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In 2007, around the time I started getting interested in food and wine and began writing the occasional restaurant review, I read Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. A decade and change later, I don’t remember much about the book, aside from

On the edge of Rishikesh, in the foothills of the Himalayas, lies an overgrown ashram reminiscent of the great ruins of the Mayans. Fifty years ago this year, the Beatles arrived at this unlikely location at the invitation of the

The young boy sitting across from me in the tuk-tuk smiles politely and asks me my name. I hate to be a cheapskate, put out by the loss of a couple of dollars, especially when everything here is so cheap.

The smell hits you before anything else, about halfway between the bus station and the town centre, filling your nostrils and urging you onward. Then there’s the sight of it, a literal smoke signal, wafting upwards from street level before

It’s the end, as they say, of an era. Or at least it was meant to be. On Saturday last week, the RMS St Helena departed the South Atlantic island that gives it its name for what was supposed to

The following book reviews were written for The Weekend Australian back in 2016. For whatever reason — probably the fact that I didn’t file them on time — they were never published. I’m putting them out there now for posterity’s sake. From the review