As a child I wanted to be an explorer, but was thwarted in this ambition by being about a century too late (or too early). Nevertheless, I have always taken the opportunity to see as much of the world as possible:

• At 18 I lived in Paris for a couple of months, then Hong Kong for another couple
• After turning 19 in Hong Kong, I took the train to Shanghai, and travelled across the entirety of China to the Silk Road's passage above the northern edge of the Himalayas, then south and east through the foothills of Tibet and Yunnan province into Laos, down into Cambodia, then up through Vietnam. I completed this nine-month trip across over 10,000 miles on a budget of less than £3000
• Aged 20, between my first and second years of university, I spent two months hitchhiking and wildcamping all over Greece, from Athens up to glorious Vikos Gorge near the Albanian border, then back down to the Peloponnese, on a budget of a couple of hundred pounds
• Aged 21, between my second and third years of university, I spent two months travelling in Mexico and Guatemala
• Aged 22, after graduating, I spent six months travelling north across India, from Tamil Nadu in the south to Himachal Pradesh in the far north
• Aged 25 I interrailed through southern Europe, taking in France, Italy, Spain and Portugal
• Aged 26–27 I went to the US to visit my mother, who lives in Utah, and spent a couple of months touring the American Southwest with her. I then flew to Costa Rica, and from there journeyed all the way down through South America to Patagonia, then back up to Bolivia, where I spent a couple of months learning Spanish, and Peru, where I did freelance work for a while (not having kept to as strict a budget as my previous trips) and completed the Salkantay Trek to Machu Pichu unguided and unassisted (for the first time)
• From Peru, I flew to Australia with my Australian then-girlfriend, and roadtripped for a couple of months with her band up the coast from Melbourne to Sydney
• From Australia we went to Mexico City, and lived in beautiful Roma Norte for a year and a half – easily the best place I've lived (and, in fact, the longest I've ever lived in one place). It was here that I taught myself to code
• Aged 29, after further trips to the US and a month in Greece, I returned to the UK
• Aged 34, I and my current partner flew to New York, then spent three months roadtripping and car camping down to New Orleans, then on to California and up to the temperate rainforests and spectacular mountains of Washington State
• From Seattle we flew to Peru, and completed my second unguided and unassisted Salkantay Trek as well as studying Spanish for another couple of weeks, before travelling by cargo ship from Iquitos all the way down the Amazon to Belém on the Brazilian coast: having travelled east to west across North America by car, we travelled west to east across South America by boat. We then lived in a shamanic community near Salvador for three months before returning to the UK
• Aged 35, I and my partner walked 350 miles from Land's End in Cornwall to Avebury in Wiltshire, wildcamping mosts nights and carrying tent, food and everything else we needed on our backs