About Us

Hello, we’re Colin and Mitch (short for Michelle). We live in England with our cat, Jiji, and have been together since we were students. We’re not very instagrammable so here’s a picture of us drawn by our wonderful goddaughter. It’s a great likeness!

We’ve been travelling together for over 30 years and have visited 60 countries. We love exploring new destinations, experiencing different cultures, learning about a country’s history, viewing amazing landscapes and wildlife, and, of course, discovering cuisines from all over the world.

Our blog is about the places we’ve visited and the local food and drink that we’ve enjoyed. We love trying to recreate recipes for the dishes we have tried when we arrive back home. We are also interested in growing ingredients and preserving food.

Food is more than nutrition. It plays such an important part in so many cultures all over the world. Bringing people together, it often forms a focal point for festivals and celebrations and is fundamental to the expression of cultural identity. 

When we’re not on the road you can find us planning our next trip or experimenting with all sorts of exotic ingredients in the kitchen.

Our Travel Philosophy

Whenever we travel we try to adhere to the following principles:

Be respectful and kind. We are representatives for our country as much as our hosts are for theirs.

We have been very lucky to have met some amazing people on our journeys and to have experienced the kindness of strangers all over the world. It’s so important to accept hospitality with good grace. We always eat food that we are offered, even if it is a bit challenging. Raw salted cod gizzard, grasshoppers, termites and frog stew were surprisingly good!

We always try to learn a few words of the language of the country we are visiting. At the very least, we learn to say ‘Hello’ and ‘Thank You’. We can also say “cheers!” in a fair number of languages! Any attempt to speak a language, however incompetent, is always much appreciated. We can speak Japanese, Spanish and French – at a level where we can get by. We can read Hiragana, Katakana, around 100 Kanji/Hànzì, Cyrillic and Hangul.

We like to learn about local customs and traditions, and to try to understand about a country’s history and culture.

We’re always aware that conditions and facilities may not be as comfortable as home. We consider ourselves lucky to be travelling. Many of the local people we have met on our trips, especially those who are hosting us or guiding us, have never had the chance to travel to other countries.

We try to be considerate of other people when taking photos and when we’ve taken the shot, we try to give others a chance to take theirs. And sometimes it’s really important just to ditch the camera and enjoy the experience.

About Our Blog

No AI was used in the creation of this blog. We have visited every destination that we write about.

All our recipes are tested extensively. We try very hard to suggest substitute ingredients if it is difficult to find a cuisine’s traditional ingredients in your home country.

All photos on this blog were taken by us and those (rare ones) taken of us were taken by friends. The pictures are generally unedited, with the exception of occasional cropping or adjusting brightness levels – what you see is what you get.

We have paid for our trips using our own resources. Hence you can be assured of a completely honest opinion about the places we have visited and the activities we have taken.