Inspiring Travel Writing from Mark Eveleigh

In 1992 Mark Eveleigh spent six hours reviewing his life while swinging from the end of a fraying cable in the world’s highest cable-car, in Venezuela. The psychological shock of this experience was enough to send him plummeting down the slippery slope into the shadowy world of freelance travel-writing.

Mark specialises in adventure travel and exploration but has written on conservation and cultural aspects of more than 45 different countries. In 1996 he led the first expedition by foreigners into Central Borneo’s ‘valley of the spirit world,’ collecting material for Fever Trees of Borneo (Eye Books). He grew up in Africa, and returned in 1999 to trek through northern Madagascar with a zebu pack-bull. The full story was told in Maverick in Madagascar (Lonely Planet Journeys and National Geographic).

Although he has been described by Maxim magazine as ‘a borderline insane modern-day explorer,’ Mark prides himself on being a clear-sighted and versatile journalist. Undercover news assignments have taken him from besieged Zimbabwean farms to high-security Bolivian prisons, but charging African elephants, Spanish fighting bulls and a randy Peruvian llama have taught him the real importance of ‘journalistic footwork.’ His travel features and photo-stories have been published in more than 50 magazines and newspapers on 5 continents and he is just as comfortable whether taking his readers on a 4x4 expedition across the Kalahari, on an anti-poaching patrol in the Kenyan bush or on a romantic wander through the backstreets of Tangier.

Mark is currently based in Spain, with his writer wife Blanca (who supplies the real class in their partnership), and he is always ready to hit the road on assignments to whatever part of the world offers a good story.