Inspiring Travel Writing from John Borthwick: Page 3 of 14
Articles by John Borthwick: Page 3 of 14
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Karakoram Highway: The High Road to China
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John Borthwick
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China
"Ava Gardner, the renowned showbiz of Holly Wood stayed in this suite in the year 1955 during the shooting of Bhawany Junction", declares a tarnished brass plaque at the old Faletta's Hotel, Lahore. I can only hope that Ava's digs were a cut above...
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Otago Peninsula: Poets, Ghosts and Penguins
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John Borthwick
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New Zealand
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South Island
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Otago
"There is said to be a ghost in Larnach Castle...an apparition dressed in black," the tourist brochure declares. It sounds like a tried though not necessarily true line. The stone lions and dark pines of Larnach Castle sit high on a ridge on Otago...
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Penang
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John Borthwick
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Malaysia
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West Coast
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Penang
Captain Francis Light once fired a cannon full of silver coins into the Penang scrub in order to motivate his reluctant workers to clear the land. It worked, and the island of Penang (off the north-west coast of Malaysia) became the British East...
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Coach, Car or Campervan?
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John Borthwick
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New Zealand
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North Island
It's no "Kiwi joke". Near the tip of New Zealand's North Island is a sixty-mile long beach called Ninety Mile Beach. Nor is it a joke that, mid-way along the beach, a Honda sedan juts from the sand like an old metal road-kill, devolving from rust to...
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Midnight in Serendip
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John Borthwick
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Sri Lanka
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West Coast
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Bentota
Midnight in Serendib. The moon hangs above the sea like an apostrophe. From the balcony of the hotel, a watcher - last drink at hand - feels the thud of waves against the granite rocks below. Somewhere in the distance the Colombo train clatters...
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Crocodile Man Meets Kodak Clan
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John Borthwick
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Papua New Guinea
This is as close as I’ll get to flying on a wing and a prayer. Below our tiny Cessna, the Upper Sepik River glistens like a jade serpent, twisting and looping back on its own coils. At the controls is a true ‘sky pilot’, a man of...
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Chasing Gauguin's Ghost
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John Borthwick
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French Polynesia
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Society Islands
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Tahiti
'What are you here for? Looking for the lost Loti Lotus Land or the Gauguin ghosts?’ demands a melancholic barfly, a European drifter in The Grapes of Paradise, an H.E. Bates story set in Tahiti. The Loti to whom the drifter refers is French...
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Saintly Stones, Fading Bones
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John Borthwick
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India
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Goa
When an Indian army attacked the Portuguese colony of Goa in 1693, the desperate Viceroy placed his baton of command in the hand of a mummy. Miraculously, it seemed, the attackers withdrew, but this wasn't just any mummy - it was the colony's most...
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Phuket Recovers from TV Tsunami
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John Borthwick
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Thailand
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Southern Thailand: The Andaman Coast
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Phuket
Phuket is Phuket. It is neither Khao Lak nor Phi Phi. The distinction is important because Khao Lak (80 km north on the Thai mainland) and Phi Phi Island (40 km east in Phang Nga Bay) were extensively damaged during the tsunami of 26 December 2004,...
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Walking Maria Islands
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John Borthwick
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Australia
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Tasmania
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Tasmania City
A city dweller, I wouldn't know a dogwood tree if it jumped up and bit me. Or a so-called cheesewood tree if I jumped up and bit it. Similarly, I can't identify all sorts of "looks-like" trees — honeywood, blackwood, pinkwood — except perhaps the "...
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