The Marathon Snail

Sarah O’Regan volunteers with a UK charity in Dunkirk supporting refugees “You must help them!” The man, drained with cold and exhaustion, gestured at a father holding a baby as he spoke urgently to me. “Why aren’t you helping them?” The clothes of the refugee carrying the baby were wet. The air temperature was close to zero. The inflatable dinghy used in the previous night’s attempt to cross the English Channel had developed a leak and everyone, including the baby, had fallen into the freezing, dark water. This morning, the adults were still in wet clothes – the only ones they owned. The baby, at least, looked dry and warm in its father’s arms. Another man told us that when he removed his trousers to dry them, the salty fabric ripped a layer of skin off. Later, we learned that two lifeless bodies had been found in the sea. It is February, and I am on a patch of scrubland near Dunkirk in northern France, volunteering with a refugee charity, Calais ...

The ghost of Christmas past perfect continuous

Having been treated to several of the best breakfasts in Uzbekistan , I was prepared to eat relatively less well after I left Samarkand, but I wasn’t expecting to struggle on Christmas Day to find a decent meal at all in the land of plenty. I’d had an unsatisfying lunch of chicken keema shashlik which I’d deemed too suspicious to finish, fearing a bout of the Southern Purge; an affliction common to travellers in Central Asia. Haunted by friends’ photos on social media and the ghost of Christmas past perfect continuous, I had been thinking about pigs-in-blankets and chestnutty sprouts all afternoon, and I was hungry. As I was travelling out of season, there were only two evening restaurants open in town. For my Christmas dinner I chose the one I hadn’t already visited. Like on many other nights I was the only guest. I was shown to a table and pointed through the menu; many dishes were unavailable but there were the usual suspects, including fish, which was accompanied by a pleasing...

Sister Act: Hiking the Himalayas in an All-Women Group in Nepal

As published 7 August 2024 on JourneyWoman , the world’s largest and most trusted resource for female solo travel Sarah O’Regan braves the elements and the Himalayan heights and finds tranquillity in the company of women who are breaking the traditional mould Danu and Kumari, women hiking the Himalayas The Himalayan wind pushes me to the side of the footpath once again, and I tack, zigzagging like a sailboat in a headwind. A half-heard sound makes me turn, and on the steep mountainside below I see my companions frantically waving. While they are clearly shouting, I can’t hear them over the howling in my ears. I sit on a stone and rest, rocked by the gale. When they catch up, I learn that Kumari and her heavy pack have been blown over, and tumbled down the mountain some distance. A few metres to our right the ground disappears into a deadly ravine, but luckily no serious damage is done. Later, my guide Danu tells me she has never experienced winds like this in fifteen years of trek...