Inspiring Travel Writing from AA Gill
AA Gill is a features writer and critic for The Sunday Times and GQ magazine and writes regular travel features for The Sunday Times magazine.
What the Papers Say recently voted him Critic of the Year; he is Sunday Times Magazine Columnist Of the Year, has won two Glenfiddich awards for his travel writing and was voted runner up in the 1999 Travelex Travel Writers' Awards for Travel Writer of the Year. He is a contributing editor at GQ and a founder of Travel Intelligence.
He has published two novels, Sap Rising and Star Crossed, was winner of the Literary Review's Bad Sex Awards 1999, and is author of The Ivy Cookbook.
AA Gill has two children and lives in London.
What the Papers Say recently voted him Critic of the Year; he is Sunday Times Magazine Columnist Of the Year, has won two Glenfiddich awards for his travel writing and was voted runner up in the 1999 Travelex Travel Writers' Awards for Travel Writer of the Year. He is a contributing editor at GQ and a founder of Travel Intelligence.
He has published two novels, Sap Rising and Star Crossed, was winner of the Literary Review's Bad Sex Awards 1999, and is author of The Ivy Cookbook.
AA Gill has two children and lives in London.
Articles by AA Gill
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Before You Die: Sacred place of the San
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AA Gill
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Botswana
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Kalahari
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Makgadikgadi National Park
Kubu Island, Botswana. A huge green granite rock that rises out of the Makgadikgadi Pan like a fairy castle, Kubu is a sacred place of the San. Giant boabab trees grow from it like red turrets. The most magical and powerful place I have ever been....
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Before You Die: A Man-Made Wonder
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AA Gill
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India
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Uttar Pradesh
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Agra
Indai, Agra: The Taj Mahal. This is one of the half dozen bona fide man-made wonders of the world. It hurts to look at it; the symmetry, the whiteness, the scale is almost too big to fit in your head. And the people: I don’t mind the people,...
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Before You Die: Art from the Gulags
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AA Gill
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Uzbekistan
The Savitsky Art Museum - Nukus, Uzbekistan. This is a remarkable and humbling collection, thousands upon thousands of paintings, drawings and sculptures produced in the face of great danger. The most moving examples come from Stalin’s Gulag....
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Before You Die: Stinky Food Festival
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AA Gill
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Iceland
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Reykjavik Region
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Reykjavik
The Stinky Food Festival, Reykjavik. You can marvel over smoked sheep’s head, stuffed cod liver, raw puffin, pickled seal flipper and the simply extraordinary and repellant buried shark. Besides which, Reykjavik is a great place. You may never...
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The Hunger Gap
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AA Gill
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Kenya
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Nairobi Region
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Nairobi
“There is no famine.” Marc Hermant, the lugubrious Belgian head of mission for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), south Sudan programme, wipes his tired eyes and repeats himself like a patient schoolteacher explaining basic grammar to a...
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The End of the Road
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AA Gill
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Kenya
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Nairobi Region
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Nairobi
Sudan, May, 1998. “There is no famine.” Marc Hermant, the lugubrious Belgian head of mission for Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF), south Sudan programme, wipes his tired eyes and repeats himself like a patient schoolteacher explaining basic...
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Out of Their Element
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AA Gill
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Botswana
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Kalahari
The Kalahari, January 1998. The great thing about the Kalahari is that it hates you. It doesn’t have a welcome mat or a lei to drape over your shoulders or a glass of complimentary sangria. It doesn’t have a hospitable grin or an...
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Awaday in a Manger
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AA Gill
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United States
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Pennsylvania
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Bethlehem
Bethlehem, December 1999. A cold coming we had of it. It started with the Mossad grilling from two 12-year-old immigration girls at Ben Gurion airport. Almost everyone in Israel who exerts any street-level power turns out to be an improbably young...
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The Fatal Shore
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AA Gill
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Uzbekistan
The Aral Sea, July 2000. The man behind the desk has a bandaged ear. Perhaps a previous guest let him keep the rest of his head as a tip. He holds my passport and press accreditation as if they are fortune cookies containing death threats. He licks...
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A Short Walk in the Hindu Crush
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AA Gill
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India
India, January 1999. Here is my one traveller’s tip for those of you considering going to India: don’t tell anyone. Pretend you’re spending a fortnight with your decaying mother in Torbay, really. Announcing you’re going to...
