I woke up in London excited to download the new Bad//Dreems album, only to hear the news that the band is going on an ‘indefinite hiatus.’ 

As an expat living in the UK for close to 20 years now, the Baddies were like a crackling long-distance transmission from back home. It was the rough and ready pub rock I grew up listening to, but with a strong sense of social justice that called out racist and misogynistic bullshit, all while knocking back a few tinnies and kicking a footy around.

Over the years, I’ve managed to catch a couple of their gigs, mostly tiny, sweaty gigs in the UK and Europe. The last one I saw was at Mary’s Underground in Sydney, which coincided with a trip back home to see my mum. The gigs were always thrillingly intense and cathartic, and the guys always humoured me with a bit of a chat afterwards.

My favourite gig was at the Komet in Hamburg a couple of years ago. A cramped, sweaty underground venue, packed with appreciative Germans wishing they had their very own Baddies (I know, they told me, while buying me drinks because I was an Aussie).

I woke on my first morning on the Senegalese island of Gorée to the sound of someone sweeping and a breeze rustling through the trees outside my window. 

Seabirds were riding the air currents, and Modour, the manager of the Maison Agustin LY, was clanking about in the kitchen preparing my breakfast.

It felt like I was a million miles away from the rest of the world, although the bustle of Dakar was barely two kilometres away.

Gorée’s dark past as a notorious slave port between the 15th and 19th centuries seemed just as distant, but reminders were there to be seen if you knew where to look. Indeed, the most obvious, the House of Slaves, was barely 100 metres from my hotel.

Known locally as Maison des Esclaves, the building served as a warehouse for slaves before they were shipped off to the New World for a life of hardship and abuse.

The abuse began here, in the cramped dungeons, and through the Door of No Return that they were herded and hustled through and onto hellishly crowded ships.

It wasn’t so straightforward getting a student discount in the days before Photoshop.

When I was doing my big trip around the equator, there was a time when all roads seemed to lead back to Nairobi.

It became something of a base to wander off to Somalia, to Rwanda and Burundi. And to pick up visas for the countries that lay ahead to the west, like Zaire, the Congo and Gabon.

And the place to pick up a fake student ID.

Back then, a student ID got you a discount on all sorts of things, from museum entry fees to tickets on trains, buses and ferries. Things, if I’m being totally honest, were already ridiculously cheap, even before any discount was applied.

As you can see, it wasn’t a really sophisticated industry back then. Just a piece of cardboard, covered in cloth, your photo and details you filled out yourself in biro.

I was pleased to see that my fake student ID had been signed by Professor Terry Heathcote.

The Prof was a fake lecturer from the University of Sydney that I’d made up earlier in the trip to secure permission from the Maldivian government to visit islands otherwise off-limits to foreigners.

For that, I cut off the letterhead from an official letter I’d got from Sydney Uni, stuck it on the top of a fake letter saying I was researching a PhD on the ‘equatorial phenomenon’ and then photocopied it to hide the join.

My friend, Sean, signed that letter for me.

The fake ID, on the other hand, was signed by another backpacker staying at Sunrays Lodge on River Road.

If I remember rightly, I returned the favour for him.

The tradition of miniature painting in Central Asia dates back to the reign of Tamerlane, way back in the 14th century.

Artists used the form to illustrate documents, manuscripts, interior items and poetry books.

The first thing you’ve got to know is that miniatures don’t have to be miniature. The term “miniature” actually comes from minium, a lead tetroxide that was used as a red pigment by medieval illustrators.

It has also come to refer to the ‘fineness’ of the art. The thinner and brighter the painting is made, the more highly the miniature is prized.

Creating a good miniature is complicated and time-consuming. It requires perseverance, great patience, a steady hand and keen eyesight.

Things that Davron Toshev has in abundance.

Toshev is arguably Uzbekistan’s greatest living miniaturist. He has exhibited his work around the world and is a confidante of the current Uzbek president. 

On my first night in Cusco I ate at the Nuna Raymi restaurant.

You’ll find it tucked up on Triunfo Street, just around the corner from the cathedral.

It was an altogether more elegant experience than Hot Chicken where I’d had lunch earlier in the day.

The wooden tables were sparkling clean, for one thing, and decorated with vases full of fresh wild flowers.

Jose Cruz from Cachin near Lares in Calca was in town delivering a batch of potatoes grown in his community.

Nuna Raymi source everything on their menu from local communities around Cusco. Jose’s community supplied the potatoes that were used in the entree and mains and to make the colourful hand-cooked organic crisps sold at the door.

Jose told us that Nuna Raymi had basically saved his village. By sourcing their potatoes from the families in his village and paying a fair price for them, it provided a living for the entire village and also a future.

Young people could make a living tilling the land now instead of heading off to the bright lights of Cusco and trying their luck there.

I’m not going to lie. I was more than a little bit concerned about altitude sickness on my recent trip to Peru.

I’m not exactly in the best shape of my life at the moment. And everyone I know who had been to Peru before spoke darkly about debilitating headaches and bouts of crippling nausea.

The best way to avoid altitude sickness, of course, is to approach your lofty destination slowly, taking time to acclimatise along the way. 

My flight flew straight into Cusco (via Madrid and Lima) so that wasn’t an option.

An American aid worker I sat next to on the flight from Lima to Cusco suggested drugs – something with an active ingredient called acetazolamide, she said.

When I arrived at my hotel they plied me with coca tea, a mildly narcotic brew made from dried coca leaves. They had a little prep station in the foyer where you could brew yourself some at any time of the day or night.

I’m beginning to suspect I’m not built like other travellers.

Rather than seek one of the excellent cafes in Cusco on my first day in the city I found myself drawn towards ‘Hot Chicken’, a beaten-up polleria on Santa Clara, just past the stone archway on the way to San Pedro market.

I’d like to say that I was drawn to ‘Hot Chicken’ because I figured they’d offer a more authentic dining experience.

Or that it would offer a unique insight into the local culture.

It did both, by the way. But the truth of the matter is that I think I just feel more at home at these kinds of places.

Last weekend I came across some old Super VHS tapes from my big trip around the equator back in the early 1990s.

One included footage of a  minivan being unloaded off our boat in East Kalimantan.

We were halfway along the Mahakam River on our way from Samarinda to Long Iram.

There was no dock for the van to drive on to. Or a crane to simply lift it off.

Just a muddy slope for the boat to pull alongside, a couple of metres below the deck the van was sitting on.

It’s cherry blossom season in Japan and social media is awash with stunning photos of the Sakura blooms across the country.

I lived in Tokyo back in the mid-eighties and I can vouch that it’s an exciting time to be in Japan.

The nightly news features special segments tracking the path of the blossoms from the southernmost part of Japan to the north.

And everyone gets ready for hanami, the traditional Japanese custom of enjoying the transient beauty of the blossoms.

Roughly translated hamani means ‘flower viewing’, which conjures up a vision of people strolling under the flowering trees in quiet contemplation.

In reality it’s just an excuse to have a picnic party under a tree with lots of food and drink and getting roaring drunk.

It dates from when I did my big trip around the equator in the early 90s and stayed with a traditional Mentawai family on Siberut in Indonesia.

The family lived in a wooden longhouse in the heart of the island’s thick jungle interior.

To celebrate my visit the locals put on a bit of a traditional song and dance show.

Families from other longhouses dotted around the jungle came from far and wide  to join in.

Especially after they heard that a pale foreigner would be donning a scratch bark loin cloth and joining in.

There were dances where my Mentawai hosts pretended to be monkeys, chickens and pigs. And songs about fabled hunting trips where the mental men returned with a bounty of meat.