The Big Travel Podcast

Former fashion editor Bonnie Rakhit, The Style Traveller, has an enviable job combining luxury travel and fashion. Having been bullied badly as a child her aim now to start using her platform to raise awareness. We talk Instagram, blogging, iconic train journeys, iconic hotels, fashion front rows, racism, taking a beating, cave raves, dancing under the stars, Coachella, Leonardo Di Caprio snogging...

Humphrey Hawksley's work as a BBC foreign correspondent has taken him to crises on every continent. He been expelled from Sri Lanka, had death threats from several extreme regimes, traced Graham Greene’s footsteps in Sierra Leone and the Cold War and espionage are prominent themes in his popular thrillers. On this episode we talk war zones, politics, the EU, Trump, guns, Russia, Iraq, Afghanistan...

Entrepreneur and style icon India Hicks, daughter of designer David Hicks and granddaughter of Lord and Lady Mountbatten, is related to everyone from Prince Philip to Queen Victoria. India talks life on a remote Caribbean island, her famous and sometimes unconventional family, taking her 90-year-old mother to Iceland, backpacking in rat-infested hostels and the harrowing damage done by Hurricane D...

The face of The Points Guy UK, a website showing us how to get the most from points and miles whose US site has over 75 million unique visitors a year. Nicky Kelvin’s own travel journey started with cheap flights courtesy of his cabin crew sister and moved on to climbing Kilimanjaro, accidentally setting fire to a Mongolian hillside, working as a photojournalist (oh and a Manny) in Israel and he w...

Exploring the hearts, minds & traditions of cultures around the world is Dr Mandeep Rai’s passion & in her book The Values Compass (recommended by the Dalai Lama!) & on this episode we question what makes us who we are; why the Turkish are hospitable, the Jordanians helpful & the Argentinians passionate? Mandeep has travelled to over 150 countries & loves more than anything how chance encounters w...

Giles Coren obsessed with Christmas, India Hicks in the Bahamas, Cosmo travel ed. Amanda Statham in Yorkshire, Rhik Samadder on Christmas Day in a Bangkok sex hotel, Dom Joly eating tinned tuna in Iran, festival guru Rob Da Bank on ‘fake Christmas’ in Dubai, Andy 'The Viking' Fordham on Chopper bikes, Paola Miggiuli the Tiny Italian on Columbian Christmas in Essex, Iain Lee on insane Christmas in...

Sometimes travel can be just pure fun and Amanda Statham, glossy mags travel editor, honeymoon expert, happy camper-van-owner, has made the fun side of travel her life’s work so far. She’s dived with sharks in the Galapagos, tracked rare animals on night safari Costa Rica, danced at sunrise in Trinidad Carnival covered in mud and spent an enviable amount of time sitting at New York City rooftop ba...

We’re in Brooklyn with documentary maker Will Francome talking filming on location, capital punishment, the American criminal justice system, the people who get let off death row, orphanages in Kenya, standing knee deep in sh*t for hours in Norway, ice caves in the Arctic, Thai Kick Boxing, racism, cocaine, pizza, rats carrying slices of pizza and the town in Nebraska with a population of one pers...

In a villa in the Tuscany hills Lisa and Anglo-Italian food writer, cook and presenter Paola Maggiulli, aka The Tiny Italian, have spent the day exploring Siena. Paola was brought up in London with a South American mother and Italian father and spent most of her childhood in the family delicatessen in London’s Battersea. She’s diced with danger in Colombia, travelled the length of Italy to find th...

An ‘on location’ episode! Lisa is in Casa Toni, a traditional tapas bar in in central Madrid, with James Blick from ‘Devour Tours’ and ‘Spain Revealed’ YouTube channel talking Spanish food, culture, history, beer, lamb neck glands, New Zealanders drinking in Shepherd’s Bush, Russian Roulette with padron peppers, Jesus nailed to the cross, General Franco, Civil War, flamenco, four metre pianos, Far...

For comedian Dom Joly, travel is in the blood. Born in Beirut he had what he describes in his recent book, The Hezbollah Hiking Club, as a paradoxical childhood between a posh boarding school and a warzone. He dreamt of being a foreign correspondent, has investigated ‘dark tourism’ and the world’s most unlikely holiday destinations and travelled the globe in search of mythical monsters such as Big...

Mimi’s Aye’s effervescent observations about food have gained her a large following online and her new recipe book tells wonderful tales of a childhood spent between Burma and Kent. She’s been shadowed by by the ‘Military Informer’ on family holidays in Burma, is conflicted by seeing people flying over pagodas in hot air balloons and loves nothing more than exploring Japan and blasting out Karaoke...

NASA astronaut John Herrington was the first ever Native American to travel to space. He lives in the Idaho wilderness, flies his own plane, cycled over 4000 miles from Washington to Florida and recently features as one of two inspiring U.S. trailblazers exploring America in the incredible film “Into America’s Wild”. His inspirational stories have landed him a well suited role as a motivational sp...

Waking up in a Bangkok sex hotel with his mum on his 30th birthday with no money and nothing to do but talk, lead to an epiphany for writer, actor and broadcaster, Rhik Samadder. He writes about battling depression and much more in his wonderfurful new book I Never Said I Loved You and on the podcast we talk feeling like he didn’t belong when growing up with Indian parents in London, forgetting tr...

Known as the Arabian Wandress, travel blogger and artist Esra Alhamal is this week’s guest talking about what it’s really like to grow up as a female in Saudi Arabia, the beauty of Islamic architecture and her travels as what she calls a Muslim Millennial travelling mindfully around the globe.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a foreign correspondent for Reuters, best-selling novelist Fiona Neill worked with Salvadorean refugees in Nicaragua, made jewellery in the Andes of Peru and travelled all over South America reporting on civil war refugees. She ‘surfed’ down the side of an active volcano, survived revolutions and serious illness and even life as features editor of Marie Claire. Her new book - Beneath the Surfac...

With the publishing phenomenon of The Rosie Project and follow-up The Rosie Effect having sold over 5 million copies worldwide, the final of Graeme Simsion’s trilogy, The Rosie Result, is out now. There’s a proposed Hollywood adaptation in the works and even Bill Gates is even a fan. Travel is an integral part of Graeme’s stories - rural France, his native Melbourne, a cosy house in Norwich or a g...

Legendary darts champion Andy "The Viking" Fordham is as much known for his darts skills as he is for being the larger than life British sportsman the UK took to their hearts. Darts has taken him all over the world; parties in Vegas, beaches in Australia and many an hour in pubs across the land, which at one point saw him drinking over 80 bottles of beer in one night. A South East London boy, born...

Rob Da Bank started as a music journalist, reviewing the biggest bands, superclubs and DJs all over the UK. He’s had his own show on BBC Radio 1 and is the co-founder of Bestival & Camp Bestival. He’s a massive fan of travel – whether touring Europe in a yellow camper van called Stella, taking his four kids on sabbatical to Bali or DJing at some of the best parties all over the world. With his own...

With a show on talkRADIO with the lovely Katherine Boyle – aka Flippin’ Kath, Iain Lee goes on tour, podcasts, has a TV show recorded from his bedroom and he’s a proper cult figure in radio. He’s eaten camel brains and a pig’s vagina for I’m A Celebrity in the Australian jungle, been caught in gunfire in Pakistan and wandered the souks of Marrakesh accompanied by the world’s biggest roll of Sellot...

Carol Drinkwater has sold over 1m books about life on an Olive Farm in the South of France. She was the kinky nurse in A Clockwork Orange, James Herriot’s wife Helen in hit TV show All Creatures Great & Small and writes beautifully evocative novels bringing the sights, sounds and smells of France to life in a way that will make you feel you’re sipping rose on a vine-covered terrace overlooking the...

Antonia Bollingbroke-Kent balances big adventures with producing TV shows like Joanna Lumley’s Silk Road Adventures. She drove a bright pink Tuk Tuk from Bangkok to Brighton, did battle with 1000 semi-wild Mongolian horses in the footsteps of Ghengis Khan and nearly froze to death attempting to drive a motorbike and sidecar to the Russian Arctic. Often guided by her Granny’s mantra of ‘Do nothing,...

Alastair Humphreys left Yorkshire on his bike and didn’t return for four years, cycling through an incredible 60 countries. He’s walked across India, rowed across the Atlantic, run six marathons through the Sahara, crossed Iceland on foot, busked through Spain by facing his worst fears of performing (badly) in public and having found all that adventure hard when real life came calling, has pioneer...

William Sutcliffe’s cynical take on people who go travelling, 'Are You Experienced?' is still inspiring travellers all over the world. He instantly regretted a solo trip to Pakistan to Beijing, was horrified by the realities on the West Bank, ate nothing but marmalade sandwiches when travelling to the remote salt flats in Bolivia and yes a lot stories in Are You Experienced are autobiographical. A...

Having done what many people dream of – ditching a corporate career to travel, the proud founder of adventure travel company Yellowwood Adventures, Sam McManus, has created the life of his dreams travelling to remote parts of Ethiopia, Iran, India, the Himalayas, Mongolia and more. He’s been woken up by 30 men with Kalashnikovs in remote African mountains, shaved his head and worn orange pyjamas i...