From a Jacobean traveller’s travails in Sindh to the tangled roots of Nigeria, our pick of new nonfiction books that shine a light on Asia, Africa and South America
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You Have Not Yet Been Defeated: Selected Works 2011-2021
By Alaa Abd El-Fattah
The Italian director’s new, semi-autobiographical film reveals a charming and rarely seen side of his home city
‘This, for me, is the most beautiful place on Earth,” Paolo Sorrentino told Filippo Scotti, the actor playing the director’s younger self in his latest film, as their 1980s Riva speedboat chopped the waves of the Bay of Naples. Their view stretched from the precipitous peninsula of Sorrento all the way west towards Posillipo. The two promontories flank the sprawling port city, offering a warm embrace to all those who disembark there. Sorrentino’s new film, the Hand of God, opens with that same view: the sun-mottled bay, whose peace is disturbed by the sound of four Rivas as they speed towards the shore. The film is both a love letter to, and a portal into, Paolo Sorrentino’s Naples.
In cinemas now and on Netflix this week, The Hand of God sees the Academy award-winning director return to his home city for the first time since One Man Up, his 2001 debut. Sorrentino tells the story of his own coming of age, up to the moment when his life is shattered by the death of his parents in a tragic accident. Sorrentino’s story is a tale of great grief, loss and perseverance, set in a middle-class part of Naples, a far cry from the impoverished neighbourhoods shown in the city’s other recent portraits: Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend or the mafia-focused Gomorrah series.
Continue reading...His career took Roff Smith, 63, to more than 100 countries. But he started to feel jaded. Exploring his local area by bike led to a whole new approach to his pictures
Roff Smith’s photographs show a solitary cyclist – Smith himself – in a painterly landscape. His wheels appear to turn briskly, but really the bike moves as slowly as it can without a wobble. As a writer and photographer for National Geographic magazine, Smith, 63, visited more than 100 countries, but now he has squeezed the brakes and shrunk his world. His photographs are all taken within a 10-mile radius of his home, and yet travel has never felt so rich to him as it does now.
Before the pandemic, he had already begun to feel jaded: air travel made “the world everywhere look the same”.
Continue reading...There are fears the decision will reverse the gains made by a successful vaccination campaign
The Brazilian government has been accused of seeking to turn the South American country into a haven for unvaccinated tourists after it shunned calls – including from its own health regulator – to demand proof of vaccination from visitors.
The decision – announced on Tuesday by the health minister, Marcelo Queiroga – sparked anger in a nation that has lost more than 615,000 lives to a Covid outbreak the president, Jair Bolsonaro, stands accused of catastrophically mishandling.
Continue reading...The arrival of the Omicron variant and rising infection rates has led to myriad new rules that travellers have to negotiate before setting off
Spain has banned all non-vaccinated Britons from entering the country. The ban is expected to last until at least 31 December, at which point the rules will be reviewed.
Continue reading...Industry body warns that some operators won’t last the winter after return of strict Covid travel rules
Travel firms have called on the government to provide urgent financial help as fresh Covid-19 restrictions come in to force on Tuesday, hitting holiday travel just before the peak booking period.
Turnover has been at just 22% of normal levels for tour operators, according to figures from the travel association Abta.
Continue reading...The health secretary has updated the Commons on the latest numbers of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus virus, as well as new travel restrictions for those arriving in the UK
Continue reading...Just how lucky will the guests who get to stay at the McCallister house later this month be? I foresee trouble
In the interests of public service, I need to make you aware of a trap. Yesterday, a property became available on Airbnb. It is a large home in the Chicago area, available for one night only and it is suspiciously cheap. Look, it’s the Home Alone house.
Apparently, for $18 (£13.50), you and three friends can stay overnight in the iconic McCallister residence. You will be greeted by the actor who played Buzz McCallister. There will be pizza and other 90s junk food. There will be a mirror for you to scream into. There may well be a tarantula. It all seems too good to be true, doesn’t it? This is why I am convinced that whoever ends up staying there will be robbed.
Continue reading...In a developing country reliant on its tourist industry, the rapidly eroding ‘smiling coast’ shows the urgent need for action on climate change
When Saikou Demba was a young man starting out in the hospitality business, he opened a little hotel on the Gambian coast called the Leybato and ran a beach bar on the wide expanse of golden sand. The hotel is still there, a relaxed spot where guests can lie in hammocks beneath swaying palm trees and stroll along shell-studded pathways. But the beach bar is not. At high tide, Demba reckons it would be about five or six metres into the sea.
“The first year the tide came in high but it was OK,” he says. “The second year, the tide came in high but it was OK. The third year, I came down one day and it [the bar] wasn’t there: half of it went into the sea.”
Continue reading...One of the positive experiences during two years of pandemic gloom has been the speed of scientific progress in understanding and treating Covid. Many effective vaccines were launched in less than a year and rapid large-scale trials found a cheap and effective drug, dexamethasone, that saved thousands of lives.
The global scientific community has also carried out “genomic surveillance” – sequencing the genome of the virus to track how it evolves and spreads at an unprecedented level: the public genome database has more than 5.5m genomes. The great value of that genomic surveillance, underpinned by a commitment to rapid and open sharing of the data by all countries in near-real time, has been seen in the last few days as we’ve learned of the Covid variant called Omicron.
Continue reading...For bikers, combustive power is one of the thrills of a long-haul trip. But flat batteries and charging points will just become part of exciting new journeys
A full tank of gas, a twist of the wrist, the roar of the exhaust as you speed towards the horizon … These are the visceral touchstones of the motorcycling experience, and all are a direct product of petrol-fuelled power, as is much of the biker’s lexicon: “open it up”, “give it some gas”, “go full throttle”. For a motorcycle rider, as opposed to the modern car driver, the journey is a full-body communication game, constantly applying judgment, skill and nerve to control the thousands of explosions that are happening between your thighs in order to transport yourself, upright and in one piece, to your destination.
Yet the days of the internal combustion engine are numbered. By 2050 the European Commission aims to have cut transport emissions by 90%, and electric vehicle technology is striding ahead for cars, trucks, buses and even aircraft. But where does this leave the motorcycle? Can this romantic form of transport and its subcultures survive the end of the petrol age?
Continue reading...With its glacial lakes, silky beaches and verdant hills, it’s a wonder this brilliant county for walking is often overlooked
Thank God no boozy poet or philandering painter was born or buried in Llandeilo in the heart of Carmarthenshire. If there were, it would probably be flooded with pilgrims. As it is, the small inland town on the mighty Tywy (or Towy) – the longest river that has its source and outlet in Wales – has a degree of quaintness, but not too much, and only a handful of gawpers admiring the pastel-painted facades. Most are, like me, on road trips, as the A40 which runs through Llandeilo is a greenery-fringed alternative to the busier Heads of the Valleys road just to the south, and there are coffees and buns and bowls of cawl (a local lamb and veg stew) to be had here.
Carmarthenshire – or Sir Gâr – known as the Garden of Wales, is one of the 13 historic counties. Still largely agricultural, it’s criss-crossed by quiet back roads and is where the M4 runs out. It’s one of many places in Wales people pass through without stopping and is something of a Cinderella county.
Continue reading...Connemara has inspired film crews, writers and maharajahs with its wild mountains and endless expanses of sky and sea
When I was 20 and straight out of teacher training college I took a job in a school in Connemara for a year. My friends were heading for the bright lights of Dublin, but after a childhood of caravan holidays along Ireland’s west coast I was drawn to the “wild mountainous country” of west Galway beloved of Oscar Wilde and countless other artists and untamed spirits.
Instead of the indoor excitement of city life, I spent the year knee-high in bogs, scrambling up the Twelve Bens, island-hopping to Inishbofin and Inishark and pedalling along deserted roads to the show-stopping beaches at Glassilaun and Rossadillisk. A sign on the road for Rossadillisk beach read “Welcome to Paradise”. I learned to ride on Connemara ponies at Errislannan and on weekends I’d hitch lifts to random events in Letterfrack, involving local poets, map makers and sculptors who breathed life into this quiet corner of Ireland. With no advance planning, I’d find myself at the summit of Diamond Hill or spotting porpoises at Renvyle beach with a gang of newfound friends.
Continue reading...Operators greet reopening with cautious optimism with bookings coming in mainly from Italy
Enrico Rossi was among the protesters in Bardonecchia when the Italian government decided in February to maintain a Covid shutdown on ski resorts just hours before the slopes were due to reopen.
Rossi described the loss of the ski season as a tragedy for the small town and others in the Susa Valley, Piedmont, especially after the 2020 season had also been cut short.
Continue reading...British Airways flight BA001 and Virgin Atlantic flight VS3 performed a synchronised departure from Heathrow on Monday heading for New York JFK for the first time since the US travel ban was introduced due to pandemic
Continue reading...The resumption of international travel pits new lives against old dreams for Australians who returned from overseas during the Covid-19 pandemic
To live and work overseas is a rite of passage for many Australians. Life abroad, however, took on a new sense of fragility with the rise of Covid-19. More than a million Australian citizens were forced to choose between riding out the pandemic in a foreign country, or returning to the relative safety of Australia.
Since March 2020, it is estimated about half of those living abroad chose to come back, while tens of thousands wished to return but were unable to.
Continue reading...Curbs on vaccinated visitors from 33 countries to go on Monday – for many separated loved ones it’s not a moment too soon
On 8 November, the US will ease restrictions that effectively halted tourism and non-essential travel from 33 countries, including the UK, most of Europe and China. The restrictions have separated families and loved ones, with thousands missing out on birthdays, holidays – and in the case of the British tennis star Emma Raducanu’s parents – a US Open final.
Now all visitors with a WHO-approved vaccination (which includes AstraZeneca) will be allowed to visit the US. Visitors with passports from any country where fewer than 10% of the country’s population has been vaccinated will also be allowed.
Continue reading...Scotland’s newly reopened mountain bothies are shining examples of sustainable tourism. Our photographer takes us on a guided tour
The Mountain Bothies Association (MBA) charity has reopened its 105 mountain huts, shelters and howffs after more than a year of closure due to Covid. The overwhelming majority of these are in Scotland and they reopened in August for what the MBA described as “responsible use”, pointing out that Covid has not gone away. The bothies are all sorts of shapes and sizes in varied locations – many are extremely remote and operated with the agreement of owners and estates and maintained by MBA volunteers since the late 60s and early 70s.
Above,Allt nam Fang, approaching Meanach Bothy; right, Meanach Bothy, renovated in 1977, is approximately 1,000ft above sea level
Continue reading...High vaccination rates and low Covid case numbers mean border can reopen, premiers Dominic Perrottet and Daniel Andrews say
For the first time in months, the border between New South Wales and Victoria will open to fully vaccinated travellers from 11.59pm Thursday, as both state governments push ahead with “normalising living with the virus”.
On Thursday evening, the Victorian acting chief health officer, Ben Cowie, reclassified the status of the Australian Capital Territory and all remaining “orange zone” areas in New South Wales.
Continue reading...The coronavirus pandemic saw arrivals drop more than 80% in the tourism-reliant nation
Thailand has reopened to fully vaccinated tourists, with tens of thousands of travellers expected to touch down in Bangkok and Phuket as the country reboots its tourism industry after 18 months of Covid restrictions.
The coronavirus pandemic has hammered the kingdom’s economy, with tourism making up almost 20% of its national income. Last year saw its worst performance since the 1997 Asian financial crisis with arrivals down more than 80%.
Continue reading...