Have you been to the Seychelles? My first destination in 2002. Here it is. A kind of sweaty place and visitors from somewhere I would never have thought of …

Dear Readers,

Greetings from the sweaty and thundery heat of the Seychelles Islands. I have flown half way around the world just to see a mob through here on a one night stand. Seems mad sometimes.

But getting here is of course half the fun. I had kinda hoped that a 22:55 departure on a Tuesday night in early March, JFK to Paris would not be too popular, but I was v wrong. Everybody thought this a great time of night to travel, including many Africans with their usual bulging, overweight and generally already coming undone boxes, going through to places like Ouagadougou and Conakry. These are the things that drive formerly nice check in agents into becoming homicidal maniacs, so the girl who checked me in felt she had really got lucky. Mind you, she had never heard of the Seychelles and even when I put it vaguely on a world map, I don’t think she was any the wiser. I always like it when I have to tell them the three letter code for my bag…. inspires great confidence. On board, my seatmate was, of course, one of the Africans, but at least in a suit and not overflowing robes and he had washed recently, so you start to count your blessings. His French was somewhat impenetrable and somewhere down the line he seemed to think I was going to Amsterdam and where was that, and I told him and then he asked if Holland was part of France, so I kinda gave up, as murder may have been on the horizon.

Anyway, we made it into a very sunny Paree at midday, and as I had hours to kill, I went through into the outside world and decided that as I had only picked at the dinner on the plane, I would now have lunch, so am bien installe in the restau. as the French with their love for abbreviations, would say and I have a nice meal and half a bottle of wine and am feeling less like someone who was wondering what had happened to last night. Then the lady says I gotta leave, not because I am spinning out my time too much, but cos the police have an unclaimed bag outside and we all have to be removed, so out we all troop (she having made me pay the bill in case I don’t return. Money before safety! ). I wander around the terminal for 20 mins while we are made safe. Help an African lady understand that the arrivals and departures screens are NOT the same and if she is meeting her mate from Dakar, then the arrivals is a better bet and I find the ETA of the flight and she needs to go over there and we get that sorted out and merci infiniment. I don’t know why. I must have that sort of face, Strangers are always asking me directions in airports, usually for the toilets. My rule of thumb is look for the bars and restaurants and they are probably over there.

Then back for my petit cafe … well it helped to kill the time. And several hours later we all troop on to Air Seychelles, which is also packed to the rafters, but we leave exactly to the minute for the 9 and half hour flight to the tropics. My seatmate is a returning Seychelloise, living in the USA, so in the same condition as me and she soon passes out and I pop a pill and do likewise. And before we know it, the sun is up and so are we and we swoop down across the coral seas and waving palms and the wheels nearly kiss the water and smoothly, so it is Bienvenue aux Seychelles. Swampy 30C degree heat outside and the immigration persons seem to be even slower than ever and we stand in gloriously non a/c lines, while they decide our fate. They have a new immigration stamp ( I know how fascinated you are probably not by these small details) but now instead of the old triangular plonk on the passport, you have the outline of the coco de mer, which is the endemic palm tree here and whose enormous nuts are very reminiscent of the female pelvis, so now I have a semi-naughty stamp in my pp…. just think what other countries could do to spruce up their image ….prizes may be awarded for the best suggestions received, on post cards please…

At the Hotel Meridien, many of the same faces are there and although I haven’t been for a couple of years, I’m greeted like an old friend – strange, cos I usually have to knock them into shape a bit and get tough. This is a resort type of hotel, therefore quite a long way from the more upmarket pads we stay in and sometimes I do feel we could do better and try harder and it becomes my job, but of course it doesn’t last and I wonder why I bother !!

What I notice straight away is a new clientele, as I hear the sound and see the look and yes, all Tel Aviv is here. Discover they have a charter every week and it has been doing v nicely thank you, but the hotel does admit that they are a work out. Some of the females are more mutton dressed as lamb than we have seen in a long day and you wish they had a sensible best friend, not of the same ilk, who went shopping with them and told them that NO, that is really more for your fifteen year old daughter darling, as the sights are now making sore eyes. One extreme specimen who is convinced she is B Spears or some other pop idol, was wearing a tight white outfit (though tight is only half as tight as the thing really was – clearly no knickers). But it had an abstract, sorta Andy Warhol crossed with Jackson Pollock splattered brown spots/splurges design, some of which came wonderfully out of the seat of the pants and went down the back of her legs – I kid thee not !!!! Her mate had spangled jeans of the most distressed variety and platform pushers/mules in blue suede with more rhinestones – they thought they were really HOT and if someone had thrown a bucket of water over them, it wudda been only to prevent the crotch friction from self-combusting and no other reason. If you know the British TV show Absolutely Fabulous, well these were Patsy and Edina on their hols.

Anyway, it’s the rainy season here so that means the world most huggest cumulus clouds build during the day and then let go with a force of atomic proportion – real Hollywood rain here, no wimpy little showers permitted. Even wakes you up at night, as it sounded like a train was coming through my room. But I meet with the necessary people and we do it all in French. They are quite impressed, but it is good practice – Creole, the lingua franca, is a nasty hard sort of noise and sounds like rather drunken French, spoken with a curious regional accent.

And on Easter Saturday my plane arrives, some 20 mins early, from Kathmandu and I meet several old friends pax and a good staff and we get ourselves organised and the party starts. The poor buggers are only here for one night and in order for them to pop over to Praslin Island, a 15 min flight away on the Twin Otters of Air Seychelles, those who are really keen have to rise and shine for an 0430 breakfast – we make people pay through the nose to do things that under normal circumstance they would NEVER do !! I am so paranoid that the hotel will not be able to do a breakfast that early, that I hardly sleep (having had several libations while catching up with the staff at an overpriced Croele Barbecue dinner). I am in bed at 2300 and awake at 0300 – turn on the telly and hear about the death of the Queen Mother, who has been there all my life, which is universally sad and just can’t think of anyone who has ever been more greatly loved. Anyway, onwards and upwards and miracle of miracles the breakfast is all there and a woman is scrambling eggs as if she was feeding the troops in Afghanistan – have to tell there that will only be about 30 takers and don’t overdo it, s’il vous plait. We get these keen types off to the airport and then there are those who want to go to church, it’s Easter Sunday, which we have fortunately thought about and it has to be Catholic whether you like it or not, so fueled by more eggs, off they go and so do I, as I have a 0915 flight to Paris and on to London, on which I am now writing (that is on the first sector), which is almost 10 hours, as CDG LHR there is hardly time to blink let alone write. The flight is 100% occupe and we are all being generously entertained by 16 months old Gustavus James, who is a bundle of energy and enjoying himself enormously by being toujours actif – and if he has a wail, then his dear papa parades him around the plane so that even those on the back rows are aware of his vocal prowess !!! Oy oy oy – he is however a stunner to look at and has a great grin and my seatmate has pronounced him to be ‘tres sage’ already, so no doubt a great future will be in store. His parents look whacked. And so were we. He has a clone a few rows back too, so sometimes we have solos and sometimes duets – makes Crusty Old Batchelors start planning murder.

Anyway in Paris I walk the change between terminals to stretch the legs and jump on the AF again for the hop to LHR and stand and stand at the baggage carousel and NO bag – bugger bugger, esp. as I was almost 2 hours in Paris, so shame on AF.

Go off to the Berkeley Hotel downtown which we are using for our next departure. Never even been through the front door before (and even discovered it wasn’t even where I thought it was either, so don’t ask me for directions in London…), but all is well and the room is big and a bit Laura Ashley on speed and I have a soak in a deep bath with a vest Victorian sort of plunger rather than a common or garden rubber plug. Next morning AF calls to say they have the bag, which was doubly good news as they were my wake up call too, so I rush downstairs in my sweaty clothes and we have our staff meeting and go over the next program minute by minute. This is Human Odyssey, kinda History of Man-type of thing. Lots to talk about and fine tune, but that’s the only way for these programs to work as well as we are known for. The punters would be amazed how much hard work and detail goes in to making it all look so easy. And before we know it, I’m back at Heathrow, still in the same clothes (well I’m going to France after all, and we are not always do wonderfully fresh there) and a quick blast of Givenchy Gentlemen from the duty free shop spritzer covers a whole host of other less pleasant odors. Check agent lets me off my excess bag weight (as I’m now carrying supplies for the trip – I made sure to leave on the AF Rush Tag, to show that they had buggered me up the day before and the plan worked…).

And in a flash (well, a 90 minute one) I am in Toulouse and me ole mate Bertrand from our French ground handlers is there, with a plain jane girl called Cecile and we go bugger off downtown and although it is now near midnight French time, they have not eaten, so we go to a restaurant, which is hopping and they have le diner and I have a big strong drink and we catch up and laugh a lot. The fact that I am dead on my feet is not mentioned. There was a French family on the plane in the row ahead with two teenage girls, both of whom were reading The Times from cover to cover, which was a bit mind boggling – how many London teens could read the Le Monde, I wondered? Or even want to?

Trip around the world 2003. Part 2. Landing on a 6000 feet thick ice runway and more. Greenland.

I connect with the guide I met last year, a pleasant young guy called Lars and he gets me checked in to the airport hotel (reception desk about 50 feet from the check-in counter… they don’t come closer than this!) and I hope that I am going to get a few hours shuteye, as feel like I have been run over. Sleep deprivation is the most effective torture. If you kept me awake until tomorrow, I’d confess to anything, I know I would. But no such luck. I have to go out to look for Musk Oxen, which roam wild here, so a quick shower and I am back downstairs and popped into a van and off we go. Road soon runs out of tarmac and we lurch along the topsoil, but the more we look, the more the Musk Oxen are not there. That’s the big trouble with wild animals – they tend to foxtrot oscar when you need them to be in one place.

So eventually I make it to bed and of course now I can’t sleep. Such is life in the fast lane. Of course, the curtains are thin and the sun is shining as strongly at 2300 at it was at 1100, so not a great night’s sleep. Next morning, after a very minimal cafeteria style airport restaurant breakfast, I take the Air Greenland flight up to Ilulissat (there may be a test on names later, so please pay attention). At the gate, I meet up with two cheerful Dutch guys who look anything but Dutch, as short and dark, who were on the flight from CPH and will be everywhere I go too and even on the same flight back to CPH at the end. Turns out that they are brothers (though no one would ever guess it) and their mother is Indian, hence the confusing non-Dutch appearance. One of them is a plane fanatic and will travel anywhere just to fly on a certain type of plane. A great collector of airline logo bits and pieces and he understands totally that it is normal for people to collect sick bags and safety cards etc. He is thrilled when I say I have some old Air Mandalay tickets at home, as he doesn’t have these in his collection. Also meet a very friendly Danish couple, both long timers with SAS, she just hitting 40 years of service. We exchange horror stories and worry about whether her son will remember to cut the hedge at home.

We fly on the Dash 7, nice old warhorse of the skies and we all make a fuss of a local woman who is travelling with her 5 day old baby. Because my Dutch friends and I are the types of people who notice things, we can see a stowage in the cabin for ‘polar survival suits’, so we have to ask the flight attendant about them and she happily informs us that if we have to land on the ice, we shall be kept warm.

Great views of the inland ice cap and icebergs floating around in the bays – we are definitely not off Long Island here. In Ilulissat, set on the wonderfully named Disko Bay, there is a posse of guides waiting for me, including the Danish girl who bravely suffered my visit last year. On the SAS flight, I had snaffled some Danish women’s magazines and presented them to her, but she did not jump up and down as I had expected her to.

The head of the guides was there and I spent the rest of the day with her. A lovely Danish girl called Hanne but pronounced as if there was an ‘a’ on the end. Quite besotted with Greenland, she has been coming every summer for the last six years, while on summer vacation from her veterinary college in CPH, from which she will graduate next year. Then she wants to come back here fulltime – Greenland has become her passion. It seems slightly mad when you think of how awful the winter is, severely subzero and with weeks of complete darkness.

First thing: did I want to go on the helicopter ride that most of our gang will be doing, so of course I did, thus 5 minutes after arriving in the hotel, I am on my way back to the airport. Life in the Greenlandic fast lane. There a nice crisply red-painted helicopter was waiting just for me to turn up and I had to smile sweetly at the other 6 pax and apologize for keeping them waiting, but it turned out they had waited all of 5 mins, so they were not put out. The Captain turned out to be Irish and the other heli is flown by his Danish wife. So off we buzzed and had great views of the ice flow and we landed on the ice and took our snaps and marveled at the grandeur of the dirty looking surface, which is apparently some 1500 feet thick! A smart off-white Arctic Hare came lolloping along and didn’t seem at all put out by us. We looked at him and he looked at us. Then a low-level flight back and we saw seals basking in the sun, on the ice though.

Later into town, which is very cute. Very small of course and wooden houses all painted different pastel colors, sitting on the rocks, so up and down and all over the place. There is just no soil at all, so nothing grows and the houses are bolted on to the rocks and stand on short pylons. Tiny harbor with a small freighter offloading containers. (got to bring in the g and t ingredients plus much else) while large pieces of ice just bobbed around. They have to bring enough supplies in during the summer, as from October, the place is solid ice. I was introduced to several people who all were greatly pleased to see me and a general good time was had by all. Due to the smallness of the population, everybody is either inter-related or just knows those who are not family. Quite a lot of tourist shopping but at a steep price. We have a bad combination of high Scandinavian prices to start off with and then the cost of living on an island that has to import everything.

The mosquitoes are kamikaze and much spraying is required, but I still managed some large bumps to grow later – at least no risk of malaria. But they are a real pest and you can’t leave a window open or you will have a room full. But the best thing is that the rooms have pulldown blinds as well as curtains, so it’s the darkest place I’ve been to yet up here and for such great mercies, great thanks! (later addition, the blinds came down OK but of course there was still enough blinding light coming around the rim to light the room quite nicely thank you). I’m going to turn into a daylight sleepwalker at this rate.

I manage to meet up with the hotel manager and go over all our arrangements. They are just not used to large groups, so details needed from me. But that is why I am there, so no question is stupid. The funniest thing about this hotel is that the chambermaids are … wait for … not local or Danish. They come from Thailand. Hard to imagine somewhere further removed from home. They stay a year or two, earning huge Scandinavian wages and then go home and can set up their bar in Pat Pong, Bangkok.

Next day I jump back on Air Greenland to Kangerlussuaq and wait for our big silver bird to arrive, which it manages to do to the minute. A very smart looking silver and blue 757, which normally operates for the Dallas Mavericks … just think of the money they must make if they can support them in such style! This long slim machine has only 63 seats in it, which will spoil our gang forever. 88 seats are going to seem crowded after this. Many old friends disgorge from the aircraft and I enjoy much hugging and kissing and before I know it, we are winging our way back up to Ilusissat, so we can start the fun and games in earnest. One very cheerful frequent traveler with us, who seems to do nothing but, trusts us to take her somewhere good, yelled to the others in flight “Tim is here, we are okay”!

The hotel staff all agog to see what real breathing Amurrican mega-millionaires look like, although I had tried to persuade them that they look just like other people and don’t have two heads or anything unusual. Well, a shortage of hiking boots and perhaps more Hermes scarves and Gucci bags and sling back shoes than they are used to.

The weather is cooperating magnificently and the sun shines and the icebergs glisten. This area of Greenland produces some of the major icebergs of the northern hemisphere and these guys break off from the ice shelf and then eventually float south west and drift down the north eastern coast of Canada and the USA, mainly Newfoundland, so Janny, I’m looking at what you will see sometime soon. Would be good to paint your name on the side and you could do an iceberg watch for it.

We did a nice walkabout and sail about and had the pleasure of listening to the amazing sounds of the icefield surrendering to the forces of Mother Nature. There is enormous, vast pressure working inside the ice mass and it sounds like huge cannons going off, a very wonderful and awe-inspiring sound, like a distant battle. One group was really lucky and saw an iceberg calving, when a huge mass of ice actually parts company with the glacier and crashes down into the water and a huge wave whams out and anything in its path rocks and rolls. What a wonderful sight this is and how small we all feel. This mass of frozen water has been moving along for hundreds of years, grinding inexorably to its date with the sea and now its moment has come.

I also flew, with some brave guests, by Twin Otter and actually landed ON the icecap. They have a very long ‘runway’, which is just flat and clean and you do go a long way along the ice, with some very gentle braking. I did have some some surreal thoughts about a B757 doing that … Now we are standing on 6000 feet (yes 6000) of solid ice which was working its way to the water (and it is doing this at about 30 feet a day, which is positively whizzing along by local standards – I almost felt dizzy). It was really wonderful and you feel like a grain of sand (which is a kinda daft thing to feel like, seeing where you are) but I don’t think a snowflake works, though that would do better). The take off was amazingly fast.

What I have really wanted to see is an iceberg actually turning over. It happens all the time here. Basically, this mega gigantic, super-sized ice cube is worn away underneath by basic melting and erosion and therefore in the end becomes top heavy. It finally goes base over apex and it just (so I am told by those who have seen it) goes round and round, trying to find its center of gravity, so it is not just a top to bottom deal, but it keeps on revolving until it works out where the hell the top is in relationship to the bottom. I would love to see that as it must be just sensational. I realize I am writing to most of you who have never seen a mega iceberg and it is awfully hard to explain how awe inspiring they are. I would sit on a clifftop for days to see this. You always know the ones which have turned over, as they have no right angles. The original, right way up ones, are all jagged and probably dirty on the top, whereas if you are looking at an iceberg which is curved and smooth, it has turned over.

And the day after, we reversed everything and they went off to Iceland and me to Russia. Then the fun and games of scouting really started. I hope that you are game for it.