Swellegant Stays

BALI blurs boundaries. The island is famed for its beaches, but above them rise volcanic mountains cloaked in rice terraces and jungle. It’s a province of Indonesia, but with a Hindu majority population, there are strong cultural ties with India. The 3.9 million people living here are of Indian, Austronesian, and Melanesian origin, and most […]

Mumbo Island Malawi Calling all castaways! Your uninhabited island beckons. In the middle of Lake Malawi – a national park and one of the African Great Lakes – sits Mumbo Island. The only way to get here is by boat, it is completely off grid, and when you step onto the jetty, you leave the […]

The 15th century villa overlooks the city of Florence from its hillside home in Filsole. I flew into Milan and took a train directly to Florence where I was about to begin my Italian dream trip. The energy that filled the train station quickly morphed into an elevated sense of place as we wended our […]

Hotel Latitude 15 Degrees Lusaka, Zambia Urban Lusaka is not the first place you’d expect to find a chic, design led hotel with impeccable service. But Latitude Hotels are challenging preconceptions across Southern and East Africa, and Hotel Latitude 15 Degrees is rightly renowned as the best city hotel in Zambia. It’s a property where […]

Time+Tide Miavana Nosy Ankao, Madagascar Madagascar – “The Eighth Continent” – is a world unto itself. 90% of all the flora and fauna found on the surface is endemic; you can see it nowhere else on Earth. From 100 types of lemurs to 300 kinds of birds, not to mention two-thirds of the world’s chameleon […]

Antarctica has the harshest climate on the planet. In winter, there are weeks when the sun never rises above the horizon, and temperatures as low as -98.2 Celsius have been recorded. The South Pole is somewhat warmer: it’s highest recently known temperature, recorded in 2011, is -12.3 Celsius! Rainfall is rare; when precipitation does occur, […]

It seems as if the Sandibe Okavango Safari Lodge has grown out of the Earth, its organic shape and colours completely in keeping with its natural surroundings. Whether it is a magical seed, or the nest of a giant Delta bird, remains to be seen. However you imagine it originated, the structure is remarkable. Pale […]

Iguazu Falls divide Argentina and Brazil, and they are the largest waterfalls in the world. Legend has it that a deity fell in love with a mortal women, and when she spurned his advances he cut the river in two, condemning her to an eternal fall in her canoe. Awasi Iguazu is a an extraordinary […]

You won’t find turrets and knights in shining armor at Bovey Castle. Despite its name, this Grade II listed historic property in England’s Dartmoor National Park was built in 1907 as the grand country retreat of Viscount Hambleden. You can now experience his aristocratic excesses for yourself, as the mansion is part of the prestigious […]