Teemu’s town in Lapland, Finland, has more reindeer than people. Around 22,500 reindeer versus 8,876 people, according to the latest census from 2015. The latter number has been decreasing steadily.
The town in question, Sodankylä, is four times the size of Antwerp. The province, not the city. That amounts to less than one person per square kilometre. Now I realise why some call Lapland Europe’s last wilderness.
Continue Reading →A pelican flying over your head when you’re floating in the salty Caribbean Sea. A walk through a toucan forest on the way to impressive temples in Guatemala. Bright red scarlet macaws gliding by in Honduras. A colony of pastel pink flamingos fluttering their wings in the low water of the Mexican coast. Central America is a true paradise for bird lovers.
Continue Reading →When I arrived in Sysmä, Finland, two months ago, my friend Janne welcomed me to the darkness. He probably knows — apart from a year in Southampton, where we carried out an extensive zythological study together, he has been living in rural Finland all his life. And yes, autumn is very dark here. On the winter solstice, dawn only came after nine o’clock in the morning. Just after three in the afternoon, it was pitch-dark again. The sun never climbed much higher than the horizon, gifting photographers a permanent golden hour. That’s when the colours of rural Finland are at its most beautiful: the birch forest covered with a layer of powdered sugar, the golden wheat fields, the shimmering water of the lakes, whether frozen over or not.
Continue Reading →Travelling is expensive. You need to save up for a year to afford to take a few weeks off. It’s impossible to travel long-term without being either filthy rich or a dirty hippie in rags who sleeps in a car and eats from a trash can. Filthy or dirty, that’s the choice.
But what if I tell you that all these preconceptions about long-term travel are wrong?
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