The bustle, colour and riot of smells that is Marrakesh can practically assault the senses when you first step out of your vehicle onto the kerb. A kerb carved from stone and possibly having stood there for the past half century. Although of course modern tar, pitted with use, covers the more ancient cobblestones, and runs up against newer concrete curbs as well. Traffic screams by in an insane riot with rules that seem only apparent to the local drivers. Stepping away from the din that is the vehicular ring road around the old city walls, the Medina, you pass into a cooler alley filled with pedestrian traffic and the occasional hooting motorcycle. This is Marrakesh, and it’s awesome!

Namibia lies high on the bucket list of many photographers around the world. Why wouldn’t it. Every year international photographic salons showcase imagery created in the extraordinary Namib Desert - ancient remains of long dead trees surrounded by jarringly red and orange sands, the hauntingly beautiful abandoned town of Kolmanskop - slowly consumed by the desert sands as it spills through doorways and over windowsills - to the eerily alien like landscape of the south: Quiver Trees perched on dolomitic boulders seemingly stacked haphazardly by some ancient giant creature.


We haven’t reached pre-covid levels of travel yet, but it certainly felt like we had as I narrowly managed to get to the front of the immigration queue at Namibia’s Husea Kutako airport, just moments before a large aircraft from Europe disgorged it’s load of passengers. Quizzing travellers while waiting for luggage and again later at the first accommodation of my own route, the usual destinations were rattled off: Sossusvlei, Luderitz, Swakopmund, Giant’s Playground, Fish river Canyon and of course a beginning or ending in Etosha. Apart from Etosha, all these locations are in the south of the country.