travel writer Tom...

One of the most memorable parts of travel is the people that we meet - not just the friends we make or the people we stay with but also the incidental encounters along the way. Speaking with people on our travels is one of the ways we learn the most about the places we're visiting and it's amazing how long these people stay in our minds, even when we don't know their names. In this episode I share...

We need some light relief in these tricky times and I found these stories just perfect! Finding love while you're travelling sounds like it belongs in a romantic comedy, but even those must be inspired by truth: this episode has stories from three couples who met in far-flung parts of the world, sometimes both far from home. If you think about all the decisions that led them to be in the same plac...