Travel and Holiday Pages

To see our full list of travel postings click here..

Magazine Articles

Arvika - A Co-Creative Community
Anna Maria Espsäter travels to Sweden to find out more about the extraordinary sense of community that makes Arvika such an interesting place to visit and such a success story in terms of creative pursuits and lifestyle.

Some 30 minutes from the Norwegian border, Arvika lies along the shores of a crystal clear lake, Glafsfj orden glittering in the autumn sunlight with immense quiet forests encroaching upon it on three sides. Despite its small size, around 15,000 in the town itself, 27,000 in the borough, Arvika is a thriving centre in a variety of ways. In Sweden it’s well-known for its successful arts and crafts community – the country’s oldest arts and crafts shop, Arvika Konsthantverk, opened its doors here in 1922. It boasts an excellent art museum, the Rackstad Museum, with works by the colony of painters that settled around nearby Lake Racken at the turn of the 19th century; there’s a large outdoor museum, Sågudden, with buildings from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries; Klässbol linen mill, not far from town, weaves the table cloths and napkins that adorn the tables at the Nobel prize dinners and these are just a few of the plenitude of things created by this community in the fi eld of arts and crafts alone.

Read more by subscribing to Kindred Spirit....

A Better Way to Holiday
From eco lodges to living in an Ashram, travel journalist Sarah Dawson shows us how to navigate our way through alluring southern India by road and rail – and return with a clear environmental conscience.

Ever since a yoga holiday in Goa where I practised yoga on a podium surrounded by exotic birds, swaying palm trees and brightly coloured butterflies I have longed to return to this spiritually pulsating sub-continent. I also wanted to make as low an environmental impact as possible which meant ‘no’ to domestic flights and profit-driven companies and ‘yes’ to public transport and ecological, community or fair-trade tourism. I started my journey in Goa and hailed a grinning rickshaw driver to take me to the state’s most southerly developed beaches where I’d heard there were some coveted environmental resorts. Located next to Palolem, one of the world’s top ten beaches boasting three kilometres of white sand fringed by palms and casuarina trees, Patnem is a chilled-out, family-oriented beach with many bamboo cafes and cabins, some delicious seafood restaurants and a small swell of surf. At the northern end of the beach a dusty yet well trodden track led to the popular ecological resort of 'Bhakti Kutir'. Set within its own palm-tree sanctuary, 'Bakti' is full of the flavours and rhythm of Goan village life and offers community living in a natural environment. The resort has daily social events and runs courses in everything from yoga to belly dancing, as well as ancient Ayurvedic therapies and delicious organic cuisine. Accommodation came in the form of simple cabanas made from local rice straw, bamboo and mud, equipped with eco biodegradable compost toilets and al fresco showers.

Read more in issue 91....

Forest of Broceliande
Throughout the tales of the Arthurian cycle, the marvels of the Otherworld are never far away, and nowhere more so than in the wild places of the great forests. Paul Brannan takes us to France to explore the treasures among the tress.

These ancient forestss are not to be found on any map, although they have their counterparts in our world; one such place is the forest of Paimpont in Brittany, a link to the legendary forest of Broceliande. Today, this forest of oak, beech and pine trees covers around 16,000 acres, but at one time extended nearly a hundred miles from Rostrenen in the west to Rennes in the east. Not all of the sites in the forest have Arthurian legend; there are also a number of megalithic sites, with a magic that was already ancient in Arthur's day...

Read this article in full in issue 89 of Kindred Spirit

Stealing of the Sampo
Heroic tales, ancient rites, shamanic rituals, amazing wildlife and thriving traditions are just some of the delights enjoyed by Anna Maria Espäster as she ventured to Kuhmo in Finland to share in the riches of the Kalevala – a national treasure of epic proportions

The small town of Kuhmo, with just 10,000 souls to its name, lies nestled in the midst of lakes and forests a stone’s throw from the Russian border on Lake Lammasjarvi, in deepest Finnish Karelia. The area of Karelia has long been a bridge between East and West and it was one of the regions that in the 1830s inspired Elias Lonnrot, a scholar and district health officer, to travel its width and length collecting the oral folk poetry and stories that were to become what is today known as the Finnish national epic – the Kalevala. Many of the stories, traditions and folklore that inspired the Kalevala are still kept alive to this day and I’d travelled to the area to see the re-enactment of a legend from the Kalevala – the Sampo Rite – by the shaman of the Kalevala village in Kuhmo.

Read this full, fascinating article in Kindred Spirit Magazine issue 88

Rock Fever
Dr Sibis Mouton travels to the Seychelles where she discovers the thrill and the beauty of life on the remote granite islands.

It was 8 o’clock on Praslin Island and I was still fast asleep when a knock on my door woke me. It was my friendly landlady, Emilia. She had come to inform me that it was possible to land on Aride Island today and that this long awaited day trip was now finally going to materialize for me. Aride, about 16 km from Praslin, is the most northerly of the Seychelles granite islands. It is also the most important bird reserve in the Seychelles, host to more than 750,000 breeding pairs of seabird species, which is more than on any other island in the region. It is home to several thousand frigate birds and five species of land birds endemic to the Seychelles, amongst them the very rare Seychelles magpie-robin. As the island is almost completely protected by its dangerous surf, it was not colonized until after 1851. Today there are only between five and ten people stationed on the island at any given time, so it is a real getaway if you have the spirit of Robinson Crusoe pumping in your veins. The island essentially ‘belongs to the birds’.

Read this article in full in issue 88 of Kindred Spirit